Comcast Disables VCR Scheduling In New Guide

An anonymous reader writes "Comcast has quietly launched a new on-screen guide for its cable boxes. What they're not advertising is that they've removed the ability to schedule VCR-compatible channel flipping any time more than a few hours in advance for people who don't buy the $20/month DVR service. What this means is that VCR owners are now forced to pay for Comcast's $20/month DVR service or else start their recordings manually. For us techies there might be a way around this, but ordinary VCR enthusiasts and owners of other recorders are left in the dust. Anyone know a good antitrust lawyer?" Raise your hand if you regularly use a VCR these days, too.

Comments

Lawyer?

[girlintraining]

Anyone know a good antitrust lawyer?

Your wallet.

Re:Lawyer?

[Lehk228]

'cause the free market fixes everything. the invisible hand of the market will even stop invading tanks as long as you wish it hard enough

Re:Lawyer?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's funny how you got modded "troll"

Libertardians obviously hate it when they're presented with evidence that the invisible market fairy doesn't fix everything.

Or perhaps they honestly believe that a service company that is renowned for poor customer service and near-universally loathed will suddenly change its tune because a half-dozen owners of obsolete equipment will finally decide they've had enough.

Re:Lawyer?

[iammani]

If only Comcast was not a monopoly in my area.

Re:Lawyer?

[commodore64_love]

You've been unfairly marked troll. (Not that I agree with you, but everyone should have a right to express an opinion without having their karma stabbed.)

Anyway, a free market WOULD fix in this case, because when Comcast pulls this shit, you would then be able to switch to Cox cable or Time-Warner cable or AppleTV or Verizon TV or anybody else you desired. Comcast's poor decisions would drive it into bankruptcy as customers would flee in droves. (As happened to Circuit City not too long ago.) BUT because Comcast operates a virtual monopoly, they know they can force customers into upgrading to Comcast DVRs, simply by turning off standard features...... like a VCR Timer.

Also it's not just VCRs, but also DVRs this affects.

I have a Panasonic ReplayTV that can switch the old analog channels just fine, but ever since the analog-to-digital transition, it's lost that capability. I now rely on an external box with a "VCR/DVR Timer" to switch the digital stations. If Comcast removes that capability from their set-top box, than DVRs like mine will no longer be able to record anything but a single channel when I'm away from home.

IMHO.

Please don't mod me "troll" just cause you disagree (like you did to Lekh).

Re:Lawyer?

[Valdrax]

I'm pretty sure that getting you to open your wallet was Comcast's goal in the first place.

Re:Lawyer?

[Anonymous Coward]

Firstly: In a free market the big would get bigger until they have monopolies.

Secondly: Voting with your wallet is great, but it's not enough. Advertisement works. Why else would most of the big corporations budgets go into that. This means that the free market will not fix things right. It will fix things the way those with the advertisement dollars want.

Re:Lawyer?

[causality]

Libertardians obviously hate it when they're presented with evidence that the invisible market fairy doesn't fix everything [google.com].

I find it more interesting to consider why it doesn't generally work that way. I have only one answer: we care a HELL of a lot more about immediate convenience and instant gratification than we have ever cared about being consistent with our principles. So we'll buy from abusive companies that deliver poor service before we'll do without their products/services. We'll patronize a company that is known to engage in extremely dishonorable business practices so long as their products are 5% cheaper than the competitors'.

The market idea really could work, except that it requires a people who are both more noble and have a far stronger backbone than our general population. Such a people would individually and voluntarily refuse to ever support any business that takes actions which are not in their interests, at all costs. In turn, the corporations would understand this which would both raise the general standard and guarantee that actually proving this to them would be a relatively rare event.

But we want our shiny and we want it now and we don't care what sort of behavior we are rewarding by voting with our wallets. That's the only reason it doesn't work. There is none other. Corporations cannot act against our interests except that we provide the funding by which they do it.

Re:Lawyer?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

It's worse than that, though. Not only does Comcast have a functional monopoly(or at least cozy duopoly) in a large number of its service areas, infrastructure construction is fundamentally subject to economic phenomena that encourage monopoly formation.

Building infrastructure has very high barriers to entry and substantially greater build-out costs than operating costs. This means that any prospective entrant needs deep pockets just to lay the wires, and also means that the incumbent, who has already had time to amortize build-out costs, can generally threaten to undercut possible entrants quite deeply for a period of time.

Once you add on the not-strictly-economic-but-hard-to-eradicate-in-the-real-world issues of easements and things(since building most kinds of infrastructure more or less necessarily requires trampling all over other people's property, building towers, putting up poles, or digging ditches, you either have the truly epic barrier to entry of having to negotiate individually with all propertyholders, or the local state-entity uses its power to take and bundle compulsory rights-of-way, which substantially lowers barriers to entry; but makes control over all rights of way a political football at the state or municipal level, which generally comes down to a further advantage to the incumbent).

Frankly, I suspect that we would have a much freer market if building out fiber were generally treated as a state function, as roads and water lines are. The municipality would run the fiber from you to a peering point. By default, the fiber would just sit there, possibly offer access to some municipal web sites. If you chose, you could contract with any private party operating at that peering point(which would make room available on a RAND basis) and a simple router config change would allow traffic between your fiber and one or more of the parties at the peering point. You want internet access? Talk to any of the ISPs at your peering point. TV? Any IPTV provider, whether at that peering point, or through an ISP, can sell you that. Phone? VOIP through your ISP, or a dedicated provider if you don't want to get your hands dirty.

All the municipality would have to do is keep the fiber lit, and pass traffic through it. Competition at the peering point could be nice and stiff(since laying fat pipes to a single location, properly chosen, is way cheaper than laying thin pipes to hundreds of locations, and because various service providers could lease bulk bandwidth from each other to offer services). As with rule of law and other flavors of infrastructure, the actual line-to-premises is arguably one of those places where state intervention is the foundation of a good free market, not the opposite of one.

Re:Lawyer?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think what parent was trying to say was pretending that every market is a "free market fixes everything" so laissez faire is silly. Of course, there's also the point that even very good approximations of free markets have untoward properties: markets have always had booms and busts, even before large-scale regulation of them.

That said, if the cable market were a free market, things would be better. Unfortunately, removing any government regulation is definitely not going to make that happen.

Re:Lawyer?

[emkyooess]

Yes, I'm replying to what's marked as a troll. BUT: "Corporation" goes in one hand. "Free Market" goes into the other hand. You cannot have both. They're mutually exclusive.

Re:Lawyer?

[harrytuttle777]

In a sense the free market could stop tanks from invading, if the country sponsoring those tanks say went bankrupt due to the spiraling cost of an unneeded and unfunded war half way around the world.

In the short term I agree with you. Sometimes government needs to intervene when there is no other way. Teddy Roosevelt did this effectively. In general, the largest corporations are the very opposite of free market. They do not want the markets to be free. They want monopoly, and control. This way the profit is maximized. I wish we had another Teddy Rosevelt, but since the major corporations pay for the elections, media, and arguably the wars, I do not feel this will happen, until....

Re:Lawyer?

[schon]

I find it more interesting to consider why it doesn't generally work that way.

Two words: Market Power

It has nothing to do with "backbone", or "caring". It has to do with the fact that consumers really don't have as much power as free-market proponents believe.

Re:Lawyer?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your MOM!

Re:Lawyer?

[commodore64_love]

Question:

If Cox Cable wanted to enter my town to compete against Comcast, how much would it really cost for them to run a fiber through the already-existing underground metal conduits? I suspect very little.

IMHO.

Re:Lawyer?

[OrangeCatholic]

Indeed, the free market is designed to give people what they want. Unfortunately, a lot of times, people's desire runs counter to their long-term self interest.

I've had enough experience selling products to know that the majority of customers are not shopping optimally. There's one class of customers that just wants the cheapest crap available, and damn the consequences. There's another class that is smart enough to ask for "the best," but it's how they define it, and they will pay an exorbitant price.

Relatively few customers are buying the right products for the right prices. They are smart enough that they could probably open their own business...if they weren't already involved in something else.

In short, the market is a competition that creates far more losers than winners. It does educate everyone along the way (did that crap not work out? Try something better next time.)

But the losers are still among us. Let's say you're smart enough to avoid buying Chinese wallboard, but you go to a friend's house who does, and you get sick. You made the right choices, and you still lose.

Re:Lawyer?

[Anonymous Coward]

what i find really is your argument for a truly 'free market' is really reminiscent of a lot of arguments for communism that i've heard, in the sense that "it would work great, if only human beings thought and acted differently than they actually do."

Re:Lawyer?

[fotoguzzi]

I imagine someone probably said, Capitalism is the worst economic system there is, except for all the others.

Re:Lawyer?

[mh1997]

Unfortunately, Cable TV is not a market where the "market fairy" can fix anything because the government gave Comcast a monopoly. If there were competing cable companies, Comcast may have to clean up its act. Maybe the satellite tv market will fix the problem allowed by the government? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comcast#Cable_television Comcast has 25 million television subscribers in 39 of the fifty U.S. states,[24] although the company is losing customers by the thousands. In the fourth quarter of 2009, Comcast lost 199,000 cable TV customers and in the fourth quarter of 2008, the company lost 233,000 cable TV customers.[25] As of December 31, 2009 Comcast has 23.559 million video customers.

Re:Lawyer?

[lisany]

The question is who owns the conduit and what they will charge to let a third party run material and if it will be sufficient volume to meet future demand. Then you're locked into whatever terms the conduit owners lay out or "Gee, wouldn't it be a shame if your fiber strands were accidentally cut?"

Re:Lawyer?

[gtbritishskull]

Oh, I understand Libertarians now. It is not their beliefs are wrong. The people are wrong for not living their lives "correctly". If you could make the people in the country act "right" then the country would be Libertarian and perfect.

So, they are just like communists. The communist system didn't fail because their system didn't work. It was because the people did not act "correctly". If only they could have acted "right" and sacrificed their own self-interest for the interest of the whole, then communism would have succeeded.

The truth is, that you have wonderful ideals, but they have no place in reality. The reason why the US constitution is such a good document (not perfect, but pretty good) is because it does not assume that people will be perfect. It is designed for imperfect people, and will survive their imperfection. Your system is designed for perfect people, and when it meets an imperfect person it will completely fail.

Re:Lawyer?

[Bartab]

No, it has to do with the fact that we don't have as much free-market as anti-free-market whiners like to tell us we do. You can't strongly regulate an industry and then claim that free market failed.

e.g. cable television, insurance, pharmacuticals, power production, power distribution, etc, etc, etc.

Re:Lawyer?

[MSTCrow5429]

This has nothing to do with antitrust.

Re:Lawyer?

[biryokumaru]

That's actually a misconception. Teddy Roosevelt gets a lot of credit as a "trust-buster" but Taft had significantly more impact in that area.

Re:Lawyer?

[Anonymous Coward]

Insightful? Don't those mods recognize sarcasm when they read it? (I guess not...)

Re:Lawyer?

[Anonymous Coward]

'cause the free market fixes everything. the invisible hand of the market will even stop invading tanks as long as you wish it hard enough

There are some things the invisible hand of the market can fix, some things it can't fix, and some things that it can fix, but not fast enough to be tolerable.

I don't know whether to blame computers for this, fundamentalism, the two-party system or just plain lazy gotta-have-it-now thinking, but too often, modern-day thought is just a bipolar illness. We need to make more allowances for the shades and colors in between. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-Aristotelian_logic

Re:Lawyer?

[migla]

For free markets to have any chance to make the world a better place, i.e. to give people good stuff as cheaply as possible, consumers as a group must be informed. They're not, by and large. Consumers in general consume what the constant barrage of propaganda tells them to consume.

Money is power: Power to form monopolies, power to persuade, power to shape ideas and world views.
   

Re:Lawyer?

[shentino]

Such a good idea that TDS sued their city to stop it from happening.

Re:Lawyer?

[aekafan]

It is just that we libertarians have no illusions that this country, and especially the broadcast system, operates in a free market. What comes to you through your television or computer hook-up is a government granted monopoly. In a true free market, we could have a hundred choices coming through the same wire. But you probably accept the illusion that we live is a "free market" of two or three service choices. Careful who you call a retard, troll

Re:Lawyer?

[Anonymous Coward]

The market idea really could work, except that it requires a people who are both more noble and have a far stronger backbone than our general population. Such a people would individually and voluntarily refuse to ever support any business that takes actions which are not in their interests, at all costs.

I agree with you; I assume you're talking about the United States.

But what about Denmark? Or Finland? Or most European countries?

In turn, the corporations would understand this which would both raise the general standard and guarantee that actually proving this to them would be a relatively rare event.

Re:Lawyer?

[shentino]

Unless you have a government in the middle strong enough to referee things and keep companies from hitting each other below the belt, you can't have a free market.

Re:Lawyer?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

That completely depends on who owns the conduit and what, if any, restrictions there are on what they can do with it.

If it is municipal conduit, or if there is an "open access" provision that requires Comcast to make it available on something resembling a RAND basis(something similar is quite common with POTS based systems in a number of countries, were the incumbent telco is required to lease access to competing DSL providers at certain rates), then your scenario is almost identical to mine, only with the "neutral pipe" being a conduit down which anybody may blow fiber, rather than it being a fiber down which anybody may send packets. Which one is more efficient is a question I leave to economists and fiber specialists. I'm largely agnostic on precisely how it happens, I'm just of the opinion that the last-mile pretty much needs to be run as neutral infrastructure for a free market in information goods and services to exist. Without that neutral infrastructure, he who controls the pipe will, more or less inevitably, start bundling what flows over it, and retarding competition.

If the pipe is Comcast's own personal fiefdom, it really doesn't matter what it would cost to blow the fiber, it matters what Comcast will charge to let you do so, which will obviously be enough to prevent you being a useful competitor.

Re:Lawyer?

[Count Fenring]

There's also the minor issue that, when one does nothing but "vote with one's dollar," the company has no way to know why. Or that without some sort of overarching organization, people find out about things that piss them off at different times, and so the relation of action to reaction is spread over time to the point that it, again, becomes completely opaque.

We've tried laissez-faire capitalism - it's called the Gilded Age, and it was TERRIBLE for 90% of the population. Previously, we tried it in Edwardian/Victorian Britain. It was horrible and soul-crushingly destructive then, too. Sensing a theme? Pure free market economies are no better an idea than communism, if somewhat more efficient at producing products.

But we want our shiny and we want it now and we don't care what sort of behavior we are rewarding by voting with our wallets. That's the only reason it doesn't work. There is none other. Corporations cannot act against our interests except that we provide the funding by which they do it.

This is a particularly bad argument when talking about cable TV - often, the consumer doesn't HAVE an alternative readily available; I can count the number of places I've been that offer multiple cable TV services on one hand, and I've lived places where satellite wasn't a real option because of geography or various out-of-my-control circumstances.

Corporations can act against our interests in a variety of ways without being immediately funded by those affected, particularly when a corporation has existed long enough and had enough pull to shape society or law in its favor. A good example is credit card companies - while there's no de jure requirement that I have one, if I don't build a credit history, I can't buy a house or car or get loans for school or...

Regardless, even if everything you said was correct, that's still a problem with Libertarianism, not with consumers. Because, well, any system that only works in the platonic world of perfect ideals is a stupid, worthless system, and not worth consideration in this, the real world.

The market idea really could work, except that it requires a people who are both more noble and have a far stronger backbone than our general population. Such a people would individually and voluntarily refuse to ever support any business that takes actions which are not in their interests, at all costs. In turn, the corporations would understand this which would both raise the general standard and guarantee that actually proving this to them would be a relatively rare event.

No, it requires a people infinitely resourceful, a people infinitely knowledgable about the actions of the corporations (and parent companies and subsidiaries) they interact with, even tangentially, and a people that can make their primary activity "making purchasing decisions" rather than work, or raising a family, or anything that is actually central to a real human's life. Also, these mythical people would still need to build a solid method for communicating the reasons behind their purchasing decisions, en masse, to the companies. Making purchasing decisions based solely in a political manner isn't some beautiful, virtuous thing, and doing so based on your own needs isn't immoral.

People not only won't buy things and services primarily according to abstract principles and disagreements, they shouldn't have to. There's no reason why, when deciding what car to buy, I should have to do thirty hours worth of research to see if the company making my car purchases child-slaves in East Examplia and grinds them up for lubricant - the laws of my country (and the world) should make unethical behavior illegal. That's what laws and regulations are for.

Re:Lawyer?

[laughingcoyote]

This has nothing to do with antitrust.

Perhaps you could explain why not? It looks to me like a company with a monopoly or near-monopoly in many areas is exploiting that monopoly in a way that would force customers to exclusively use its service, by deliberately forcing out other (if not for their tactics) perfectly viable options. Sounds like a textbook antitrust issue to me. What makes you say it is not one?

Re:Lawyer?

[coldmist]

That's funny. Even Galbraith later admitted that he was wrong on this point.

link

Galbraith’s magnum opus was The New Industrial State, in which he argued that large firms dominate the American economy. “The mature corporation,” he wrote, “had readily at hand the means for controlling the prices at which it sells as well as those at which it buys. . . . Since General Motors produces some half of all the automobiles, its designs do not reflect the current mode, but are the current mode. The proper shape of an automobile, for most people, will be what the automobile makers decree the current shape to be.”

Well, not quite. Although GM would have loved to “decree” the shape of automobiles in the 1980s, it seems consumers had different ideas. That is one reason why GM, which did produce about half of all U.S.-bought autos in the 1960s, sells only a quarter of all U.S.-bought autos today.

Interestingly, in his autobiography Galbraith presented the very evidence that should have talked him out of his conclusion in The New Industrial State. In 1954 Galbraith was on a consulting team hired by Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR), Canada ’s dominant railway at the time. He saw quickly that CPR’s most promising assets were its forests and land, not its railway. Yet CPR basically ignored the team’s advice. He wrote, “The railway men did not look with favor on such passing fads as airplanes.” This should have clued him in to the idea that large firms like CPR could “decree” virtually nothing.

To his credit, Galbraith ultimately admitted, with a 15-year lag, the major problem with his thesis. In July 1982 the steel and auto companies he had claimed were immune from competition and recessions were laying off workers in response to both foreign competition and recession. Asked on “Meet the Press” whether he had underestimated the extent of risk that even large corporations face, Galbraith paused and replied, “Yeah, I think I did.”

Re:Lawyer?

[Dragoniz3r]

How did that end, anyways? Or is it still rolling?

Re:Lawyer?

[John Hasler]

> BUT because Comcast operates a virtual monopoly...

Not a virtual monopoly: a government-created and protected one. Try to get permission to string cable to compete with them in a jurisdiction where they have a "franchise". The free market is deliberately crippled in the case of cable companies.

Re:Lawyer?

[denzacar]

The market idea really could work, except that it requires a people who are both more noble and have a far stronger backbone than our general population.
Such a people would individually and voluntarily refuse to ever support any business that takes actions which are not in their interests, at all costs.

Hey, that's funny - same goes for communism. And major religions, achieving world peace, ending hunger and poverty...

No... really. All we need for those to work as intended/described is a better class of humans.

Re:Lawyer?

[PopeRatzo]

Your wallet.

Sorry, but the days when consumers could change corporate behavior by changing their buying preferences is long gone.

You act like it's possible to punish Comcast by going to their competitors, but those shifts have long been absorbed by those corporations so that they no longer have an effect.

Today, your spending "habits" are locked-in, tied-down, under contract and so many times removed from your "choices" that it's just not an issue any more. Cable television, like all telecommunications are no longer anything like a "free market", and that's got nothing to do with government regulation, except for the fact that it's the telecoms that are writing the regulations now.

And that's not even taking into consideration the effect that marketing and advertising has on every single one of us. It's a lot more powerful than we are, and we're no longer capable of making informed choices. I get a kick out of people who say "I just ignore advertising" because they're just in denial.

We work for the corporations now, so stop deluding yourself into thinking that "your wallet" has any power whatsoever.

Re:Lawyer?

[girlintraining]

We work for the corporations now, so stop deluding yourself into thinking that "your wallet" has any power whatsoever.

Your wallet also contains a voter registration card.

Re:Lawyer?

[PopeRatzo]

I have only one answer: we care a HELL of a lot more about immediate convenience and instant gratification than we have ever cared about being consistent with our principles.

That's not it, really.

It's that our very principles have been shaped by marketing and advertising that is much more powerful than our own personal wills. There's been a fundamental change in the relationship of consumers to "the market" since WWII and there's nothing in current trends to suggest that it will ever change back.

"Free Markets" were an illusion when first written about, and now they have become a delusion. As consumers, our "freedom" is very much like that of a slave, who is "free" to choose whether to have bread and fatback for dinner or just bread. Or nothing at all.

And I guarantee, if there really was anything like a "free market" society, it wouldn't be a very pleasant place to live for all but a very small number of people.

The funny thing is that most of the Libertarians I've met would be the first ones eaten if "free market" forces ever really came into effect.

Re:Lawyer?

[sarhjinian]

The market idea really could work, except that it requires a people who are both more noble and have a far stronger backbone than our general population.

People say the exact same thing about Communism: it could work if people were better.

If a system requires people to be better people, it's a broken system. Idealists (and ideologues) on both ends of the spectrum need to come to grips with that.

Re:Lawyer?

[AK Marc]

The market idea really could work, except that it requires a people who are both more noble and have a far stronger backbone than our general population.

The free market requires informed consumers and choice. They don't have to be "noble" if they have another cable provider to choose from. But they don't. The Free Market was never intended to have large segments of the population abandon a good or service to punish a company. They are supposed to get it somewhere else.

Those that tout the ideas of a Free Market most are those who look to subvert it at every turn. I don't believe in the Free Market because informed consumers are impossible because a single person can't know everything the market knows and the companies are willing to lie to conceal the truth so that even if you knew everything the market knew, you'd still be misinformed. Without informed consumers, it will never be a free market.

Re:Lawyer?

[timmarhy]

i find it amusing free market whiners always use the fruits of the free market society to do their whining.

I'm not against regulation, but that regulation has to be there to help the market along and it has to be very well thought out. all too often it's not.

Re:Lawyer?

[Anonymous Coward]

Although you jest, it should be pointed out that cable markets are extremely far from free. They are enforced monopolies kind of like garbage service in most municipalities. Cities sign long term contracts with a provider and that provider "owns" that area. No competition on cable service is allowed. So there is nothing for the market to operate on. Sure, you can go with a satellite provider - but look at all the wonderfully shady practices they have. I don't know if I buy into that whole "free markets will fix everything" shtick, but in this case there is no free market.

Re:Lawyer?

[Anonymous Coward]

So we'll buy from abusive companies that deliver poor service before we'll do without their products/services. We'll patronize a company that is known to engage in extremely dishonorable business practices so long as their products are 5% cheaper than the competitors'.

The problem is that there is no perfect company. Say, for example, that I want to buy cable TV service. Even if I am willing to move anywhere in the country (i.e., in US) to get cable TV service from a company that is perfect by your definition, I bet you cannot find such a company. Furthermore, there no perfect company for any product you pick.

Re:Lawyer?

[Anonymous Coward]

You care way too much about who gets modded as what. I'm moving you to the top of my mod-bomb list.

Re:Lawyer?

[Golddess]

Close, although I have no idea how factual that quote is.

Re:Lawyer?

[im_thatoneguy]

Even if it's a monopoly there is no guarantee everyone else wouldn't do it as well.

Re:Lawyer?

[JLennox]

Libertardians obviously hate it when they're presented with evidence that the invisible market fairy doesn't fix everything [google.com].

I find it more interesting to consider why it doesn't generally work that way. I have only one answer: we care a HELL of a lot more about immediate convenience and instant gratification than we have ever cared about being consistent with our principles. So we'll buy from abusive companies that deliver poor service before we'll do without their products/services. We'll patronize a company that is known to engage in extremely dishonorable business practices so long as their products are 5% cheaper than the competitors'. The market idea really could work, except that it requires a people who are both more noble and have a far stronger backbone than our general population. Such a people would individually and voluntarily refuse to ever support any business that takes actions which are not in their interests, at all costs. In turn, the corporations would understand this which would both raise the general standard and guarantee that actually proving this to them would be a relatively rare event. But we want our shiny and we want it now and we don't care what sort of behavior we are rewarding by voting with our wallets. That's the only reason it doesn't work. There is none other. Corporations cannot act against our interests except that we provide the funding by which they do it.

They don't have to be "noble" if they have another cable provider to choose from.

A lot of people are saying this -- why try not having cable? That's a valid option.

Re:Lawyer?

[jejones]

What on earth does US cable TV have to do with a free market?

Re:Lawyer?

[Anonymous Coward]

gtbritishskull,

I am not sure you have a correct understanding of Libertarians. Libertarians, such as Ron Paul, believe in as little government as possible, Their platform includes doing away with Social Security, Medicare, military engagements around the world - they believe in an individual is responsible for him/her self and shouldn't count on government for anything.

Generally considered the founding book of Libertarianism is Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead". While a novel, it gives a great view into Libertarianism.

Re:Lawyer?

[Khyber]

"It has to do with the fact that consumers really don't have as much power as free-market proponents believe"

Want to bet? If we quit buying everything but food, energy, and our clothing, watch how fast every other economy on the planet would suffer.

You cite Wikipedia as if it could be used as a RELIABLE source to explain something as unpredictable and random as human behavior.

What if every consumer just decided 'fuck it' and took up arms and ran every corporation into the ground via lethal force?

Consumers ARE all-powerful, no matter how corporations try to spin it. Without US, they do not exist.

Re:Lawyer?

[shentino]

As far as I can tell TDS used the lawsuit to stall the city's fiber construction, then while they were tied up in court charged on ahead with their own network, dropping the lawsuit once it was completed.

Re:Lawyer?

[T-Bone-T]

The way it works is:
1. Everything is great
2. Someone makes an undesireable change
3. The market fixes it

Step 3 has only just begun. It takes a little time.

Re:Lawyer?

[DesScorp]

'cause the free market fixes everything. the invisible hand of the market will even stop invading tanks as long as you wish it hard enough

If you'll permit me to interupt your trolling for just a moment, I'd like to point out that cable companies are not monopolies. You DO have a choice. It's called satellite, and it's similarly priced. Things like DirecTV are available in places where even cable is not. Cable is just a medium for delivering the service. The service is enhanced television.

So if Comcast does something you think is unworthy of your dollars, take your dollars elsewhere.

I'm not a Libertarian, but I'm sympathetic to some of their ideas, and they're generally correct in stating that markets tend to be better off without overbearing regulation. You're always going to have regulation of some kind. A sales tax can be viewed as a form of regulation. But what Libertarians are justified in fearing are people like you telling the government "make this company give me everything I want at the price I specifiy!".

Why would anyone want to run a business in that kind of environment? And more to the point, when did you gain a right to Comcast's products and services, let alone the right to tell them HOW to offer those services? What else will you demand the government make them do, and for how much? Can you please point out to me where in the law you have a right to Cable TV? Cable/Satellite is a luxury. It's non-essential. It's not like a hospital where they HAVE to serve you.

If you think they suck, fine. You've probably even got some legitimate points. But it's a private business. If you don't like them, do business elsewhere. Or don't do it all.

Re:Lawyer?

[IGnatius T Foobar]

Thanks for writing that. I've been pointing out for years that the Bell System breakup was performed along the wrong lines, and that a better solution would be pretty much exactly what you've described. The job of an ILEC should be exclusively the provision of the "last mile" infrastructure, and they should be barred from providing any type of services over that infrastructure. Local vs. long distance? Srsly? Who cares? Voice, data, video? It's all the same now.

The only danger is that it could turn into something similar to what the "deregulated" power grid has become, where you can buy your electricity from any ESCO you want to, but it doesn't matter because the local power company still overcharges you for "delivery" of that electricity. I'm not quite sure how we'd solve this problem, although I'm sure that if there were at least two last-mile infrastructures in each market (one former telco and one former cableco) there might be enough competition to keep the prices reasonable.

Re:Lawyer?

[nine-times]

I think there's a sort of problem with your idea in that it assumes the the market is being driven by a class of dedicated well-funded consumers. The idea is reinforced by the fact that people use the word "consumer" so often when talking about normal everyday people, but essentially there isn't much of a consumer class.

I know some people are scratching their heads right now and thinking that I'm spouting nonsense, so let me explain. You have a whole bunch of businesses out there trying to sell us all things. They employ researchers and scientists. Food manufacturers have chemists and biologists trying to figure out how to make you addicted to their food. Car companies have dedicated salesmen who practice all day convincing people that this year's model is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Verizon employs psychologists to craft their ad campaigns so that you get warm fuzzy feelings whenever you hear the phrase "can you hear me now?" Yeah, I know, it annoys the piss out of you, but it also breeds a sense of familiarity that makes you feel safe, even if you don't realize it.

So they have armies of people, spending all day trying to figure out how to get as much out of you as possible, while providing you with the least possible service. You? You've got nothing. You have no psychologists on staff, no market researchers. You don't have lawyers or lobbyists, no professional analysts. You don't even have time-- you're too busy going to work, trying to stay in shape, to clean the house, trying to live your life with your friends and family.

There are exceptions. If you're a professional IT guy than you know about buying computers. If you're a psychologist than maybe you catch some of the tricks that these companies use. If you're rich, maybe you can pay personal shoppers to find you all the good deals. But most of us, most of the time, are somewhat at the mercy of all the professionals looking to bilk us.

Yes, I'm exaggerating a little. It's not quite that bad. The free market works a little, but for the "free market" to work they way people tend to assume, you'd need for a lot of people to be "consumers" on equal footing with the businesses they're buying from. They'd need to be perfectly informed of all their choices, and they'd need to be able to have the expertise to understand all the relevant ramifications of their choices. They'd need to be able to spot all the psychological manipulation employed by psychologists and professional salesmen, plus a team of lawyers to counter the business's lawyers. Even then, we'd need to assume that businesses didn't have any extra-special dirty tricks up their sleeve.

Even Adam Smith, when proposing the whole damned thing, implied that it would require moral and wise businessmen doing business with well informed customers. You can't necessarily blame people for not having enough "backbone" when you have several large multinational organizations working day and night to manipulate them.

Re:Lawyer?

[Anonymous Coward]

Libertardians obviously hate it when they're presented with evidence that the invisible market fairy doesn't fix everything [google.com].

I find it more interesting to consider why it doesn't generally work that way. I have only one answer: we care a HELL of a lot more about immediate convenience and instant gratification than we have ever cared about being consistent with our principles. So we'll buy from abusive companies that deliver poor service before we'll do without their products/services. We'll patronize a company that is known to engage in extremely dishonorable business practices so long as their products are 5% cheaper than the competitors'.

The market idea really could work, except that it requires a people who are both more noble and have a far stronger backbone than our general population. Such a people would individually and voluntarily refuse to ever support any business that takes actions which are not in their interests, at all costs. In turn, the corporations would understand this which would both raise the general standard and guarantee that actually proving this to them would be a relatively rare event.

But we want our shiny and we want it now and we don't care what sort of behavior we are rewarding by voting with our wallets. That's the only reason it doesn't work. There is none other. Corporations cannot act against our interests except that we provide the funding by which they do it.

Steve Jobs does not like your world therefore the iPhone will not work there

Re:Lawyer?

[mjwx]

The market idea really could work, except that it requires a people who are both more noble and have a far stronger backbone than our general population.

The market idea really could work in Bizzaro land. You see the so called "invisible hand" is actually someone's very real and visible hand. The problem you have with letting the Market(TM) handle it is that there are people who want to and actually control the market. So letting the Market(TM) handle it is just giving the problem to whomever has the most influence and blindly accepting their solution.

The general populous does not have the cohesion to be the most powerful influence over the market. It never will so long as corporations exist. This is one of the many reasons I put libertarianism in the same league as Communism, both work great in the perfect world, but neither will work in the real world. Both are extremist ideologies that require every person to believe the same, without this both philosophies will end up with an extremely authoritarian rule.

Re:Lawyer?

[Profane MuthaFucka]

Libertarians == anarchists.

Re:Lawyer?

[Anonymous Coward]

"The reason why the US constitution is such a good document (not perfect, but pretty good) is because it does not assume that people will be perfect"

Yea, you might even be a slave, but at least it's pretty good, right?

Re:Lawyer?

[Oyjord]

One word: education.

Americans have stopped valuing education for a generation or two now (at least). Anti-intellectualism is at an all-time high, with the "red state," "Blue Collar Comedy Tour" mentality dominating American culture.

And an undereducated population makes bad decisions, including what to do with their dollars. It's that simple. We Americans now value our 60" plasmas more than caring about the consequences our purchases have (even if that purchase is on credit cards we can't afford).

Re:Lawyer?

[Count Fenring]

If you had a point, you wouldn't need to resort to personal insults.

Also, yes, the industrial revolution has had positive effects in the long run, and yes, it's better than feudalism. Neither of those change the fact that it ran on a heaping helping of laissez-faire capitalism, and it was utterly terrible for most people involved. And, again, I see that you haven't remotely dealt with the problem of the Gilded Age, where laissez-faire capitalism led directly to both horrific working conditions and huge monopolies.

Libertarianism looks good to you because, frankly, it's a ridiculously simplified model economy, with very little interaction with the real, dirty, complicated world, full of people who don't always logically pursue their greatest financial interest. It looks good and pure, because it's small enough to fit comfortably in a human mind all at once. So is communism. Neither of them work.

Re:Lawyer?

[Low Ranked Craig]

The Free market *could* work if it were *actually* free. When you choice is limited because there is only one cable provider in your area, and your other choice is a satellite dish or OTA programming you're kinda fucked. If I could pick between say, Cox, Comcast, and Time Warner then there would be competition and incentive to provide better services, assuming that the government enforces the anti-trust laws (good luck with that). As it is I pay $50 a month for freaking cable with no special channels and no DVR (I refuse to purchase any of their extended services), and my only other choice is a satellite dish, or basically nothing, which is unacceptable. I think your position is extremely ivory tower and not at all realistic.

So I disagree with "That's the only reason it doesn't work. There is none other." With Cable providers and utilities there is *no* competition. Just like I'm stuck with Salt River Project for power. I'd switch to APS if I could, but they don't service my area and I can't just tell SRP no thanks I don't need electricity.

IMO the primary problem is that the big cable companies, telecommunications companies, etc. are in bed with the politicians, and they are collectively bending us over and pounding us in the ass. With sand.

Re:Lawyer?

[Anonymous Coward]

How perfect is it really? "Our" modern systems of governments are very young and we've had one revolution (USA-elsewhere... too I'm sure) already. The country may be stable today and unstable tomorrow. Our system has fallen just like communism fell in Russia. If democracy turns into one of the shortest lived types of government around I won't be surprised at all. Nor will I be surprised if corporation based democratic systems fall quickly the world over frequently. The USA is one of the few nations which has had a continuing democracy and in that time we haven't had a corporations more than 100 years or so. The system is VERY fragile.

Re:Lawyer?

[SuperAlgae]

If we quit buying everything but food, energy, and our clothing, watch how fast every other economy on the planet would suffer. ... Consumers ARE all-powerful, no matter how corporations try to spin it.

... and the world's insects have the power to join together and destroy humanity, but it's not going to happen. Hypothetical power and real power are two different things. As long as a company can control enough consumers, then the others can vote with their wallet all they want-- it won't do much. That's the problem with a lot of arguments for free market. They assume that large groups of consumers will act with the same cohesion as their corporate counterparts. This rarely holds true.

If only there was some organization by the people and for the people that could represent us in a more unified way... oh wait, we have something that is supposed to do that... it's government. We just need to stop thinking of the government as the enemy and start thinking of it as a tool that needs to be maintained and fixed when it is broken.

Think about how many times large companies have behaved poorly. Now think about how many times those behaviors have been stopped by consumer boycotts. It's very lopsided. Changes are more often achieved by pressuring the government than by simple consumer power. In cases where there have been successful boycotts, they usually relate to a small aspect of a company rather than a fundamental change.

I do like the idea of consumer power. It's comforting to think that we can fight an entity much more powerful than any one of us alone. But we need to be realistic about what can be achieved and how. A nice idea without practical teeth is just a placebo.

Re:Lawyer?

[mgblst]

Surely not watching TV is an option, or is that something you would never ever consider?

Re:Lawyer?

[Count Fenring]

It's certainly an option people can take, but removing yourself completely from the market for a class of services hardly works in a "vote with your dollar" scenario, does it?

And how much are you going to opt out of modern society? Comcast and Verizon both suck; I guess I'm not allowed to have internet. Name a cell phone company that isn't terrible in terms of their customer service record. Any one of these things could be done without, perhaps, but I really find it hard to believe that one can maintain actual engagement with society while shunning 100% of its basic communications media.

I've responded to this not as the veiled insult that I'm almost sure it is, but as a genuine question. For the record, let it be known throughout the land that I can take or leave TV, and left it for a four year stretch in undergrad, without missing it.

Re:Lawyer?

[DigiShaman]

So...what "system" will provide more winners over a free market? To my knowledge, no such system exists. When the opportunity presents itself, we choose to be lazy instead of informed and active. That's the problem. Human nature. Good luck trying to change millions of years of evolution!

Re:Lawyer?

[Anonymous Coward]

A free market depends on competition for self-regulation. Without competition, there is no pressure to compete, and suddenly money no longer has the power it should because there is no competitor your money can go to to increase competitive edge. Cable service in many areas is essentially a monopoly (or at best, an oligopoly, but even then, your choices are usually between bad and worse), and when you have no proper competitor, your choice is between paying for bad service or abstaining and suffering in silence, as what company actually listens to complaints from someone who isn't a client? If this were a technical issue, I would understand, but as they are essentially holding VCR scheduling for ransom, this seems more like a strongarm tactic to get customers to ditch their VCR (which they've already paid for and only costs additional VHS tapes to add new recordings) and replace it with a monthly fee-based DVR. It's times like these that I wish I had the capital to compete with Comcast; even if I went under, it would be worth it to see what kind of changes could be brought about purely from the introduction of another predator in the pond.

Re:Lawyer?

[Khyber]

"... and the world's insects have the power to join together and destroy humanity, but it's not going to happen."

Whoo boy, I guess you haven't been paying attention to the Argentinan Ant invasion. They're wiping out their competition first, then they'll be after us.

California is practically one GIANT anthill underneath.

Re:Lawyer?

[iphinome]

Libertarians == Sociopaths.

Fixed that for you.

Re:Lawyer?

[Ozlanthos]

Funny, I was thinking the same thing about cell phones service providers the other day. As high up as our internet-capable/email retrieving/you-tube-streaming/IMing/network-interfacing/video-capturing/picture-taking phones usually are on our lists of "survival gear", the associated $69.99 (minimum) price-tag may lower them below a $19.99 a month "broadband account", and a $17.99 a month land-line. I'd love to see what would happen to At&t, Sprint, Verizon..etc. if there were to be a mass migration away from cell phones. With the economy being as it is, I would think that such an exodus is not entirely outside of the realm of possibilities.

-Oz

Re:Lawyer?

[Valdrax]

I am not sure you have a correct understanding of Libertarians. Libertarians. . . believe in as little government as possible. . . [and that] an individual is responsible for him/her self and shouldn't count on government for anything.

I'm pretty sure he gets Libertarians completely. The problem is that people don't act responsibly for themselves much of the time, that people are in fact incapable of acting as perfectly-rational, well-informed economic actors in all markets, and that society crumbles without some form of check and balance on people placing their own interests above the expenses of others.

Much like communism, libertarianism relies on the notion that the world will be a utopia if everyone acts properly or that a large enough group of people acting according to the tenets of the philosophy will be able to mitigate or eliminate the negative effects of those actors who work against it. Both systems drastically underestimate the knack that unethical people have for pushing off the costs of their behavior on others in ways that are difficult to effectively police without a mix of strategies outside the province of "pure" systems.

Re:Lawyer?

[bickerdyke]

But he is right.... ....just for a different kind of "fix". Or rather a different evaluation of that "automatic channel flipping". Is it an "usual feature" or a "support for legacy device"? Try to look at it like that and you'd be less surprised that you have to pay a premium for it.

Re:Lawyer?

[ChienAndalu]

So, they are just like communists.

The difference here being that Communism led to labor camps and mass executions while your perceived libertarian free market (which is debatable) leads to you not being able to use VHS.

Re:Lawyer?

[Trepidity]

How would you argue the free-market approach to cable television should work? Should cities let anyone dig up the road whenever they want, even if 10 companies are doing it constantly? Should they let nobody dig up the roads, and force cable companies to piece together rights of way by individually negotiating with private landowners, even though it's nearly impossible to actually piece together rights of way in that manner? Should they pick some arbitrary number, like top 3 bidders get to dig up roads? Should the city bury its own lines and sell access to multiple ISPs? I'm not quite sure what the most free-market approach is for something like that, which has physical constraints on getting to the market.

Re:Lawyer?

[HungryHobo]

The difference is that half arsed capitalism and free markets work far better than half arsed communism.
At the very least the former assumes that people will be greedy and unpleasent and try to screw the system every step of the way which puts it leagues ahead of the latter in terms of realistic assumptions.

Re:Lawyer?

[master_p]

If you replace "business" with "communist party", your comment works for communism as well.
The truth is that a system is as good as its members are. Since humans are greedy, every system so far has failed...
Some systems fail fast, other fail slowly, like capitalism. Those that fail fast make smaller noises...

Re:Lawyer?

[branewalker]

Libertardians obviously hate it when they're presented with evidence that the invisible market fairy doesn't fix everything [google.com].

Interesting that I call myself a libertarian and believe in market regulation. Libertarian ideals are about non-agression, and supressing tyranny wherever it appears, whether in the public or private sector. It's not about lasseiz-faire, it's about keeping crooks from ripping you off, whether in the grocery store, the drug store, the bank, or the tech sector.

The invisible hand works if there is a large amount of information present to both buyers and sellers. This is rarely the case in modern markets, especially the technology services market. The invisible hand fails when that information is withheld through lies, deceit and cover-ups (as is often the case in modern technology markets). It also fails when there is no competition in a particular market. And markets are much smaller than we traditionally think of them. That said, what we need are fewer, better regulations, not more stupid regulations.

I'd like to see some intelligent consumer protections passed to prevent this kind of thing. It would basically be a freedom of interoperability law, covering everything from unlocking cell phones to not removing certain features of a product through software means (obviously hardware revisions or new software versions would have exemptions where they were not sufficiently tied to the basic functionality of the device). Might help with things like this and the PS3 OtherOS debacle.

The libertarian view is that the government's job is to keep order by preventing the tyranny of one individual (or company) over another. Anything beyond that is too much interference, but we're not anarchists, and we're most certainly not for the government selling out our rights to big corporations right and left.

Re:Lawyer?

[HungryHobo]

the difference being that half arsed libertarianism works a hell of a lot better than half arsed communism.

The first assumes people are perfectly greedy and will act almost purely in their own self interest.
The second assumes people are perfectly selfless and will act almost purely in the interests of society.

The former seems to me a far better model of realistic human behaviour than the latter.

Re:Lawyer?

[HungryHobo]

The same could be said for every single economic system on the planet.

No matter if it Anarchist,Capitalist,Communist,Corporatist,Fascist,Georgist,Islamic,Market socialist, Mercantilist,Participatory,Protectionist,Socialist or Syndicalist

All of them. Every single one can be described in a similar manner.

Every one relies on a ridiculously simplified model economy, with very little interaction with the real, dirty, complicated world, full of people who don't always logically pursue anything.

Re:Lawyer?

[tc3driver]

A much better idea would be to have the city lay out it's grid (cable, internet, telephone, etc) and then lease its usage to competing companies, The infrastructure becomes an investment that the community has, and is able to profit from. All potential lessees would be charged the same amount for usage of components of the grid, thus you have the same base rate for each company, then they each have to figure in the profit margin etc... no need to explain this any further.

I realize this is a corruptible system, at the same time, it would be a self correcting system, as the community can decide which is offering the best service for the price.

There would be a large "up front" Investment here, but would pay for it self, especially when you get a large number of companies on the same grid.

Re:Lawyer?

[Anonymous Coward]

lol at "East Examplia"

Re:Lawyer?

[michaelhood]

Comcast and Verizon both suck; I guess I'm not allowed to have internet.

Do you think their duopoly in your locale is because of the free market or government interference?

Re:Lawyer?

[mrchaotica]

No, the libertarian free market leads to feudalism as the "haves" buy personal armies and the "have nots" sell themselves into serfdom to survive.

Re:Lawyer?

[sdwes]

I have a ReplayTV too... 1- ReplayTV has an IR blaster 2 - The Comcast cable box / digital transporter has an IR receiver 3 - Aim #1 at #2. In my case, I put them both in an old toilet paper tube. 4 - ReplayTV scheduling and recording mirth 5 - ??? 6 - Profit

Re:Lawyer?

[ChienAndalu]

What are you talking about? Where is this happening?

Re:Lawyer?

[Trepidity]

Yeah, I agree. To me, it's somewhat like roads. The government owns one set of roads everyone can use, and in return you get a bunch more competition at the higher level on top of those roads. I'm not unsympathetic to libertarian arguments that competition can improve things, but to me the idea of multiple competing private road networks sounds likely to make things worse rather than better: imagine if, say, FedEx owned an extensive network of roads that competitors weren't allowed to use.

Re:Lawyer?

[Jurily]

consumers as a group must be informed

Sounds good on paper, doesn't it? Imagine a group of people putting up honest and detailed information about the products of big companies. Now imagine what they'll spend on lawyers when the big companies in question find out about it. Even if they can prove they tell the truth, they're going bankrupt.

Re:Lawyer?

[digitalunity]

He was on the right track though.

They weren't immune to foreign competition, but GM and Ford combined essentially dominated the market for many decades. It wasn't until a decade after the quality/price disparity between GM and foreign cars was so great that the company finally went belly up.

The market was just slow to correct itself because consumers are slow to change their perceptions.

If people were willing to abstain from businesses they think are acting outside societies best interests, we would have a very different corporate landscape. No more walmart. The big three wireless companies would have drastically different policies and pricing. Things would just look a lot different.

Re:Lawyer?

[digitalunity]

Government is broken. It enacts regulation it will not enforce. It's regulatory bodies are toothless in the face of lobbying dollars.

The FCC is toothless to regulate dominating, price-fixing, anti-consumer telecom companies(AT&T, Verizon and Qwest, I'm talking about you.)

Comcast has no reason to treat customers fairly because nobody will make it do so. Being the asshole is more profitable.

Re:Lawyer?

[croftj]

Yes, free markets are the answer to everything. Look at how much better the world is now that the free markets 'equalized' the excesses of the sub-prime mortgages where lenders were lending money to every one and their dog, especially after they repealed the law seperating the investment banks from the regular banks. 'Let the markets go free' they cried 'They will self regulate, because the bankers don't want to go broke!'. Hmmmm.... they had a point. I have yet to hear of a banker, who as an individual, when broke! Maybe a stupid one did, but I suspect most walked away with a tidy little sum.

Re:Lawyer?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you had a point, you wouldn't need to resort to personal insults.

I do believe his point--and it is an apt one, and well taken--was that you are a liar, and an ignoramus as well. Sometimes you just have to call a spade a spade.

Re:Lawyer?

[Runaway1956]

Hmmm. You make sense - but, can you give an example of free market in the United States, any time within the past 100 years or so?

Seriously, we have never seen it in our lifetimes. Every single commodity or good that you can possibly purchase has been regulated at multiple points. Nothing you can possibly buy today is actually produced by a "free market". Absolutely nothing.

If you can find something that isn't actually regulated directly, you will find that it is affected by peripheral regulations, such as minimum wage laws. In the case of textiles, cotton remains King. Imagine that. I can't think of any specific laws that regulate cotton - but cotton is protected by seemingly unrelated regulations that outlaw hemp products in this country. You might say "Big deal!" But, hemp products outlast similar cotton products, usually by 7 times. Hemp products actually make the soil they are grown from more fertile, as opposed to cotton, which depletes the nutrients in the soil rapidly.

Go ahead - look around, and find ANYTHING on the US market which is truly subject to "free trade".

We can't possibly prove or disprove the idea that the free market is self regulating, because we've never put it to the test.

Re:Lawyer?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a particularly bad argument when talking about cable TV - often, the consumer doesn't HAVE an alternative readily available; I can count the number of places I've been that offer multiple cable TV services on one hand, and I've lived places where satellite wasn't a real option because of geography or various out-of-my-control circumstances.

You're very correct. In my area I have zero option; Comcast is the only cable provider and there's absolutely nothing I can do about it. Unless I want to live without an Internet connection.

Corporations can act against our interests in a variety of ways without being immediately funded by those affected, particularly when a corporation has existed long enough and had enough pull to shape society or law in its favor. A good example is credit card companies - while there's no de jure requirement that I have one, if I don't build a credit history, I can't buy a house or car or get loans for school or...

This doesn't subtract from your main point, but this is still mostly a myth perpetuated by the credit card companies themselves. I've purchased a car and house over the past three years and I've still never had a credit card in my life.

Now, the credit companies want this very badly to be true so I wouldn't be surprised if one day it really was in all cases.

Finally, I also agree that Libertarians make the mistake of assuming everyone thinks like them - which, were it true, would indeed make them right about their system being the best. However, in the real world, such a system would be little different than the one we have now: the less fortunate majority hold up the very fortunate minority.

Re:Lawyer?

[commodore64_love]

Can someone explain to me, in what way is this post a troll? I asked a question; I offered my best guess of what the answer will probably be. I even said "in my humble opinion" at the end, to be polite. Grrr.

Question:

If Cox Cable wanted to enter my town to compete against Comcast, how much would it really cost for them to run a fiber through the already-existing underground metal conduits? I suspect very little.

IMHO.

Re:Lawyer?

[Gr8Apes]

If we had a truly free market, where there were many providers, then we'd have the mythical market you mention. In reality our version of capitalism always drives towards a monopoly.

Re:Lawyer?

[Silentknyght]

I find it more interesting to consider why it doesn't generally work that way. I have only one answer: we care a HELL of a lot more about immediate convenience and instant gratification than we have ever cared about being consistent with our principles. So we'll buy from abusive companies that deliver poor service before we'll do without their products/services.

I gave up mod points to comment. I find your statement to be dubious in that you suggest that there is a clearly and demonstrably "good" alternative in this (or in all) situations. I recently switched to Comcast, from Qwest. After receiving about a dozen flyers for their FIOS service and after calling and pestering them about it a half-dozen times, they finally said that they have no plans within the next several YEARS to upgrade beyond their 1.5 Mbps service, the maximum they support in my area. I'd give up my geek card before I went without internet. So, I signed up for Comcast and got 16 Mbps for less.

I held out with Qwest on principles, but good "service" also includes the provided service itself. After waiting for several years and without the prospect of improvement, I switched. There was no "good" alternative in my case.

Re:Lawyer?

[Curunir_wolf]

Government is broken. It enacts regulation it will not enforce. It's regulatory bodies are toothless in the face of lobbying dollars.

The FCC is toothless to regulate dominating, price-fixing, anti-consumer telecom companies(AT&T, Verizon and Qwest, I'm talking about you.)

It's actually worse than that. Most Federal regulatory bodies are, in fact, controlled by large corporations, and are used not to regulate corporate activity, but to impose barriers to competition for those corporations, and regulate activities such that consumers are more dependent upon those corporations and the government institutions controlled by them.

The FCC, then, is there to protect media giants from competition from pirate radio. The FDA is there to protect corporate food giants from small farmers, and the Fed is there to protect Wall Street from competition by small business.

All while spending the entire country so far into debt that there is no way out.

I think "trust in government" would be some psychotically misplaced trust at this point.

Re:Lawyer?

[tomservo84]

It's not just VCR's that have analog tuners, though... I have a MythTV box...I've got an analog tuner in it and if I want to record anything off of the "digital tier" on my cable box, I have to tune it in on the box. Switching channels automatically is the only way to do this if I need to record several things while away.

Re:Lawyer?

[AndersOSU]

cable television and power distribution are natural monopolies. Regulated or not, there is no possibility for a free market there.

Pharma companies are regulated because we found out that if we didn't regulate food and drugs, snake oil salesmen would wander the country selling unlabeled tincture of morphine to cure your upset stomach.

Insurance ... well that's a clusterfuck. Insurance is interesting because it is largely regulated at the state level, so, in theory, it should be possible for one state (Texas? Oklahoma? Utah?) to decide that it wanted to try out unregulated insurance to appease the spirit of Ayn Rand. At least that's what people who respond with "tenth amendment" in all caps to my posts tell me. For some reason, however, we have 50 states and not one is actually willing to put their free-market-money where their mouth is.

Re:Lawyer?

[Anonymous Coward]

consumers as a group must be informed. They're not, by and large.

Ah. And therein lies the truth; not in your statement, but in your motivation. People as a whole are ignorant and capable of making informed decisions as carefully as yourself? No wonder socialism is on the rise these days. Hitler's youth is strapping on their boots yet again.

Re:Lawyer?

[JasterBobaMereel]

Pure Capitalism does not work (you get a monopoly of one which becomes a dictatorship)

Pure communism does not work either (It becomes easy to take over and becomes a dictatorship)

Re:Lawyer?

[AndersOSU]

What you say is true, but in order to ensure competition you must bar against collusion, cartels, vertical integration, and consolidation of power, and the only way to do that is not self-regulation, but good old third-party government regulation.

No one has the money to compete with Comcast, because this is a classic case of a natural monopoly. If someone were to seriously try, one or both companies would go under and we'd be left with at best worse service as the cash-strapped survivor exploits the market to recoup the money it lost to the defunct competitor, or no service as neither company can survive with <60% market share.

Re:Lawyer?

[jedidiah]

Strong regulation? You're on crack. It's deregulation that allows for this sort of BS. In other
countries, companies that have "ownership" of physical rights of way have to share that with
competitors. This is why they have Gigabit ethernet when much of the US is lucky to get 2 mbit.

Infact, the wannabe robber barons are whining about how gross under-regulation infact constitutes
crushing over-regulation when it is obviously not the case.

Re:Lawyer?

[bluefoxlucid]

Wal-Mart keeps unions at bay; keeps a horribly aggressive competition base that keeps other retailers in line (this breaks price fixing); and actually supplies decent salary and benefits to its workers (in 2005 they gave inventory employees $10/hr and decent medical; Best Buy was paying $6.5-$8 in 2008).

Wal-Mart deals with different suppliers than i.e. Sears. They encourage outsourcing of labor to reduce manufacture costs; but they don't carry Land's End, Polo, or Doc Marten. So they have lower quality clothes, at like $20 for a set of pants or a shirt; whereas i.e Land's End sells a much higher quality set of pants for $40, but you can get them at Sears or discount clothing stores for $30 regularly.

Those of us who buy decent clothes will recognize the quality and pay $30, maybe even $40 for good pants; but I'm not paying $80 for those things. If Wal-Mart wasn't around though... $30 cheap jeans or khakis, and Old Navy selling their stuff for $50-$60 probably? Those $2-$3 glasses ... yeah, instead of getting a good set of kitchenware for $50, it might cost you $100. You can get a cheap set from Wal-Mart for about $35.

The poor would suffer most at the demise of Wal-Mart; though the middle class would be notched down a bit since nobody would be aggressively fighting for lower prices. It's hard to compete with a different tier product when you're 1 class above the lower end crap yet your price range is 3 times higher.

Re:Lawyer?

[JasterBobaMereel]

Libertarianism - Assumes people will be greedy and act in their own self interest - But also assumes they will never act in the interests of society

Communism - Assumes people will be selfless and act in the interests of society - But also assumes they will never act selfishly

This is why neither works ....

The middle road, where you assume people will sometimes act selfishly, sometimes selflessly, is what most countries have now .. with a bit of bias one way of the other ...

Re:Lawyer?

[pnewhook]

No, it has to do with the fact that we don't have as much free-market as anti-free-market whiners like to tell us we do. You can't strongly regulate an industry and then claim that free market failed.

No, regulation is irrelevant as long as everyone is regulated the same and its a level playing field. Its when different standards exist that the market playing field becomes unfair and breaks down.

Re:Lawyer?

[daveime]

Yes, what a wonderful idea ! Have "the city" (taxpayers) finance an infrastructure system, then lease it out to private companies who will pay for the lease via their subscribers (the same people who financed it in the first place).

And as they all pay the same lease, exactly the same costs get passed on to the subscribers no matter which of company A,B or C they choose, and the same crap appears on all the networks as they are all working on exactly the same profit margin. It would not be a self correcting system, it would just give the illusion of competition, thus avoiding any anti-competitive worries.

The only win-win would be for the cable companies who get to double-dip the consumers, AND avoid any nasty lawsuits because they are all "in competition" with each other.

Back to the drawing board eh ?

Re:Lawyer?

[Devout_IPUite]

It pisses me off too, because I am a very discriminating consumer. I have companies that are on my shit list because of something they've done. It's actually at the point where I don't buy half the items in the grocery store for moral reasons (Juicy Juice is off my shopping list because Nestle consumes human slavery and pretends it's not their fault). If other people would pick a few companies a year to abstain from purchasing from for moral reasons, I would have a better world. Lazy fucks. : (

Re:Lawyer?

[AndersOSU]

We haven't put it to the test in the last 100 years or so, because we learned the lesson the first time. The industrial revolution in Britain and the United States was a free-market wet-dream. No minimum wage, no worker safety, no anti-competitive status, and no child labor laws.

What happened was that industry found the sweet spot where they were just a hair better than staying on the farm (which also had none of those restrictions) so that they could run their machinery with a constant stream of new-arrivals. The result was sweat shops, child labor, company towns, tenements, slums, the reduction of the middle class (skilled workers), and massive environmental damage - all for the benefit for a few ultra-wealthy "captains of industry" like Rockefeller, Carnagie, Morgan, and Vanderbilt.

Ironically, communist China is in the process of repeating our free-market mistake.

Re:Lawyer?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, there is a fundemental difference.

Libertarians tend to say "it would work /better/, if more human beings thought carefully and defended their interests."

Communism relies on nearly complete buy-in to work effectively.

Living as a libertarian in a quasi-socialist society is still functional. I bought a used car on Saturday, and I applied all the principles that any libertarian consumer would use (research, negotiation, resistance to impulse purchase, etc.) and wound up with a car that suited all of my needs--for $3,000 less than its 'percieved' market cost. The act of living as a libertarian rewarded me even though few other people purchase cars with the same mindset.

Try living as a communist when all around you are living in a capitalist-driven quasi-socialist state. There's no comparison.

The big difference is this: if the majority of a society started acting in a 'more libertarian' manner, major corporations that rely on the abuse of market power and the huge scale on which they operate, would no longer be able to effectively perform those same actions.

(Note that I'm not arguing against the regulation of the telecom industry. I'm still making up my mind and the results I have seen in other countries strike a strong blow in favour of a carefully regulated telecom infastructure. I'm just saying that comparing his argument to communism is disingenious at best--the sort of clever posturing that made us feel special when we said it in a high school economics class, but has little bearing on the real world).

Re:Lawyer?

[jedidiah]

All that's required for the free market is choices and the freedom to choose.

The rest doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if 99.9% of the market has no taste if those willing to cater to that last 0.01% are able to do so and their customers are free to do so.

The market breaks down when there aren't any choices due to physical limitations or there are compatability barriers trapping customers.

In truth, I don't have to eat fat back or bread. I can ignore them both because they are the sort of product that's easy to replace and easy to compete with.

I don't need world domination or being part of the biggest crowd. I just need to be able to ignore the crowd.

The free market is broken once I am no longer able to ignore a particular company.

Re:Lawyer?

[Devout_IPUite]

Africa. Seriously, it's happening a lot over there.

Re:Lawyer?

[daveime]

while there's no de jure requirement that I have one, if I don't build a credit history, I can't buy a house or car or get loans for school or...

You could perhaps just *save* for those nice things, instead of demanding society supplies you with everything on credit 5 minutes out of college ?

Re:Lawyer?

[Anonymous Coward]

"The market idea really could work, except that it requires a people who are both more noble and have a far stronger backbone than our general population."

Amusingly enough, these are the same assumptions Communism is based on :D Fascinating :-D

Re:Lawyer?

[AndersOSU]

The problem with cities laying their own infrastructure is that they will never replace it. Paris is running the same sewers it was when the in 1400. Verizon is only now replacing copper telephone wires laid in 1900 with fiber, and they're only doing that because they're not obligated to let competitors lease fiber (as they are with copper.)

There isn't a good solution here, but we could do worse than regulated private industry (though I'd prefer the regulations to be a bit tighter and mandate open access to the network for competitors at whole-sale rates).

Re:Lawyer?

[gtbritishskull]

I will grant you that the Communist system leads to a concentration of power, which leads to corruption, which leads to immoral people being in charge, which leads to labor camps and mass executions. But, if you go full Libertarian, in most markets you will naturally end up with a monopoly. Which is a concentration in power. Why do you believe it will end in a different fashion than communism?

The flaw in your logic is that you are quick to point to where another system has failed and seem to think that because your system hasn't failed, it is better. It hasn't succeeded either, though. Lack of information is not a good argument.

Re:Lawyer?

[Shakrai]

Every single commodity or good that you can possibly purchase has been regulated at multiple points. Nothing you can possibly buy today is actually produced by a "free market". Absolutely nothing.

That's not true. My weed dealer doesn't have to deal with the consumer product safety commission ;)

Re:Lawyer?

[Eli Gottlieb]

Last I heard "Consumer Reports" hasn't gone bankrupt.

Re:Lawyer?

[HungryHobo]

I'd tend to err on the side of assuming people will be selfish at least in aggregate.
If anything the bigger problem with free market economics is that it assumes perfect or at least extremely good information which is so far from reality it can't even see it in the distance.

And the fact that any economy has to be able to survive in the presence of other competing economies will keep it that way since if the actors in a competing economy have near perfect information about the actors in your economy while yours do not have near perfect information about the actors in that other economy then they'll be out-competed so there's no chance to convert an existing economy to the kind system where all relevant information is available.

So it falls under the "everyone has to adopt it at once" category on the check-list.

It both work quite well certain situation though.

Re:Lawyer?

[gtbritishskull]

Where is this not happening? Why are you asking him to prove himself right? If you truly believe what you are saying, why don't you prove him wrong? As I said in another post, lack of information is not an argument in your favor.

Re:Lawyer?

[b4dc0d3r]

First, is it that important that you record television when you're in the real world? Must be nice to have first-world problems.

Second, my VCR is 17 years old or so, and is programmable. So if I did feel the need to record stuff, I could. Or buy a second VCR set to record the other channel at a different time. I don't know what ReplayTV is, but it sounds like if you have something like MythTV you should be able to get it to switch channels when you want it to (as opposed to telling it to figure out when to switch on its own). There are probably other workarounds as well, so I don't think Comcast's ignorance will affect everyone - just those unwilling to find a workaround. So you're paying them for convenience, which is the basis of the service industry. You can choose to pay them or not, getting your programming from over-the-air or your own workaround or some other option, and you can choose separately whether to use their tools or your own.

Re:Lawyer?

[AndersOSU]

So...what "system" will provide more winners over a free market?

The one we're using now.

No it's not perfect, but laisez-faire free-markets erode the middle class. An economy where the majority of industry is private and regulated with organized labor creates more winners than any other system tried to date.

Re:Lawyer?

[pnewhook]

Good post, good question. Should not be a Troll.

Re:Lawyer?

[Shakrai]

Yeah, I agree. To me, it's somewhat like roads. The government owns one set of roads everyone can use, and in return you get a bunch more competition at the higher level on top of those roads.

My fear with the municipal owned network as described by the GP is that it would grow into a revenue stream for Government. To use your road example, many decades ago New York State issued bonds to pay for the construction of the New York State Thruway. To repay those bonds they passed a law saying that the Thruway would be a toll road, with the understanding that the tolls would go away once the bonds were repaid. Those bonds were repaid in 1999. Guess what? The Thruway is still a toll road.

It's not maintenance expenses -- NYS still gets Federal highway money from the gasoline tax to pay for that. It's just a revenue stream for the state government. The money goes to the Thruway Authority which uses it for all manner of things not related to the original bond purchase.

I hate the current broadband monopoly but I'd honestly rather deal with a system wherein new competitors would dig up the roads (provided they are willing to pay to have them repaved) before I'd want to see the Government own the network. If you think it's bad now wait until politics enters the calculation. Wait until the network is held hostage by a public employees union that wants more money. Wait until the network is used as a revenue source to support all manner of Governmental programs that have nothing to do with broadband.

Re:Lawyer?

[pnewhook]

Try to get permission to string cable to compete with them in a jurisdiction where they have a "franchise". The free market is deliberately crippled in the case of cable companies.

Have you tried getting such permission or are you making up the the suggestion that there is somehow some collusion going on that prevents competition?

The only barrier to multiple cable companies is the infrastructure cost to setting up the initial lines. That's why most competitors use things like satellite or line of sight broadcast.

Re:Lawyer?

[JasterBobaMereel]

...Instead of Working in the fields and living until they were 70-75 if they were lucky, and working for a greedy and rich landowner

they worked in factories and died young, working for a greedy and rich factory owner

A great improvement ....

Until the government tightened up controls on working conditions and pay, so they could live until they were 75 again ...

Laissez Faire Capitalism will always mean that there will be the very rich and the very poor - The system is very good if you happen to be one of the rich

I don't want the government to interfere with my life even to save me from myself - but I do want them to stop the powerful undermining my rights....

Re:Lawyer?

[mrbcs]

Or to quote Despair.com "none of us is as dumb as all of us"

Re:Lawyer?

[jduhls]

The market idea really could work, except that it requires a people who are both more noble and have a far stronger backbone than our general population.

How about:

The [any social system] idea really could work, except that it requires a people who are both more noble and have a far stronger backbone than our general population.

Re:Lawyer?

[AndersOSU]

Actually, let me rephrase that. It's debatable whether the lack of regulations during the industrial revolution (and now in China) were a "mistake." It may be that this was the only way to get sufficient population density to eventually get to a modern economy. However, it's not something I would desire to return to.

Re:Lawyer?

[JasterBobaMereel]

If it cannot work without perfect information (or near perfect)

Then anyone opting out of giving information can undermine the system and out-compete everyone else ... and so everyone will do this if they can

and so the system collapses

So what you are saying is that it can only work in an ideal world and it is intrinsically unstable

Re:Lawyer?

[Attila Dimedici]

cable television and power distribution are natural monopolies. Regulated or not, there is no possibility for a free market there.

How do we know that? No one has ever tried letting either spring up according to whoever wanted to enter the market. In both areas the government stepped in and regulated into existence monopolies almost as soon as the industry appeared. Certainly the theory of natural monopoly sounds good, but we have no evidence that it is actually true.

Re:Lawyer?

[Runaway1956]

Illegal drug dealers have to cope with all sorts of regulations that outlaw the stuff. The drug runners are either ignorant dupes, or if they are aware of what they are doing, they demand huge payments for the risks they take.

Remove the regulations which dictate that transporting a ton of weed into the US means years of prison time, those transportation costs will drop to about the same as transporting a ton of watermelon. Next to nothing. Your prices will plummet.

So, you see, it isn't exactly "free market" at all.

Go cut a ton of bermuda grass and drive across the border. You may be stopped by an agricultural inspector, who will search for signs of fire and infestation, or similar problems. But, he won't give a rat's ass about your bermuda grass, even if he suspects that you're going to smoke it.

Re:Lawyer?

[gauauu]

..The market idea really could work, except that it requires a people who are both more noble and have a far stronger backbone than our general population...

Hey, that's funny - same goes for communism. And major religions, achieving world peace, ending hunger and poverty..

Although interestingly enough, that's the entire point of Christianity, which is often missed (by Christians and non-Christians alike). That people are corrupt, incapable of becoming completely non-selfish, incapable of achieving world peace and ending hunger and poverty. Yeah, Christians would love to achieve world peace, but the very principles of the core of the religion will show that it's not possible.

Re:Lawyer?

[david_thornley]

Nowhere with a decent government.

Re:Lawyer?

[Attila Dimedici]

You make a good point, but the problem is actually partial deregulation. The only thing worse than excessively strong regulation is gradual deregulation where the barriers to entering the market are left in place, but the companies already in the industry are allowed to operate with a free hand. Unfortunately, that is the method of deregulation chosen by most politicians.

Re:Lawyer?

[Attila Dimedici]

The problem with free market capitalism is that there are people who will abuse the system at the expense of others. The problem with regulating is the same thing, except that with regulation, the people abusing the system have the power of the government behind them.

Re:Lawyer?

[MSTCrow5429]

One cannot point to a large company, complain that it's doing something you dislike, and therefore, it's both a monopoly and guilty of an antitrust violation. While the uber-parent doesn't bother to substantiate its accusation, an antitrust claim must plead with particularity the violations in question. Assuming Comcast is a monopoly (which is unlikely to be found), it still isn't guilty of antitrust. Common antitrust claims are tying, bundling, and conspiracy. Comcast is not tying or bundling anything; they are not forcing people to buy or use a product or service to use another product or service. They are only withdrawing automated support for a VCR, a VCR which they do not produce or sell. They are not forcing anyone to use its services exclusively. Generally, options are available in both several satellite TV providers, fiber optic in some locations. Dropping support for a VCR doesn't in any way impact their competition (unless DirectTV et al are manufacturing VCRs, and this is a major component of their businesses). There is obviously no conspiracy involved. There's no kernel of antitrust here.

Re:Lawyer?

[david_thornley]

In other words, in a free market, the cable company would freely lease its lines to competitors. I don't believe it. The only way to have a hundred choices coming through the same wire is for a government to own the wire, or closely regulate its use.

If you've got a model of how we could have competitive cable access in a completely free market, I'd love to hear it.

Re:Lawyer?

[eth1]

Cable TV *used* to be a natural monopoly, when it was all analog. Now, it's all just data.

You only need one fiber to each house (owned by the city, an independent non-profit, or even neighborhood associations - anyone but the content/service providers). You could easily have 10 each of cable TV companies, phone companies and internet companies all available over the same bit of fiber.

Re:Lawyer?

[AndersOSU]

We've seen it happen with municipal water and we've seen it happen with railroads. It's reasonable to infer that any situation where an industry requires a massive capital outlay to run the sort of infrastructure where parallel lines would be redundant to be similar.

At some point rather than repeating the same mistakes, you have to learn by analogy.

Re:Lawyer?

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously in such a system Tort reform would be very high on the list...

Re:Lawyer?

[Count Fenring]

An interesting argument; but I don't actually agree. There are people who primarily think in terms of understanding and altering sections of the real economy; there are various blended plans that take account real data and potential malfeasance on the part of actors...

At some level, they're all abstractions of the real, yes, but not to the same degree; Libertarianism is much more so than most current economic theories.

Re:Lawyer?

[Count Fenring]

We've gotten somewhat afield of the original argument, so I'll restate - I'm not saying that Comcast is the result of nothing but pure free-market economics - I'm saying that a free market wouldn't fix the problem.

Also, it's my understanding that their duopoly in my area is at least partially due to their ownership of the physical media of transfer (the last-mile copper and cable wiring).

Re:Lawyer?

[bsdaemonaut]

If something only works under ideal conditions then it is safe to say that it is an ideal, one which couldn't work in "the real world." In effect your kind of proving yourself wrong here. You can't assume people will be willing to sacrifice themselves for their ideals. Throughout history those types of people are the exception, not the norm. Hell, they're some people who would have a real hard time simply existing if they couldn't buy their supposedly "non-organic" food from underpaid and under-appreciated Wal-Mart employees. I'm sure you can argue that the market prices would adjust if we'd all just cooperate, but once again your shooting for an ideal that has never and will never exist.

Re:Lawyer?

[ChienAndalu]

Because anarchy and lawlessness is the same as libertarianism. Right.

Re:Lawyer?

[mcgrew]

e.g. cable television, insurance, pharmacuticals, power production, power distribution, etc, etc, etc.

Wow. Cable TV is a monopoly, there is no free market with a monopoly. Yet you say that the reason it doesn't work is regulation? IMO the local government should run monopoly utilities, not just regulate them. Pharma? You don't want drug companies regulated, let them sell poison? Power production? They deregulated power production in California a few years ago, ane the "fee market" gave them blackouts and brownouts. Deregulation sure worked there. Before environmental regs you couldn't drive past a Monsanto plant because the air was so toxic. Rivers and streams caught fire.

I'm sorry, but you're either ignorant or completely insane.

Re:Lawyer?

[Anonymous Coward]

Go ahead - look around, and find ANYTHING on the US market which is truly subject to "free trade".

Since you brought up Hemp, I'll cite the obvious example: Marijuana.

Counter economics (the black and grey markets) is THE prime example of free-market economics in practice. Seems to be working pretty well for millions of people.

Re:Lawyer?

[HungryHobo]

If you look only at the most simplistic Libertarian economists of course but again you'll find the same thing for every economic systems.

The serious and competent economists who study the various systems are people who primarily think in terms of understanding and altering sections of the real economy; there are various blended plans that take account real data and potential malfeasance on the part of actors.

The talking heads who get invited on chatshows are not a representative sample of any system, be it socialism, communism or libertarianism.

This would be an example of sampling bias, you're far more familiar with the real work being done in your prefered system.
You are far more aware of the loud sillyness in other systems and don't hear about similar serious realistic people who do work on other systems.

Re:Lawyer?

[Belial6]

You left out the option that cities could lay pipe the same way they do with sewer lines, and then they could let any cable company run lines any time they want without ever having to dig up the streets again.

Re:Lawyer?

[Count Fenring]

In my personal case (student loans), I can't, because my income doesn't allow for substantial savings, and won't until I have the degree that allows me to seek professional-level jobs.

And, yes, it's theoretically possible to save money for a car; assuming that your job and city don't require you to have a car to get to work. Living in Sarasota, FL, for instance, the bus isn't an option, because its service hours end before 99% of jobs do.

You can buy a cheap-ass used car for $500-$1000, but everyone (every single person) who has done so has spent more in repairs over time than the loan would have cost them, and been stuck someplace when their car broke down multiple times.

Again, these things are possible for some; but there's a reason we have an institutionalized system for loans, and that's that generally, people can't afford college before they have the degree conferred by college (and sometimes after, but that's a separate problem).

Re:Lawyer?

[mcgrew]

They're a monopoly. No comcast, no high speed internet, no cable.

Re:Lawyer?

[HungryHobo]

name a system which doesn't have the same flaws.

they all only work as advertised in an ideal world.

Re:Lawyer?

[ChienAndalu]

I will grant you that the Communist system leads to a concentration of power, which leads to corruption, which leads to immoral people being in charge, which leads to labor camps and mass executions. But, if you go full Libertarian, in most markets you will naturally end up with a monopoly. Which is a concentration in power.

Again, the difference being that "power" in the context of communism means armed forces and secret police, while the "power" of a monopoly is being able to sell light bulbs slightly cheaper than your competition.

Why do you believe it will end in a different fashion than communism?

The flaw in your logic is that you are quick to point to where another system has failed and seem to think that because your system hasn't failed, it is better. It hasn't succeeded either, though. Lack of information is not a good argument.

The fact that you can sit on your PC and complain about the system (specifically some content provider changing some TOS) over the internet is an pretty good indication that it is succeeding.

Re:Lawyer?

[ChienAndalu]

Like governments that protect the rights and liberties of individuals as proposed in libertarianism?

Re:Lawyer?

[Sheik Yerbouti]

The market does offer options just take the other options (Dish, DirecTV, Regular old antennae and now the Internet) and quit whining.

Re:Lawyer?

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in a condo. FiOS has not been rolled out. DSL doesn't come here. Satellite is prohibited by the community. And there is only one cable company in my town: Comcast. I have two choices: Dial up + indoor antenna, or Comcast. Comcast can charge whatever the hell they feel like. And they do. My complex pays more than the rest of the town. And I don't live in the sticks either. It's just what happens when you have no competition. Please tell me how to make the all-powerful free market fix this.

Re:Lawyer?

[Count Fenring]

No, with regulation, you get children not chained to desks (Not hyperbole - Gilded age). You see, people en masse in the public eye, responsible to constituencies to some degree, are actually a somewhat more reliable system than people making decisions in a closed boardroom, responsible only for profit. Sorry, but it's proven by history.

Neither are infallible, or even reliably good-trending; but one is less vulnerable to corruption, and it's not corporations.

Re:Lawyer?

[bsdaemonaut]

Third party regulation? You need only look at Ma Bell to see how that turned out. Most local, privately owned ISPs only avenue to offering affordable "broadband" was through the phone company's DSL. For a while this was regulated, poorly, and allowed them to stay afloat, but only just. Most of these local ISPs slowly faded away, not because they didn't have the user base, but because what they had to pay the telephone companies left little margin for profit. At one point I remember BellSouth in particular even telling us we could no longer offer the cheap, low-speed offering, even though they themselves still offered it -- meaning we had no way to compete for the lowest dollar. Dropping DSL regulation was the final death toll, the ones that were large enough to negotiate a deal survived, but that was it. Personally I feel the telephone line is a perfect example of why government regulation doesn't work.

There are plenty of companies who can compete with Comcast. Comcast is hardly the only large cable company out there. I don't see how it would necessarily be any different then the cell phone market. They would have to slowly expand their network, but competition would be possible.

Re:Lawyer?

[Count Fenring]

It's actually a result from interacting with local political groups of Libertarians over long periods of time, reading position statements of Libertarian and Libertarian-leaning politician over time, and discussions with people with Libertarian views.

I'm not saying that there aren't people who have reasonable positions who identify as Libertarians, but, honestly, I think the only really reasonable ideas attached to the platform are in reforming areas of our government process that are more-or-less run as games or which deal with subjective elements; for instance, the vote-reform platform tends to be sensible, or their social and drug policies.

Re:Lawyer?

[Anonymous Coward]

A few points. Granted, most of these are philosophical as opposed to real world, but...

1. You don't NEED cable T.V. Railing against the fact that you only have one cable provider in your area is fine, but you will survive without cable T.V. I have plenty of friends who do so.

2. You most certainly ARE NOT required to get a credit card. You definitely DO NOT need a credit card to get loans for school - I have never had one, and I can very easily get student loans to cover my tuition and expenses. And guess what? They are provided by the government, which means they should be perfect for you if you are like most standard "government can fix everything" libertarian haters.

3. While certainly making purchasing decisions based on some moral imperative is not some automatically virtuous act, that road goes both ways. If you "need" (and in 90% of cases I would argue that you don't actually "need" it at all) something and purchase it from a morally corrupt company it is on YOU, not the company. You don't get a free moral pass because you "need" to go shopping at Wal-Mart. Either own up to your own moral failings and understand that you are complicit in supporting companies that follow practices that you like, or go out and do the research so that you don't.

You don't get the luxury of saying "I don't have time to research this, so it's morally okay for me to buy things from companies that abuse children." I would submit to you that your time spent researching is both less work and less painful than the children who work in conditions akin to forced labor for twice that amount of time on a weekly basis.

But saying "I don't have the time, therefore it isn't my problem" is the American way.

Re:Lawyer?

[AndersOSU]

You need only look at Ma Bell

So, not perfect, but pretty well.

As much as people didn't like ma bell, they liked the baby bells (e.g. bell south), after deregulation, much less.

Ma Bell was broken up in 1984, well before DSL made any significant inroads.

Cable TV is fundamentally different from cell phones because cell phones don't have the "last mile problem."

You may feel that AT&T is a perfect example of why government regulation doesn't work, but ask the guy in the Tennessee valley who still can't get broadband, but has a phone with 5-nines uptime thanks to the universal service fund.

Re:Lawyer?

[QuantumPion]

We've tried laissez-faire capitalism - it's called the Gilded Age, and it was TERRIBLE for 90% of the population. Previously, we tried it in Edwardian/Victorian Britain. It was horrible and soul-crushingly destructive then, too. Sensing a theme? Pure free market economies are no better an idea than communism, if somewhat more efficient at producing products.

Terrible compared to what, modern standards? Compared to what the lower class was living like before the industrial revolution, it was a big step up. Reliable jobs and income combined with rapidly decreasing cost of goods meant a huge increase in the standard of living for those 90% of people.

Re:Lawyer?

[vandon]

Higher priced doesn't always mean higher quality. It usually means 'we spent more on advertising than our competitors'.
Example: I've bought $90 Nike shoes and had them last about 10 months before starting to fall apart. The next pair were Adidas that cost about $45. It's been over a year and a half and they're still in good shape.

Re:Lawyer?

[HungryHobo]

I'd probably best fit under "Libertarian socialist".

There's a strong "leave me the hell alone and stay out of my personal business" aspect I like.
Dislike of bureaucracy also comes into it too.
The free market stuff isn't totally without basis to an extent, something like a free market with enough regulation to prevent monopolies is damned good at getting useful work done.

What's your preference?

Re:Lawyer?

[Agronomist Cowherd]

Bullshit.

Look at the early years of the telephone system. Multiple phone companies, each with their own lines and subscribers. A business needed to have a phone with each major phone company in order to receive calls from its customers. The sky was black with competing redundant phone lines (slight hyperbole, but there are pictures of ludicrous pole congestion).

We've tried full deregulation, and it's messy.

Shut the fuck up and go back to your Randian basement.

Re:Lawyer?

[AndersOSU]

As someone who thinks that libertarianism is a giant scam, I think this is a succinct and accurate analysis.

The only point I'd add is that just because libertarianism fails more gracefully than communism doesn't mean it's anywhere near the optimal solution.

Re:Lawyer?

[mcgrew]

$10 an hour is not enough to feed yourself, let alone your family. Food stamps aren't welfare for the poor, they're welfare for WalMart. Food stamps allow WalMart and Best Buy to underpay their workers. As to Best Buy, in Illinois the minimum wage is $8.50. According to the linked page, $6.50 is illegal everywhere.

Re:Lawyer?

[Actually, I do RTFA]

No, it has to do with the fact that we don't have as much free-market as anti-free-market whiners like to tell us we do

We found when we did, that people would be born into a company town, owned by say a mining company. Since that one company owned all the land, all its employees rented from it, but more importantly, it had the only store that could be frequented. By controlling both wages (only jobs were with he company) and the sale of products (only from the "company store"), the company could force people to constantly be in debt using their job as collateral; forcing them to work. And by controlling credit, they could force the same conditions on newly minted adults before they had a chance to escape.

That's to say nothing of natural monopolies, the need to control externalities, market failures, and the tragedy of the commons/communal goods.

People who believe in religion dogmatically I understand; its unfalsifiable. But how do free market advocates keep doing it. The unregulated free market doesn't exist because it was tried and was horrible.

Or, how about this. Dubai has a completely free market system. Why don't you move there?

Re:Lawyer?

[Anonymous Coward]

this whole discussion is in error since 'cable' is not a free market. the government grants geographic regions to companies. there's nothing 'free' about it. you want cable? you have 1 choice. i've spoken to Comcast reps who can't get Comcast.

your option to switch generally involves installing a small satellite dish on your home, which brings a little touch of west virginia to affluent suburbia.

Re:Lawyer?

[Red Flayer]

How do we know that? No one has ever tried letting either spring up according to whoever wanted to enter the market. In both areas the government stepped in and regulated into existence monopolies almost as soon as the industry appeared. Certainly the theory of natural monopoly sounds good, but we have no evidence that it is actually true.

False.

Railroads are a perfect example. Natural monopolies led to abusive practices (like gouging) by monopoly holders.

Another example is wire services, the direct predecessor to telecom industry.

If we can't find an example of this happening in the modern telecom industry, it is because we did our job in preventing it from happening.

But go ahead, keep those free-market-conquers-all blinders on, if you so choose.

Re:Lawyer?

[bluefoxlucid]

Dude, you don't have a right to live on your own, by yourself, in a house, with a non-working wife and family, just because "you're working 40 hours a week."

Re:Lawyer?

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Terrible compared to what, modern standards?

Terrible compared to how the system would have evolved with tighter regulation.

Re:Lawyer?

[Actually, I do RTFA]

You could perhaps just *save* for those nice things

Not being homeless is a "nice thing". Being able to get to your job is a "nice thing". Certainly, if you're talking about renting instead of buying, or driving a scooter instead of a car, I agree. But you need a credit score for both of those things as well.

As for student loans, I tend to think the government should either provide them or fix high school.

Re:Lawyer?

[nomadic]

Anyway, a free market WOULD fix in this case, because when Comcast pulls this shit, you would then be able to switch to Cox cable or Time-Warner cable or AppleTV or Verizon TV or anybody else you desired.

Yep, and all these companies have to do is lay a few hundred miles of cable first.

Re:Lawyer?

[Jon_Hanson]

The FCC has ruled that condo/homeowner associations cannot restrict the installation of (small) satellite dishes or antennas for receiving television or Internet services. There are certain exemptions for historical preservation and such but other than that they must make reasonable accommodations. http://www.fcc.gov/mb/facts/otard.html

Re:Lawyer?

[HungryHobo]

Anyone figured out the optimal solution yet?

Re:Lawyer?

[Red Flayer]

The only thing worse than excessively strong regulation is gradual deregulation where the barriers to entering the market are left in place, but the companies already in the industry are allowed to operate with a free hand.

Given that there are significant market-created barriers to entry (such as infrastructure costs, the cost of acquiring rights-of-way, etc), a completely unregulated market would yield these results anyway.

If you want a truly competitive market, you need to remove naturally-occurring barriers to entry (by building out a public infrastructure, for example). Or, if that is not desirable, you try to find the best possible substitute for a free-as-in-economically-free market, which may (if properly regulated) be a regulated monopoly provider.

In truth, the deregulation we've had does exactly what you say... but that is because the most significant barriers to entry are not regulatory in nature.

Re:Lawyer?

[bsdaemonaut]

When referring to Ma Bell I'm referring to the baby bells also, sorry if I wasn't clear.

"Cable TV is fundamentally different from cell phones because cell phones don't have the "last mile problem.""

Some may be affected less, but there is no provider without the "last mile" problem. Cell phones can reach capacity in specific regions just as well as cable/dsl. I can recall several instances in which this has happened. It will become a much bigger problem if it ever becomes a viable option for primary internet access. I don't see how this has anything to do with the original topic.

What I was arguing is that cell phones are a much freer market and as such, I feel at least, users have benefitted in greater amount and in less time then they ever had with ma/baby bells. DSL deregulation isn't a good example of why deregulation doesn't work your talking about a service that had been regulated for decades. Of course its not going to work. A regulated industry is just not going to be in the kind of condition to support a free market when deregulated.

5-nines uptime with a cell phone? Somehow I doubt that. I can't even get reliable cell phone access at my house, near a major city, because its in a shallow ravine.. the tennessee mountains are much less forgiving. You can't offer an exception as being the norm. There are far more people who have access to DSL/Cable, in my experience, then they do reliable 2.5/3/4G.

Re:Lawyer?

[gtbritishskull]

Again, the difference being that "power" in the context of communism means armed forces and secret police, while the "power" of a monopoly is being able to sell light bulbs slightly cheaper than your competition.

So, let me try to see what you are trying to say.

First, it seems you are saying that only governments can have a military type force. You might want to do a little research on that assertion.

Second, you are saying that even if the worst happened and a private company got a military force, it would not do anything "secret". So, everything that a security force does for a private company does will be document and the public will be informed of it. Is this correct? If so, is it congruent with your libertarian ideals?

And, this is assuming that the sole way for a private company to influence an armed force is by owning one. But, I would assert that monopolies tend to have a lot of money and money can be used to influence (or directly pay for with a bribe) the actions of publicly elected officials. So, a private corporation could have enough influence in the government through their money (obtained through eliminating the competition and then selling their lightbulbs for more than they should be worth) to get the government to perform the necessary military and secret police actions for them.

I'm not saying this is going to happen. I just want you to prove to me that it won't if we have a completely ideal libertarian free market.

The fact that you can sit on your PC and complain about the system (specifically some content provider changing some TOS) over the internet is an pretty good indication that it is succeeding.

No. We do not live in a free market. It is regulated. Monopolies are punished when they use their monopoly in an anti-competitive manner. By your logic, a lot of the European countries are more socialist/communist, so it is a good indication that communism is succeeding. Libertarians want the extreme. The reason why you don't have an example of the extreme working is because it breaks down before it ever gets there (just like communism did). If I am wrong, show me a place that has your libertarian system. I do not argue that the free market does not have its advantages. But I also acknowledge its disadvantages. So I like that in the US we use a free market that is regulated to try to find the balance in the middle that gives you the best of both worlds.

Re:Lawyer?

[PerfectionLost]

You are clearly white. He would care if I drove across the border with it.

Re:Lawyer?

[AndersOSU]

Obviously, the optimal solution is unknowable. But based on our experiences in the gilded age and based on Russia's experiences after the October Revolution, we know that it lies somewhere to the left of laissez-faire libertarianism and somewhere to the right of communism.

Based on our experiences between 1950 and 1973, the optimal solution is probably far to the left of laissez faire libertarianism.

Re:Lawyer?

[gtbritishskull]

Ahhh... A voice of reason. It is so rare that I meet one such as you.

One of the best things that I see about the US government (and most other successful governments) is that it is hard for one "side" to succeed over another. There is a constant pull back towards the center. Of course, like everything else, it oscillates back and forth. Sometimes the country is moving more conservative, sometimes it moves more liberal. But, it always moves back to the center.

I have a problem, though, with the alarmists who choose to ignore that fact. The biggest one right now is Glenn Beck. These people argue that the natural stopping point of any movement is the extreme.

From what I have seen, the basic rhetoric is...

Obama has shown us he is a communist by passing the healthcare bill. So, in a few years he will nationalize all of our country's businesses. A few years after that, he will nationalize all of the private property and we will be fully communist.

This type of rhetoric is crap and is an insult to the great things about this country. I think it would help the debate out a lot if people would talk about what is happening now, and not make so many predictions about what they think the other side might do in the future. Or, just realize that if I a person claims themself as a Republican or Democrat, that doesn't mean they are an extremist. I am a liberal, but if Obama tried to get rid of the free market, I would fight him tooth and nail.

Re:Lawyer?

[HungryHobo]

You assume the search space has no local minima.

There could even be an optimal solution far to the left of communism or far to the right of laissez-faire libertarianism.

Hill climbing is a terrible way to search most interesting search spaces.
Search spaces for most real world problems could be best graphed as a floor covered in porcupines and on the tip of every quill is another team of porcupines.

Hell even the left/right way of thinking about it is pretty terrible since there's far more dimensions involved.

Re:Lawyer?

[mrchaotica]

Because anarchy and lawlessness is the same as libertarianism. Right.

Of course anarchy and lawlessness isn't the same thing as libertarianism! With libertarianism, you get all the legal protection you're willing and able to pay for. And if the criminals outbid you for control over the police, well, that's just your fault for being too poor!

Re:Lawyer?

[AndersOSU]

When referring to Ma Bell I'm referring to the baby bells also, sorry if I wasn't clear.

So you're saying that poorly conceived and poorly executed deregulation is a problem with regulation?

"The last mile" specifically means running and maintaining infrastructure directly to each of your customers homes. So no, cell phones do not have the last mile problem. Which is what makes their market fundamentally different from both cable tv and land line phones. This is why cable tv and land line phones are natural monopolies and cell phones aren't. Comparing one to another - even if they offer superficially the same service is comparing apples to oranges. For the record, I agree, the cell phone market is, and always has been better than both the land line and cable tv market.

5-nines uptime is with land-lines. Government regulated, government mandated service. Not perfect, but existent. Rural electrification and rural telephony are success stories. Private broadband penetration a glaring failure. And it's not an exception. I get water to my apartment everyday, and I don't have to negotiate arbitrary checkpoints and toll booths when I drive to work on public roads. Regulation isn't always desirable, but it is always necessary in monopoly markets.

Re:Lawyer?

[Runaway1956]

Uhhh, you are mistaken. Black, white, and brown people cross the border every single day with tons and tons of stuff agricultural goods. Every single day. I've been on the border, and the border patrol doesn't look any harder at one type of person than he looks at another. They MAYBE look a little harder at young people than older people, but that could just be my own perception. "Younger people" meaning mid teens to maybe 35. Old goats like myself aren't likely to set off any alarms, unless we're acting stupid.

I'd invite you to try it sometime, but if you are a nervous paranoid sort of person, you WILL be stopped and questioned, LMAO

Re:Lawyer?

[pugugly]

Given that Regulation is *always* a response to a large, public, politically embarrassing failure of the "Free Market" (and indeed, deregulation almost alway sooner rather than later *results* in a large, public, politically embarrassing failure of the "Free Market"), yeah actually I think we anti-free-market whiners actually can claim that.

Fail to enforce coal regulations - bam - people die in coal mines.
Deregulate Credit Unions - bam - massive credit union baolouts.
Repeal Glass-Steagal - bam - find banks leveraged well past their limits in credit default swaps.

At some point you would think Free Market advocates could learn to master the same level of logic gets children to quit touching hot stove burners. Instead you get logic that amounts to "Why put fire sprinklers in apartment buildings. I mean really, what kind of idiot would live in the same building as an idiot that would burn down the building they live in?".

Pug

Re:Lawyer?

[Anonymous Coward]

The free market doesn't work for the same reason communism doesn't work: human nature. But communism is teh evils! don't forget!

Re:Lawyer?

[AndersOSU]

Care to detail any systems outside of the bounds I offered? Or a better way to locate the global maximum?

Re:Lawyer?

[PerfectionLost]

Most of my experience is with airports, where I pretty much always get searched. I don't live particularly close to Mexico, so I doubt I'm going to get that experience any time soon.

Re:Lawyer?

[AndersOSU]

http://xkcd.com/720/

Re:Lawyer?

[Lumpy]

Or my $29.00 walmart "falls creek" specials that I have worn for 2 years now and only will be replacing them because I literally wore the soles off the shoes. The tops are still in great shape, and the arch and inside are still in great shape.

Re:Lawyer?

[digitalunity]

His point is valid nonetheless. $8.50 working 40 hours a week is only $1156 after tax per month, and before any deductions for retirement and savings plans.

WalMart touts itself as a perfectly kosher place to work if you're an adult that needs to live off the money, but that couldn't be further from the truth. A disproportionate number of WalMart employees rely on some sort of public social assistance program, whether that be food stamps, daycare assistance or insurance subsidies. WalMart uses razor thin margins, globalized distribution systems and cutthroat pricing to displace retailers that would otherwise pay better.

People buy WalMart's shit not realizing that they're cutting their own Achilles heel.

You could make an argument that some person in China has a job with WalMart where they otherwise would not, but consider this: WalMart directly operates factories in China(they're not just a distributor) and their employees face slave-labor conditions to produce the shit you wanted to save $1 on. If you're going to spout shit about globalization, go all the way and just say you don't give a shit about slave-laborers in China because you wanted to save money.

Re:Lawyer?

[mcgrew]

You've been unfairly marked troll. (Not that I agree with you, but everyone should have a right to express an opinion without having their karma stabbed.)

The moderation system works; his "troll" is now +4, insightful. And, if your karma is good enough, the occasional "troll" or "flamebait" moderation won't hurt you anyway; the only bad thing is your comment gets buried.

Re:Lawyer?

[digitalunity]

I don't shop at WalMart.

WalMart relies on razor thin margins and a huge number of customers to survive. It wouldn't take but a couple million people like me to make it unprofitable.

Of course, if they changed the way they hire, promote and pay people, that might change my mind. I just don't see that happening any time soon.

Re:Lawyer?

[Lumpy]

Update your knowlege: those in power make the laws. If I buy enough army to take over, all the laws suddenly change to my laws.

so theyare not being lawless, they are being VERY law abiding... just abiding by their laws that they make up at whim..

Re:Lawyer?

[Lumpy]

Glenn Beck is entertainment. he is NOT news or intelligent commentary.

Glenn Beck is Fox's answer to the Colbert report.

The problem is there is a HUGE number of people that watch Glenn Beck that also think that all the news on TheOnion.com is also real. They cant understand the difference between satire and joking and reality.

Glenn Beck is entertainment, this is directly stated and admitted to by Fox new channel. They cant help it that there is a large number of people that dont have the IQ to understand that.

Re:Lawyer?

[Lumpy]

Most people can make it to work and back on a bicycle. It's just that many are too lazy to do that or are afraid of discomfort and use it as an excuse to not do it. Yes you CAN bike 15-17 miles to work easily daily. no it's not gonna take 10 minutes, you have to get off your ass and get up earlier. and yes you CAN ride a bike in the rain and in snow.

I see people do it every day, and I live where we get 4-8 feet of snow a year.

P.S. if you look hard enough, you can find a free bike.

Re:Lawyer?

[HungryHobo]

outside of the american left/right thing?
Sure, different economic systems can work better within different social structures which adds another few dimensions which are not purely financial.
environment, technology, etc etc.

For example increased technological advancement may make previously non-viable economic systems viable. (if we ever get the hang of von neumann machines it could really screw with current economic systems and even simple miniaturisation could change what kinds of industrys are viable in a less centralised economic system )
Social structures and how wealth is inherited or distributed through extended family groups is another aspect which could fall under social factors which have economic effects, for example if people stopped seeing it as natural that parents pass on all wealth to their children or perhaps if it went the other way and it became the social norm that wealth was split between extended family groups rather than being the property of individuals.
Advances in medicine and life expectancy could alter how long people have to build up personal fortunes which could change the optimal system(a system which generally prevents wealth from accumulating with individual or families over the course of a generation or so may fail if individual life expectancies are significantly extended).
This probably comes under tech again but some of the post-humanist crap could make the communist end of the spectrum more viable.

An economic system which works well under a monarcy could work terribly in a democracy or the other way round.
Economic systems which rely on decent communication may work well in an open society but terribly in a censorship prone society.
etc etc etc etc.

Re:Lawyer?

[bluefoxlucid]

$1200/month after tax when you have 2 room mates in a $1000/month apartment in college is like, $900/mo for YOUR food and car insurance. Plus you have medical benefits. With 2 working people in a $1000/mo apartment, that's $2400/mo combined, leaving $1400/mo to cover expenses.

I work with a fellow who supported another non-working person in their own apartment covering all expenses in a $23,000/year job. That's scarcely $1500 after taxes, covering two people.

It's horrible, but livable.

As for cutthroat pricing, Wal-Mart is the reason everything else is so cheap. It's hard to compete, as I said, even with the same shit on a different quality tier. The value just isn't there for $60 pants, which instead have to be priced at $40 and constantly rotating through sales at 25%-50% off to actually sell; but that's okay because those pants only cost $10 to make anyway, so a sale price of $30 leaves enough margin for everyone.

It's not an isolated system, as you've noticed (Wal-Mart displacing other retailers); but that goes both ways. On one hand, Wal-Mart gets a huge market share offering lower quality standard products at lower prices that cost less to manufacture than other retailers; on the other, this means that the better and slightly-more-expensive-to-manufacture shit has to be priced only slightly more expensive, rather than price gouging consumers on a demonstrable quality increase. Removing one evil lets another one in...

Re:Lawyer?

[Attila Dimedici]

Railroads became monopolies through government intervention (local, state and federal). If by wire services you are referring to telegraph, the telegraph monopolies also developed through government intervention.
I will agree that once one company has gained dominant position in any of the industries that are considered "natural monopolies" through government intervention, it is very hard (approaching impossible in some cases) for competitors to arise even if the government gets out of the way.

Re:Lawyer?

[tc3driver]

Not quite, but excellent point! I would be hoping for a shift in taxes after this is complete. Lower sales tax, or better get rid of it all together, and let the infra pay for the city taxes. I know that is a dream... but I can can't I?

Re:Lawyer?

[sbeckstead]

I actually chalk it up to the fact that consumers are not nearly as smart as most of the free marketers seem to think they are and just don't believe it when told that company X is evil because of x,y and z. Even when presented with direct evidence they tend to write it off as fringe rumor mongering and not mainstream fact. So given that the "free market" won't actually do anything to regulate any company we still need the smart people to put regulations in place to protect the gullible and obviously not as educated as you would like them to be consumers.

Re:Lawyer?

[mcgrew]

If you'll permit me to interupt your trolling for just a moment

His post was no more a troll than yours, which isn't either. Just because you disagree with an opinion doesn't nake it a troll.

I'd like to point out that cable companies are not monopolies. You DO have a choice. It's called satellite, and it's similarly priced.

Not if you rent; if the landlord doesn't a dish, you have no choice but cable. And if you're in an apartment it's a physical impossibility. They're the only high speed internt in my area as well, there is no taking my business elsewhere. It's quite literally Comcast or dialup (and satellite is dialup speed when uploading).

A sales tax can be viewed as a form of regulation.

How? An excise tax, yes (cigarette and beer taxes, for example) but not a sales tax.

And more to the point, when did you gain a right to Comcast's products and services

When they started using my tax dollars and emminent domain to build their infrastructure.

But it's a private business.

IMO that's the problem; my local government should be serving cable TV and high speed internet. Comcast and Amerin (my gas company) don't HAVE to listen to their customers, but if CWLP's (my electric & water) customer service goes to hell, the Mayor will be voted out of office.

I think I have a right to fresh air, which is why I'm glad the EPA can regulate. I have a right to food and drugs that aren't poisonous otherwise harmful, and to know exactly what's in the food I east, so I'm glad the FDA is there with its regulations. And I'm glad the local health department is there to regulate restaraunts; I think I have a right to salmonella-free food.

Re:Lawyer?

[Ogive17]

Ever been to a festival, fair, or flea market?

If you're speaking on a national sense, I'd agree. But on the local scene it's easy to see "free trade" at work.

Re:Lawyer?

[Attila Dimedici]

We've seen it happen with municipal water and we've seen it happen with railroads.

Let's look at your examples: "municipal" water, that is water supplied by the local government. Let's see, that seems to imply that the government was involved somehow. Railroads became monopolies through the intervention of local, state and federal governments. So, try again to find an example where a "natural" monopoly actually emerged without government intervention.

Re:Lawyer?

[sbeckstead]

Saint Peter don't you call me cause I can't go, I owe my soul to the company store. I hear ya brother...

Re:Lawyer?

[Attila Dimedici]

So, what caused a telephone monopoly to emerge? If telephone service is a natural monopoly, a single monopolist should have emerged from the market. However, that isn't what happened. The government decided who the winner would be. That doesn't prove that natural monopolies exist. It proves that telephone service would be messy if the government hadn't regulated a monopoly into place (and it is possible that over time the mess would have gradually cleaned up as the technology matured--or not, we'll never know because the government intervened to create a monopoly).

Re:Lawyer?

[bsdaemonaut]

"So you're saying that poorly conceived and poorly executed deregulation is a problem with regulation?"
No, I'm saying poorly conceived or poorly executed regulation makes it impossible to have a successful deregulation, the infrastructure just won't be there. If a monopoly, or something close to it, is allowed to fortify its position as a monopoly while regulated, there will simply be nothing capable of competing with it when deregulated. I'm not really a proponent for either, regulation might be the most likely to work, but the way its been done in the past certainly has proven that.

""The last mile" specifically means running and maintaining infrastructure directly to each of your customers homes. So no, cell phones do not have the last mile problem."

I'd argue that the inability of cell phone carriers to provide access to my home and shoddy access at my workplace, is proof that there is most definitely a last mile problem.

Re:Lawyer?

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Most people can make it to work and back on a bicycle

And I can and do. But then again, I also decided to live close to the office.

But for a long time, the only place I could afford was a 45 minute drive/4 hour public transit/bike commute each way. I'm all for telling people they're not entitled to a car, I just want to provide a viable alternative. Cheap mass transit and bikes work for me.

But the GP was in Sarasota. No mass transit. And I'm not sure how safe it is to bike in 100+ degree weather.

Re:Lawyer?

[AndersOSU]

If a monopoly, or something close to it, is allowed to fortify its position as a monopoly while regulated...

We're entering into circular territory here. You acknowledge that there is such a thing as a natural monopoly, right? Therefore, regulated or not such an entity will have an unfair competitive advantage. I would argue that unregulated such an entity would (and has) run amok exploiting it's position to extort monopoly rents from helpless customers whose alternatives are constrained. Regulated, such an entity can be forced to provide services it ought to, but otherwise wouldn't have to. If at a latter date you wish to modify the arrangement the proceedings can get messy.

Re:Lawyer?

[AndersOSU]

flamebait huh?

Man, some people just won't let their (counter-factual) opinions be challenged.

Re:Lawyer?

[Red Flayer]

Railroads became monopolies through government intervention (local, state and federal).

What? Do yourself a favor and read some more history. Most railroads were monopolies because they were natural monopolies. Some railroads were granted legal protection of monopoly status, but that is the exception, not the rule.

the telegraph monopolies also developed through government intervention.

That's a ridiculous claim to assert. Can you support that with any kind of evidence? Because everyone else who has studied the rise of Western Union Telegraph Company can tell you that their monopoly did not arise from government intervention.

I will agree that once one company has gained dominant position in any of the industries that are considered "natural monopolies" through government intervention, it is very hard (approaching impossible in some cases) for competitors to arise even if the government gets out of the way.

FYI, that's not what I claimed, so you are "agreeing" with something different than what I said. If I understand correctly, you are claiming that natural monopoly effects will prevent competitors to entering a market when that market is deregulated... but you are saying that the same factors have no effect in a nascent market?

Re:Lawyer?

[mike1210]

The result was sweat shops,

Only the fans of socialist slavery and terror call stepping stones to a better life "sweat shops".

child labor,

Better than child prostitution.

company towns, tenements, slums, the reduction of the middle class (skilled workers),

Bullshit. The middle class greatly expanded during the Industrial Revolution. For that matter, so did the wealthier classes. And the standard of living for the lower classes rose dramatically.

and massive environmental damage

Still leagues better than the environmental damage that occurred in existent socialist states.

- all for the benefit for a few ultra-wealthy "captains of industry" like Rockefeller, Carnagie, Morgan, and Vanderbilt.

You're getting your "history" from communists. That's your problem.

Re:Lawyer?

[mike1210]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kenneth_Galbraith#Some_of_Galbraith.27s_Ideas

Galbraith? Isn't he the one who went to Mao's China at the height of the socialist-induced artificial famine and proclaimed in a luxury hotel reserved for guests of the regime, "if there is any shortage of food it was not evident in the kitchen"?

Re:Lawyer?

[daveime]

In my personal case (student loans), I can't, because my income doesn't allow for substantial savings, and won't until I have the degree that allows me to seek professional-level jobs.

Well yes, this was exactly what I meant in my original comment ... I didn't start saving until I finished my studies, and even then, my first jobs weren't particularly great salary wise. Essentially I started being able to save at 25, and I'm now 42. That's 17 years of NOT having the latest flashy car (oe even A car most of the time), of NOT having 60" flatscreen TVs, and NOT being able to live in anything more than cheap rented accommodation.

But at 42, I've saved enough to buy my land and house outright (circa 50k USD for the land and 100k USD for the house), and it's bought and paid for, compared to the "I want it now" crowd who'd have got credit 17 years ago, and would still be paying for it 8 years from now.

Sacrifices have to be made of course, but it's perfectly doable, and the satisfaction of knowing it's mine and no bank or credit company ever got their grubby hands on 250% compound interest makes it all worthwhile.

Once upon a time, everyone saved for what they wanted, and credit was a last resort and somewhat shameful. Now if you (especially US) can't have *everything* at 18 years old, it's somehow society's fault. And you wonder why your system is in such a mess.

Re:Lawyer?

[Count Fenring]

1. No, you don't need cable TV, but since we were discussing the concept of "voting with your dollars," that's not a relevant issue. Removing yourself completely from the marketplace at hand removes even the tenuous level of influence that spending your money on a competitor's service might be said to have.

2. You don't, per se, need one, but, in fact, it's pretty hard to do without, and making something unreasonably difficult does, in fact, matter in the same way making it impossible does, albeit to a different degree. It's theoretically possible for me to opt out of the purchasing of food by stealthily hunting squirrels on the Boston Commons, but in practice, I need to buy groceries if I want to effectively live my life. Also, the personal attack here is pretty stupid, given that only certain classes of loans are federally subsidized, and those alone are insufficient to pay for any school worth a damn.

3. I personally don't buy from Walmart, on moral grounds - but I don't expect everyone to know all of their failings, and I don't look down on people who buy from Walmart. I buy from Target, which, as far as I've been able to tell, has better business practices - but I can't vouch for every brand they carry, or the trucking company they use to aquire product.

My point here is that, in fact, it is almost impossible to know with anything approaching certainty the complete moral record of the supply chain of any one purchase, much less every purchase you make. The act of purchasing isn't immoral, because it's not the responsibility of the consumer to police corporate behavior. That the actual parties responsible for policing this behavior (the SEC, etc) are less than effective is a problem with the laws, not a failure of consumers as a whole.

The slam on American culture here comes off as really juvenile. What culture are you putting forward as your perfect culture that never buys things based on price and value alone?

Re:Lawyer?

[Count Fenring]

Just out of curiosity, how did you fund your studies?

Also, I'm 27, have never owned a new car or a TV that wasn't secondhand, and have never lived in other than cheap rental property in terrifying sections of town. The credit card debts I've incurred (mostly taken care of or paid off) were either medical, rent, or cost of transport related; not optional "glitz purchases."

Most credit card debt isn't toys and entertainment; it's food, rent, appendectomies sans insurance.

Re:Lawyer?

[Count Fenring]

Honestly, I'm very liberal on social issues, and economically, I believe that we need stronger restrictions on corporate power, particularly extra-national corporations, and especially in the ways that corporations can interact with the process of government. I'm not opposed to capitalism in general, but once it moves past producing a product or service into coercive behavior, regulation is necessary, as well as places where profit motive doesn't serve the public welfare.

Re:Lawyer?

[bsdaemonaut]

I'd agree with that, but it seems like we're being forced to choose between two unacceptable situations. Regulation seems to be the lesser evil in some cases, but not all.

Re:Lawyer?

[HarrySquatter]

Want to bet? If we quit buying everything but food, energy, and our clothing, watch how fast every other economy on the planet would suffer.

And then we'd watch our own economy doing the same. Or did you forget how much of our GDP is dependent on exporting?

Re:Lawyer?

[AndersOSU]

How many people who worked in sweat-shops graduated to management? Before the industrial revolution shirts and shoes were made by middle class skilled tailors, after they were made by lower class unskilled factory workers.

Ultimately, the industrial revolution morphed into the modern industrial economy and the largest expansion of the middle class in history - but only after labor reforms had taken hold. Labor dragged the the industrialists into modernity kicking and screaming and shooting and beating.

Like I said, industrial society oiled it's machine by offering better conditions than agricultural society - but only just. So the standard of living for the lower classes rose, but only by a small amount - an efficient market in action.

The industrial revolution proved to be a great thing, but only after the we constrained the most self-serving aspects of naked capitalism.

Re:Lawyer?

[daveime]

Fund studies ?

These two words should never be seen in the same sentence. At least not if you come from one of those backward European countries as opposed to the mighty US of A.

Re:Lawyer?

[mattack2]

Also it's not just VCRs, but also DVRs this affects.

So I wasn't even sure what the main complaint meant.. So it is really "just" a complaint about the analog->digital transition (for cable, remember it has NOTHING to do with the OTA transition, even though cable companies IMHO purposely confused their *chosen* transition with the forced OTA transition).

If that's really the complaint, then this situation is not really any different than it's almost always(*) been, for premium channels. DVRs have had to be able to control cable boxes ever since DVRs have been around... and there is a better choice nowadays, CableCards.. That way, the DVR (or computer -- there are cable card tuners for computers nowadays) does the tuning directly. So you only have to rent the cablecards, not the entire cable box or DVR.

Don't get me wrong, I liked having most everything available in analog too, but once they moved expanded basic to digital, I got cablecards for one Tivo, and just got them for my other Tivo. (I still do a tiny bit of manual recording on analog channels with older recorders, but that's only like 2 recordings a day to get a section of a longer show that repeats itself -- and I just haven't bothered doing that on the Tivos instead.)

(*) Long ago I did get HBO in analog with no box. After that went to requiring a box, then I cancelled HBO.

Re:Lawyer?

[Count Fenring]

Alright, verbiage isn't important - what is it you're defining when you say "studies," and how did you/did you pay for them?

So we can knock off this weird poking at geography, I live in Boston, and was born and went to undergrad in Florida.

Re:Lawyer?

[VDizzle]

The problem that you would face with that arrangement of municipality owned fiber would be on-going maintenance. How long do you think it would take the government to roll a truck and fix a fiber cut? It would be a lot longer than a matter of hours that the current infrastructure providers do it in. If the city does not depend on the revenue from that fiber what would be its motivation to fix it in a timely manner?

Re:Lawyer?

[ChienAndalu]

I meant lawlessness as blatant disregard for individual rights and freedoms, which are the focus of libertarianism.

  Libertarianism defined as the government not regulating the economy has nothing to do with Somalia and other places where the government doesn't exist.

A libertarian government still protects individuals personal rights (which of course also covers violations of the terms of service, which is the issue here)

Re:Lawyer?

[DesScorp]

"Just because you disagree with an opinion doesn't nake it a troll."

That's true. But he was still trolling. "Stop invading tanks"? Come on.

"Not if you rent; if the landlord doesn't a dish, you have no choice but cable."

Yes you do. Move out. As I pointed out to another poster, if the problem restricting your choice is your landlord or home owner's association, why is that Comcast's fault? Get a lawyer, or move. Comcast isn't the one stopping you from putting up that dish.

"my local government should be serving cable TV and high speed internet"

Then emigrate to Cuba, because in free market countries, governments don't monopolize communications.

"I think I have a right to salmonella-free food."

Do you have a right to pick what you'll pay for that food? Do you have a right to tell providers how they'll deliver it transport it?

In the United States, you have the right to life, liberty, and the PURSUIT of happiness, not the guarantee of it. You're on your own in getting it. No one owes you a damned thing.

Re:Lawyer?

[DesScorp]

Please tell me how to make the all-powerful free market fix this.

Leave.

The problem here is your "community", not your consumer choices. Either get a lawyer, or move. Because the "community" is what is impeding your choice, not the cable company. If your fellow condo owners tell you "we forbid you from getting satellite", how is that Comcast's fault?

Re:Lawyer?

[Count Fenring]

That's a somewhat simplistic view, honestly; any closer look at this history, or for that matter, the literature of the period will show that there were also a lot of conditions in the period where standard of living declined, particularly comparing hand-manufacturers versus factory workers. Yes, income overall increased, but that's a flat number that doesn't take into account the loss of self-sufficiency; a broke person with recourse to the family farm is in a better position than the broke factory worker who now is out of home and food as well as money.

And, even if it was an unqualified success compared to the previous generation of techniques, it was horrible by the standards of today, and a large part of our better standard of living is the regulation of industry practices. I mean, it's not the free market that struck down child labor in Britain and the USA.

Re:Lawyer?

[operagost]

Libertardians obviously hate it when they're presented with evidence that the invisible market fairy doesn't fix everything.

Actually, I get pretty annoyed when people trot out straw men as if they were valid arguments.

Re:Lawyer?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a natural monopoly because the effect of not having a monopoly is worse than forcing it to be operated as a monopoly.

AC to preserve mods.

Re:Lawyer?

[KDR_11k]

Knowledge is important for any sort of market correction to work, people cannot properly vote with their wallet if they only find out that the choice was bad for them after they've already spent the money or even never. E.g. food toxicity is not something your average Joe can judge but he's sure as hell affected by it, that's why the law lets experts judge that and ban products that are toxic.

Re:Lawyer?

[KDR_11k]

You realize you just talked about a left wing stance before citing a right extremist organization, right?

Re:Lawyer?

[KDR_11k]

WalMart uses razor thin margins, globalized distribution systems and cutthroat pricing to displace retailers that would otherwise pay better.

Funnily when WalMart went to Germany they were sent back home with their tails between their legs.

Re:Lawyer?

[digitalunity]

There was a cultural barrier there. In the case of Germany, consumers did not like the warehouse type of store. Of course, this is the only way a Walmart store can be competitive - by being huge.

Re:Lawyer?

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason why the US constitution is such a good document (not perfect, but pretty good) is because it is being ignored by large corporations or anyone with money

Fixed that for you.

Re:Lawyer?

[Attila Dimedici]

What you fail to realize is that the people who campaigned (successfully) to implement the child labor laws were competitors to the people who used children in this way. They did not mount this campaign to impede their competition, they did it out of compassion. As a general rule, those who campaigned against child labor were actually more successful businessman (and their wives) who were unwilling to see children suffer while waiting for the forces of economics to correct the abuses.

Re:Lawyer?

[AndersOSU]

Let's look at your examples: "municipal" water, that is water supplied by the local government.

Well it is now - because that was the only sensible thing to do after initial experiments with indoor plumbing resulted in competing private companies which lowered profits and forestalled the installation of any new infrastructure. This is one of the better studied examples of how natural monopolies can arise and why we don't want them.

Railroads became monopolies because after Vanderbilt laid rail between New York and St. Louis no one else would be stupid enough to build redundant infrastructure, because if he lowered his fare by a nickel for a year he'd have one less mansion and you'd be destitute (then he'd buy your line at fire sale prices and build a bonfire). This means, if you wanted to go from New York to anywhere in the midwest you had to pay his monopoly rents.

This is Adam Smith stuff, it's not controversial. Capital intensive industries have high barriers to entry, the initial player can operate inefficiently and still undercut you on price, because you have to pay back your loans and they have equity in their investments.

This is why everyone gets their power from an Edison company, and there isn't a competing Tesla power. There simply isn't room for competition.

Re:Lawyer?

[AndersOSU]

I'd agree with that, but it seems like we're being forced to choose between two unacceptable situations.

Well that's life for you.

Regulation is the lesser evil in all monopoly situations. Then you start considering things like public health (food, drugs, health etc.) or international trade (subsidies, levies, currency manipulation etc.) and it gets hard to find an industry that shouldn't be regulated fast.

Re:Lawyer?

[AndersOSU]

Dubai has a completely free market system. Why don't you move there?

Feeling generous today? I normally suggest Somalia ;)

Actually, I hear westerners do pretty well for themselves in Dubai, especially if they have backgrounds in finance or engineering, or can teach English. Well, provided that you don't have a problem with the fact that your six or seven figure salary is being subsidized by with what amounts to slave labor on the part of the immigrants from India and South Asia - wait is slave labor part of the "free market"?

Re:Lawyer?

[AthanasiusKircher]

We haven't put it to the test in the last 100 years or so, because we learned the lesson the first time. The industrial revolution in Britain and the United States was a free-market wet-dream.

While I get your point in principle, you're creating a false dichotomy. Most of the seemingly "evil" effects of the free-market industrial revolution were just as bad as before (just aggregated) or a result of new technology, new crowded conditions, etc. It took a while for a balanced solution to be found. For example:

No minimum wage,

Most corporations before the industrial revolution weren't big enough to make something like this necessary. Even as it is, one has to be careful with this sort of regulation. What often happens when a minimum wage is introduced is that a few people get higher wages, people in the middle get lower wages (closer to the minimum), and management goes on skimming the same amount off the top. While it does create a minimum standard, it actually can contribute to the same problem you bring up later (reduction of the middle class).

no worker safety,

Not needed as much before so many large scale machines began to be used in factories, so again, we should expect some time for a solution to evolve. Factories and farms before the industrial revolution weren't much safer; they just had different hazards (and admittedly less of them).

no anti-competitive status,

Ditto the sentiment above about large corporations.

and no child labor laws.

That's because childhood wasn't really invented until the 19th century. On the farm, you worked as soon as you were able. Same thing for apprentices in the city. (For poorer families, you'd even ship off your toddler to become a chimney sweep, since they were the only ones small enough to fit into those spaces.) Only rich kids got tutors and perhaps a few years resembling modern "childhood." Why would there be child labor laws when the concept of a child didn't exist? And once it gradually came into being, kids started going to public schools, and child labor laws began to evolve.

Why does a (relatively) free market necessarily need to allow such abuses? It doesn't. You're bringing up a historical situation that is relevant, but these problems need not occur again. And neither should any problems that we now have moral objections to. You don't need to allow murder or rape in order to have a free market; you don't need to allow child abuse either.

What happened was that industry found the sweet spot where they were just a hair better than staying on the farm (which also had none of those restrictions) so that they could run their machinery with a constant stream of new-arrivals.

Yeah, and life on the farm could be pretty bad. Children worked hard, one could easily get injured or killed by a farm machine or vehicle, animal, etc. And no wages either. Again, you're creating a false dichotomy, because the problems you bring up couldn't exist on farms, and they didn't exist until a novel historical situation came into being -- one that doesn't need to be repeated.

The result was sweat shops,

No restrictions were placed on workers before the industrial revolution, either. The abuses just happened on a larger scale. Ever read about feudalism? Serfs didn't have a lot of rights or the ability to take a day off either. The industrial revolution started only a short time after aristocrats began to lose their power. As for the people outside of towns in the US, if you took a day off on the farm or from hunting or whatever, your family might starve.

child labor,

Already talked about that one.

company towns,

A product of isolation that was still possible in the 19th century. Do you really think such

Re:Lawyer?

[hab136]

If I remember correctly, the ReplayTV DVRs had an infrared emitter, specifically to change channels on cable boxes. Presumably this trick would still work.

Re:Lawyer?

[Anonymous Coward]

This isn't too dissimilar to what happens in the UK. BT was split into two divisions: one to lay the cables and one to sell services to consumers. The cable-laying part is forced to offer its services to anyone who wants to pay for it and the sales part is forced to buy it from the cable-laying at the same price as anyone else. This means that different companies can join the party and compete with BT, increasing competition and lowering prices. ISPs have to do some work at the exchange but, in general, it's quite good.

Re:Lawyer?

[AndersOSU]

It may have been that the conditions during the industrial revolution were inevitable, and it is certainly true that conditions during the industrial revolution made it possible for the eventual largest expansion of both the economy and the middle class in history.

My issue is with that the post I replied to asserted that we didn't know if industries would regulate themselves because we haven't tried in 100 years. This is technically true, the last time we tried was about 120 years ago. That time we discovered that industrialists weren't interested in improving the lot of their workers, they were interested only in their self-interests. Hence the violent reaction to the nascent union movement, and the largest concentration of wealth in history. As FDR would go on to say, "heedless self-interest was bad morals; we now know that it is bad economics." On that note, it's often impossible to separate things that are economically wrong from things that are morally or actually damaging, c.f. Countrywide Financial.

Re:Lawyer?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't believe the answer to regulation is a boolean; the real answer is one of degree. Some industries should have little to none because, by their very nature, it is near-impossible for a natural monopoly to be sustained. The infrastructure and maintenance costs of cable service and the existence of entrenched companies such as Comcast begs for regulation or other means of promoting competition. Regulation in and of itself isn't evil, but excessive regulation is. Unfortunately, this is not a case of 'less is more'

Re:Lawyer?

[MacAndrew]

I have heard even human rights groups have qualms about going after retailers running (or more often doing business with contractors who run) sweatshops because the alternative may be to lose the job altogether and end up worse off. In China crappy wages can actually be good wages, though the conditions are unconscionable by our standards, the laborers choose the jobs intelligently over the alternatives.

If we hold the company (e.g., Nike) accountable, the company may, instead of correcting the problem, which again is probably with a contractor not a directly owned factory, switch to a supplier possibly in another country where labor standards are adequate. Again, the victims lose their jobs.

I'm not trying to rationalize the cheap shoes from sweatshops, just describe unintentional consequences I don't like, either. The host country -- all of them -- stepping up regulation of all companies would work, but it's not going to happen anytime soon in, say, China.

So what to do. No, nothing is not the answer, but the answer can be tough even for a well-meaning company, if there are any of those left. Certainly some of them do better jobs than others.

Apple recently revealed finding children and excessive (60+/7 days) hours in unidentified Asian contract factories. And so it ... terminated the contract. OK, good, noble even. And the workers did what?

(Apple had similar problems in 2008 and 2006, too.)

Re:Lawyer?

[digitalunity]

I have no problem with the pay rates itself. China and other foreign countries are perfectly free to enact their own minimum wage laws.

What bothers me is the unsafe working conditions and lack of workers rights.

Re:Lawyer?

[JasterBobaMereel]

Democracy appears to be fairly stable and seems to work fairly well

"Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time" - Winston Churchill

It's stable because it tends to exclude the extremists, it mostly works because the majority agrees with the outcomes (most of the time)

Re:Lawyer?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or You could still not use Comcast even if it is a monopoly.

Here is your options
  a Get Cable from Comcast; enjoy
  b Don't Get Cable From Comcast
  c MOVE

Ok so you want your cake and be able to eat it to; Too Fucking Bad

But you still are not a troll.

Re:Lawyer?

[HungryHobo]

that's a political rather than economic system and still doesn't perform nearly as well as advertised since people are far less inclined to base their choices on rational thought rather than on emotion.

Re:Lawyer?

[mike1210]

How many people who worked in sweat-shops graduated to management? Before the industrial revolution shirts and shoes were made by middle class skilled tailors, after they were made by lower class unskilled factory workers.

Far more middle class jobs were created than were destroyed.

Ultimately, the industrial revolution morphed into the modern industrial economy and the largest expansion of the middle class in history - but only after labor reforms had taken hold. Labor dragged the the industrialists into modernity kicking and screaming and shooting and beating.

Like I said, industrial society oiled it's machine by offering better conditions than agricultural society - but only just. So the standard of living for the lower classes rose, but only by a small amount - an efficient market in action.

Living standards for the lower classes did not rise "only a small amount". Their living standards increased dramatically before the government got involved, and continued despite government getting involved.

VCR owners revolt!

[CyberSnyder]

Both of them.

Re:VCR owners revolt!

[nine-times]

Hey, I'll join in. I've been pissed that Comcast isn't supporting my attempts to record all my video to a wax cylinder.

Re:VCR owners revolt!

[correnos]

You think Comcast's bad, look at MS! They've dropped all support for my paper tapes! How am I going to access all of my assembly coded programs now?

Re:VCR owners revolt!

[commodore64_love]

I still use VCRs. For a couple reasons:

- It's Super VHS so it produces DVD quality recordings.
- If I want to keep a recording it's as easy as popping-out the tape and putting it on the shelf.
- (Main reason.) I have about $1000 worth of bought tapes and blanks, and it seems silly to just throw them away that much money.
- Also lots of my home movies are stored on VHS. I need some way to play them.

Re:VCR owners revolt!

[pcolaman]

My thoughts exactly, Comcast is about a decade or two late to the party. Who the fuck seriously still has a VCR that is used regularly. And no, not the VCR you keep in the closet so that you can bust out some old home movies or old Disney Videos every once in a while, but a VCR that still gets regular everyday use?

Re:VCR owners revolt!

[LoRdTAW]

What is the vee-cee-arr you speak of?

Re:VCR owners revolt!

[pcolaman]

- It's Super VHS so it produces DVD quality recordings.

False. Just because it records 420 lines of resolution does not make it "DVD Quality." VHS, S-VHS, and even Betamax and other tape formats did not handle things such as audio recording and chroma signal as well as true digital recordings do. But even from a simple resolution standpoint, S-VHS I believe recorded at 560x480, which doesn't even touch DVD resolution. Add to that the extra bandwidth for proper color resolution and digital audio, and there really isn't even a comparison.

- If I want to keep a recording it's as easy as popping-out the tape and putting it on the shelf.

The shelf life for the quality to remain similar to when it was recorded is no more than about 10-15 years. Yeah, they'll last longer than that, but the quality of the recording goes down as the tape ages. DVDs last much longer assuming they are reasonably cared for, and video stored in a digital format can easily be copied without a degrade in quality. Copies of magnetic cassettes? Not so much.

- (Main reason.) I have about $1000 worth of bought tapes and blanks, and it seems silly to just throw them away that much money.

So transfer them to a digital medium such as hard disks. Using the right equipment you won't lose a whole lot in quality (as if they are hi-fidelity as they are), and they'll actually last a lot longer.

- Also lots of my home movies are stored on VHS. I need some way to play them.

See my last point. Honestly, your VCR or VHS tapes will not outlive you. If you want to keep those memories, transferring to a digital medium (and making a few backups just in case the worst were to happen) would be smart. Heck, I'd make at least one copy that you store away in a safe deposit box or fireproof safe, so that you really make sure and keep them for a while. If those VHS tapes go up in smoke, adios amigo (assuming you have some home videos in there you wouldn't want to lose).

Re:VCR owners revolt!

[OrangeCatholic]

The bulk of tapes kills me. Video is one of the few areas where computers really make a difference. Audio and print, not so much.

That said, you're lucky to have an S-VHS. I don't think I've ever had a "good" VCR, in terms of picture quality, stereo, and useful controls. The market got cheapened just when the quality was getting there.

Re:VCR owners revolt!

[tepples]

Betamax and VHS were consumer analog video recording formats that predated DVD recorders by about two decades. Back before Sony was in the MAFIAA, Universal Studios sued Sony to keep Betamax decks out of the United States, but Sony's win established the legality of home off-air video recording.

Re:VCR owners revolt!

[Pentium100]

I use a VCR to record TV shows:
1.It is more convenient and more reliable than using a computer.
2.If I don't like the show I can tape over it, DVD-R cannot be overwritten.
3.On the other hand, If I want to store the show, I can just store the tape, unlike with hard drive based video recorders.
4.No DRM. My tape will play in any VHS VCR that supports PAL video, so if this one breaks beyond repair, I can just get another one.
5.If I am available at the time when the show airs and want to record it, I can pause the tape during commercials and have a tape of the show without commercials.
6.If I had to set the timer to record the show, I can connect another VCR and then edit out the commercials (if I want to store the show, anyway).
7.A 20 year old VHS tape still plays OK, a 6 year old DVD-R usually doesn't.

I now have over 100 tapes that I recorded in the last 3 years.

In any case, my cable company provides analog as well as DVB-C signals, I can record from analog or use a digital tuner, which can be programmed to turn on at the specified time. However, I rarely record more than one show per day, so I just leave the digital tuner on and program my VCR.
I am using the digital tuner because I bought my current VCR from abroad and it does not support PAL D/K, so I don't get audio. I tried to add a converter, but while it gave the audio, it also caused some interference with video for some reason.

My next VCR will be a pro model, without tuner, but with more functions and higher quality mechanical parts (also, all functions accessible from the front panel). I also read in the manuals of some of the models that they have a function to start recording immediately after getting a video signal, which would mean that I would just need to set the timer on the digital tuner to record a show.

Also, what you missed from the summary was that Comcast now expects everyone to pay a monthly fee to use their video recorders (be it VHS, DVD or HDD), that is, to be able to set a timer a day or more in advance.

Re:VCR owners revolt!

[pcolaman]

This is really easy. High Def Video Input Card and a big ass hard drive. And I have 10 year old DVD-R's that still play just like the day they were burned, 20 year old VHS tapes are not going to retain the same quality they had when they were freshly recorded, unless you kept them in a completely static free, oxygen free environment. Something tells me that's not the case.

Re:VCR owners revolt!

[Mashiki]

Actually my mother, grandmother and great aunt all use their VCR still. They don't want anything else, two of the three of them are also pensioners. While my grandmother is tech savvy enough to use a computer, and well(including knowing where to find TV shows to watch them streamed), I can't get either one of the others to do the same. It's still viable for people in the boomer/pre-boomer age group.

Re:VCR owners revolt!

[fermion]

I am more interested in who still pays for cable, much less has a TV. I thought every had netflix, hulu, or bittoerrent, streamed through a computer, with and LED projector and a 120" screen. I suppose a few on /. might still watch sports and soap operas, which does require cable, but otherwise I can't imagine why anyone would pay for cable.

Re:VCR owners revolt!

[SEWilco]

The VCR is that big slot on the side of the DVD recorder. You haven't used it since you copied those plastic boxes to DVDs.

Re:VCR owners revolt!

[DLWormwood]

Sarcasm failure detected, Keptin!
Behold, the mighty Whoosh!

Re:VCR owners revolt!

[pcolaman]

Don't give a fuck because I felt like disassembling an argument for the hell of it detector detected.
Behold, the mighty Fart!

Re:VCR owners revolt!

[mellon]

What I don't get about this is that not only does the article imply that people still use VCRs, which seems implausible, but that those same people also have cable, which is absurd. Don't comcast subscribers have high speed internet? Why not just watch this stuff at your convenience on Hulu, and stop paying those remarkably high cable TV bills for, mostly, a ton of crap you never watch?

Re:VCR owners revolt!

[EdIII]

And no, not the VCR you keep in the closet so that you can bust out some old home movies or old Disney Videos every once in a while

I have a VCR and some tapes in the closet, but it ain't Disney on the fucking tapes......

Re:VCR owners revolt!

[Pentium100]

and 20 year old DVD-R's will retain zero quality.

In any case, I have a video capture card, SD, but it is enough for me. I actually had that card before I had a VCR, however, I always had some problems with the video recording using a PC, that's why I said that VCR is more reliable:
1.Sometimes the recorded file was without audio.
2.Sometimes the file was without video.
3.Sometimes the recorded file was with video and audio, but had dropouts, as if someone cut out random portions of the recording.
4.Sometimes the recording would not start because the PC though that it would be a great time to change to/from DST, an app that I used to watch TV before setting the timer did not close properly and the capture card was still in use or some other problem.

All in all, I had a success rate of about 40%, where the recording would start as set, be with sound and video, without dropouts and other problems. Oh, and I could not do anything with the PC while it was set to record. So, I finally fed up and just bought a VCR. Now my success rate is ~99%, I can use my PC while the timer is set and/or the VCR is recording. I can also use my VCR to record how I play games, since my VGA has a tv-out connector.
I still use my video capture card, but I now use it to copy from VHS to DVD for other people, but I consider a PC to be unusable in doing things, that if they fail, there is no second try (like recording TV or radio shows, I use my VCR to record both) or each attempt takes a long time (for example: copying records - I use a cassette or r2r deck for that).

Re:VCR owners revolt!

[pcolaman]

If you really thought I meant actual Disney Videos, then you are hilarious.

Re:VCR owners revolt!

[pcolaman]

20 Year Old DVD-R's are irrelevant. If you have the source in a digital medium, you can continue to reproduce DVD-R's time and again, as long as you maintain the source (which is effectively accomplished through redundant backups). A magnetic tape will never be as good a quality as the day prior, no matter what you do short of storing it in a vacuum (and really, who does that?)

And your issues with recording digitally sound to be a matter of inadequate software/hardware or user error. It has nothing to do with the format. I have a camcorder and record digitally without any of the problems you have stated, all with reasonable hardware and software that is obtainable by the average middle income American citizen (a sub $1000 gaming laptop and a sub $100 video capture card and a sub $300 HDD Camcorder).

Re:VCR owners revolt!

[Pentium100]

However, for the magnetic tape, I do not need to continuously copy it every few years.

Yes, I know that my issues are not because all digital systems behave the same. However, a VCR is so much simpler. Also, if I built a dedicated PC to record video, I could buy a lot of blank tapes for that price, and with tapes I would not need to buy separate storage, that is, even a big hard drive fill up, so I would need somewhere to put the recordings (I would probably just use LTO2) to free some space. With VHS I just store the tape, so for the price of a dedicated PC for video recording I could buy a lot of blanks.

I also have a camcorder that records digitally (to miniDV tapes). It works OK.

The difference between the camcorder and a PC is that a camcorder is a purpose built device (like a VCR), it does its function better than a multipurpose device (like a PC), that is independent of what technology is used to record. I am sure that a DV VCR or a HDD video recorder would work just as well as my VHS VCR does, but DV tapes are expensive and I already stated my problem with factory made HDD video recorders (DRM).

Keeping a PC running can sometimes be more difficult than with a VCR. Now, while my computers are quite stable, my main PC crashed when I was recording a TV show. I was recording with a VCR and just using the PC to watch the video (since I don't have a separate TV or a Composite/S-Video->VGA converter). If I set a timer, I have to keep the PC running until it finishes recording. If I set a timer a week from now and go somewhere, if the PC crashes while I am away, the recording will not be made. A VCR only needs power, I can connect it to a UPS (it also helps that the VCR uses much less power than a PC) if I really want the recording.

There are more things to video than quality. Ease of use is one of them. Reliability is another.

With digital you need backups, you also need to actively copy the information from old media to newer. A DVD can be damaged beyond repair much easier. Compared to that, I can just store the tape for a long time and it will work. If it gets badly eaten, I can cut out the bad parts and splice the tape, usually though it works just with some lines on the screen. If the tape gets stepped on, I can transfer it to another shell (and clean the tape).

My tape collection is like my record collection - I do not need to do anything until I want to play a tape/record.

Re:VCR owners revolt!

[ratboy666]

Macrovision.

Or have your forgotten? There is a copy control device on VHS tape containing movies. So, the library of movies cannot legally (in the US) be transferred to another format. Well, you cannot purchase the device that would allow you to do that.

The home movies should be transferred.

Re:VCR owners revolt!

[Dogtanian]

Hey, I'll join in. I've been pissed that Comcast isn't supporting my attempts to record all my video to a wax cylinder.

You can't do it on wax cylinder, but you *can* do it on a disc.

BTW, who tagged this story "bigbrother"? Are you are aware that the point of "Big Brother" wasn't simply that he represented a large, evil, over-powerful totalitarian government (or in this case, organisation or company), but the way that it held its power by means of total surveillance and control of its subject's lives?

I agree with the person that recently complained here about the overuse and kneejerk invocation of Big Brother / 1984 when it wasn't really appropriate, and reckoned it was on its way to becoming the next Godwin. Whether or not Comcast are doing Big Brotherish things with people's data, viewing habits or whatever, that wasn't the focus of this story.

Perhaps they meant the crap TV show where they lock a bunch of attention whores in a house for a few weeks, but that would be even less applicable.

Re:VCR owners revolt!

[FlopEJoe]

errr... I have a stand-alone DVR and use this feature all the time. If it is what I'm thinking it is. I set my Phillips DVR to record at a certain time, go to my cable box's guide, and set the show to record. Guess I'm screwed and I haven't had a VHS tape in years.

Re:VCR owners revolt!

[commodore64_love]

>>>>>It's Super VHS so it produces DVD quality recordings.
>>
>>False......

Specs can not be argued, but "quality" is a subjective thing. It's all a matter of opinion. I have bought some *really* crappy quality DVDs (too much compression), like Star Trek DS9 and Babylon 5, where my off-the-air HDTV to Super VHS copy actually looked better.

Similarly I've heard some really shitty CDs that had volume compression (make even silent passages loud), such that my old 1990s Type II Chrome tapes actually sounded better.

.

>>>>>- Also lots of my home movies are stored on VHS
>>
>>So transfer them to a digital medium such as hard disks.

I probably will when the price comes down. But for now it's too costly to get the required D-to-A equipement, and therefore cheaper to simply keep a functioning VCR to play them when desired. There's also the more simple fact that analog media is more robust.

I've seen a lot of digital drives fail (I lost my copy of Enterprise season 4) and digital tapes fail (my niece lost an entire summer when her miniDV tape stopped playing), but analog, even when the tape gets wrinkled, still produces a picture.

Re:VCR owners revolt!

[smooth wombat]

that people still use VCRs, which seems implausible,

I still use a VCR (as do others who have already posted). I do it because it's quick and easy and not subject to bit flags or any other nonsense. When I'm done with the show, I record over it. And tapes are much cheaper than getting a DVR and either renting it from Comcast or trying to make one on your own.

Don't comcast subscribers have high speed internet?

Yes, if you don't mind paying almost $120/month for tv, phone and internet. You can get just internet for roughly $50-$60 month if you don't mind the yearly rate increases. (Side note: as I tried to confirm this, Comcast's site kept timing out on me when it was asking for my address and ZIP. That tells you the quality of their service)

at your convenience on Hulu,

Because not everyone has the technical know-how or desire to hook up their PC to their tv and all that it requires. Nor do they want to watch a tv show on a small screen (compared to a tv). They want to be able to sit down and use that big honkin flat screen they purchased without having to fuss around with making connections and encoding and everything else that goes along with it.

What amazes me about tech people (and I'm technically one of them) are the contortions they will go through to solve the simplest problem. It's like when folks talk about how "easy" linux is. "Oh sure, just do grep and when you find the file, sysconfig in the .etc directory you just have to do a chmod and change the -s parameter to -p. When you're done, you'll have to check the usr directory so that the pagint file didn't change with the update. If that doesn't work, you may have to apt get from the server to force the change and revert back to the old config because the newest files don't play well with older versions."

WTF? People want simplicity. They don't want to have to jump through hoops for something as simple as watching a tv show. I set my vcr to the time I want to record and walk away. No extra charge from Comcast, no drm to work around. It just works.

Re:VCR owners revolt!

[Anonymous Coward]

"I probably will when the price comes down. But for now it's too costly to get the required D-to-A equipement,"

Seriously? The cost of a hauppauge card (Mpeg2 on board) is probably less than a VCR now.

Re:VCR owners revolt!

[pcolaman]

You say that like a DVD-R is going to go bad in a few years. A DVD-R will easily outlast a VHS tape as long as it's reasonably cared for. I wasn't exaggerating when I said I had DVD-Rs at least 10 years old that worked just the same as the day I copied them. I glanced through the rest of your comment and all I see is the typical FUD from someone apparently not ready for the technology age. You act like it's some sort of monumental task to make a copy of a digital backup or create the backups and maintain them in the first place. I have three copies of all music/videos/photos I have, and it takes little time to keep them up-to-date. One goes into a fireproof safe, a second goes on a portable drive that I can carry on my person should I need to evac for a Hurricane, and the third stays on my laptop, which is fuck easy to maintain.

Re:VCR owners revolt!

[Big Boss]

Macrovision is trivial to bypass. Just get a "Video Stabilizer" and you're good to go. EBay will likely have them.

Re:VCR owners revolt!

[pcolaman]

It's called electrical tape. Just tape over the fucking hole and you can copy to your hearts content. Or have you already forgotten how we rolled back in the day?

Re:VCR owners revolt!

[pcolaman]

I too have some DVDs where the quality is suspect, but that has more to do with the fact that it was translated from a medium where the quality was shit to begin with (such as pre-digital OTA broadcasts). Not much you can do with that unless you own a multi-million dollar digital retouching studio. But if you preserve the recording as close to as it was from when the recording was originally made, it won't degrade any further. A magnetic tape outside of a static-free, oxygen-free environment again will never be as good as the day prior. That's not hyperbole. It's science.

Re:VCR owners revolt!

[Lumpy]

My DVR ignores "bit flags" but then I use Mythtv.
My DVD recorder ignores all bit flags as well.

my DVD recorder is far easier to use than ANY VCR I have ever owned.

Have you even tried to look at alternatives?

here's a bit more fun. My DVD recorder will record things your VCR cant. Macrovision protection that thwarts all VCR's my LITE-ON recorder will record macrovision protected items without a problem. no flashing of the screen like you see on "protected" tapes.

Simplicity. Insert Tuesday DISC select the show and press play. VCR= insert tuesday tape, fast foreward past all my wifes stuff, press play.

Sounds like the DVD recorder is far far simpler than your VHS recorder.

Re:VCR owners revolt!

[mcgrew]

You seem to forget that a lot of us are actually over twenty (yeah, I know that's a hard concept to grasp) and have collected a LOT of movies and TV shows on tape. Yes, I have a DVD, and a VCR, and no tivo.

It's too bad you can't easily buy blank tape these days. One of these days I'll get around to digitizing all those tapes.

Re:VCR owners revolt!

[Anonymous Coward]

That's where my toddlers store their PB&J sandwiches.

Re:VCR owners revolt!

[Pentium100]

Have you tried copying 200 DVDs?

I have ~200 DVD-Rs that I started recording 7 years ago. Oldest discs are already full of read errors.
I am now copying them to LTO2 tape which I hope will last longer. I will probably have to copy my LTO2 tapes some time in the future too, but at least there won't be 200 tapes.

Re:VCR owners revolt!

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry, I've got a backup of all the "home videos" involving the OP's mother.

Re:VCR owners revolt!

[pcolaman]

Must be the DVD Writer. I've only ever had two DVD-R's with read errors and both times it was my own fault.

Re:VCR owners revolt!

[Pentium100]

Could be, the problem is that the DVDs developed the read errors after some time, which means I had no way of knowing that the drive was bad (if it was the drive).

If I buy a new drive and resume recording DVDs I again won't know about the quality until after 6 years.

However, LTO tapes are more convenient, 100 or 200GB in one tape, takes up less space and I need to swap less tapes to record or copy them.

Re:VCR owners revolt!

[pcolaman]

If you keep the images in a digital medium, then it really is irrelevant if the discs go bad in 5 years or 50 years. As long as you keep your backups up-to-date and replace the drives that are used for the backups every so often, the cost of maintaining the video collection exponentially gets a lot less over time compared to a magnetic tape format, as the cost will actually increase instead of decrease due to lack of use of the technology. Hell, in 30 years they'll probably just figure out a way we can download videos into our brains and keep a copy in a contact lense that also doubles as our "TV"

Re:VCR owners revolt!

[Pentium100]

The relevance is that if the medium stays intact longer then I do not need to worry about it. For example - vinyl or shellac records. You need to clean them before playing, keep them in suitable temperature, humidity etc. However, other than that, you do not need to do anything, until you want to play a record and it does not matter if the last time you played it was a week or 10 years ago. No need to buy disks, make backups etc. just put them somewhere not very dusty (or use protective sleeves), humid or hot.

The same can be said about analog video tapes, but video tapes do not last as long as records (a 60 year old record still plays ok).

The same with audio tapes and cassettes. I can find a 15 year old cassette somewhere in the attic or wherever and it will most likely play.

DVDs and other recordable digital media (except magneto optical disks, but they are too expensive) cannot be stored like records. Even if you want to play the disk once every 10 years, you will still probably need to access it more frequently just to keep it readable.

Books, records, audio tapes and video tapes do not need that kind of maintenance.

And if you think that copying a bunch of DVDs is nothing, try copying 200 of them. If I did not start using LTO tape to archive digital video/audio I would have more than 500 DVD-Rs by now, which I would need to copy every few years. I hope LTO tape lasts longer than DVD0-R and I'll have to swap less tapes when I'll need to copy them to LTO7 or whatever.

dvd-r

[tivoKlr]

OK, I know most don't use VCR's anymore, but there are those using DVD recorders, and being unable to set the settop box to switch to the right channel would interfere with setting up recordings when one is away.

Comcast sucks though, and this is definitely another example of such.

Re:dvd-r

[Lumpy]

you think that sucks... comcast boxes around here revert to the channel 1 for on demand every 8 hours the box is not touched... it's designed to screw with people that have recorders.

Re:dvd-r

[Lumpy]

if your DVD-recorder did not have a learning IR function, then you bought the wrong one.

My offbrand will blast IR signals to turn the channel on the cablebox. so this problem wont affect my Lite-ON.

VCR?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's that?

Re:VCR?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah. I'm confused...

Re:VCR?

[Hamsterdan]

A device used to watch rented porn in the '80s and '90s :)

IR Blaster

[Anonymous Coward]

End.

What's the alternative?

[treeves]

I recorded some movies on HBO on my Verizon DVR then later cancelled the HBO and kept the DVR. Then when I went to watch the movies, I could not. I paid for the service but I can't watch the movies I already recorded because I don't *keep* paying? Well, at least I know it wouldn't do any good to switch to Comcast... I think I need to do some research...

Re:What's the alternative?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I recorded some movies on HBO on my Verizon DVR then later cancelled the HBO and kept the DVR. Then when I went to watch the movies, I could not. I paid for the service but I can't watch the movies I already recorded because I don't *keep* paying? Well, at least I know it wouldn't do any good to switch to Comcast... I think I need to do some research...

Although I hate to admit it - tivo. Despite the absolutely craptastic nature of their interface (it was great like 10 years ago, but hasn't kept up at all) at least on verizon fiostv they are great because verizon never sets the "do not copy" bit, so you can pull all your recordings off your tivo - hbo, cinemax, hdnet, anything but pay-per-view (which tivo doesn't support recording in the first place). I have a perl script that just regularly polls my tivo and downloads anything new to my linux box. Apparently tivo doesn't count these downloads as viewing of the programs either, so my tivo isn't even snitching on my viewing habits either. As far as they know I never, ever watch tv.

It may also work to use the firewire port on the verizon set-top box, if it has one - I haven't tried it since I don't have a set-top box, but typically the firewire stuff is limited by the exact same "do not copy" bit as the tivo uses to decide if you can copy too.

Re:What's the alternative?

[Anonymous Coward]

Welcome to the future. All of today's shit DRM, as you have experienced, is where we're going. Thank shiny bling bling companies like Apple and their slimeball partners in crime. The future for these people is all devices locked down, functionality whatever they decide you can do, content will be rental only. In 20 years you'll look back to today and think of it with fond freedom memories.

Re:What's the alternative?

[commodore64_love]

I gave-up on cable.

Now I just use an antenna, which gives me about 40 non-duplicated channels. They show lots of movies on Saturdays/Sundays. "ThisTV" shows movies 24 hours a day. "RetroTV" shows classic 60s/70s/80s shows. PBS offers 3-4 channels of history/discovery type programs. Reruns of Deadliest Catch, Star Trek, Regenesis air daily and new episodes of Legend of the Seeker every week. And I have Qubo and Family Channel for the kids.

All free.

The DTVpal that I use includes a VCR/DVR Timer to auto-change channels on schedule, so you can record shows while you're not home.

Re:What's the alternative?

[sjames]

And that is why some of us prefer to stick with independent devices that don't obey the commands of cable companies and other media ass-rapers.

Re:What's the alternative?

[Anonymous Coward]

Netflix?

Re:What's the alternative?

[whoever57]

I have a perl script that just regularly polls my tivo and downloads anything new to my linux box.

I have one word for you: Galleon

Re:What's the alternative?

[radish]

[blockquote]so my tivo isn't even snitching on my viewing habits either[/blockquote]
Or you could, of course, opt out of the anonymous stats reporting.

Re:What's the alternative?

[OrangeCatholic]

Really? Last time I had broadcast, it was ten channels.

Re:What's the alternative?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Or you could, of course, opt out of the anonymous stats reporting.

Not if you want to schedule recordings via their barely capable but better than nothing website.

Plus, I think you'll find that "opting out" doesn't stop your tivo from reporting your viewing habits, it just stops tivocorp from doing anything that would alert you to the fact that they have that information. As in, they won't send you tailored commercials but they still have all the information it would take to do so. That's almost universally the way these "opt out" things work.

Re:What's the alternative?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I have one word for you: Galleon

First thing I tried, waaaay too buggy and cumbersome.

Re:What's the alternative?

[tabdelgawad]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815116030&cm_re=hd_pvr-_-15-116-030-_-Product

At least until they eliminate analog outputs. I own one and can say it works very well (up to 1080i) with 3-4 year old PC hardware. You get H.264 encoded m2ts or ts files with 5.1 sound. You can use it to record live TV, but I prefer to DVR the show then record off the DVR.

Re:What's the alternative?

[commodore64_love]

This comment is not offtopic. The guy asked, "What's the alternative to cable?" and I answered him. There was No valid reason to mod it down.

I gave-up on cable.

Now I just use an antenna, which gives me about 40 non-duplicated channels. They show lots of movies on Saturdays/Sundays. "ThisTV" shows movies 24 hours a day. "RetroTV" shows classic 60s/70s/80s shows. PBS offers 3-4 channels of history/discovery type programs. Reruns of Deadliest Catch, Star Trek, Regenesis air daily and new episodes of Legend of the Seeker every week. And I have Qubo and Family Channel for the kids.

All free.

The DTVpal that I use includes a VCR/DVR Timer to auto-change channels on schedule, so you can record shows while you're not home

Re:What's the alternative?

[commodore64_love]

>>>Really? Last time I had broadcast, it was ten channels.

Yeah well we have subchannels now. That means each channel is divided into 2 (sometimes 3, 4 or even 5) pieces. For example my local NBC channel carries NBC programming, but also has 2 subchannels: thisTV and RetroTV.

So I have about 15 actual stations, but they are divided into 40 channels.

Re:What's the alternative?

[yuna49]

verizon never sets the "do not copy" bit

That doesn't mean that you cannot copy some of the material on FiOS, though. I tried recording a movie on HBO to my DVD recorder and was blocked by the older anti-copying technology that applied to SD material.

Re:What's the alternative?

[Phoobarnvaz]

I recorded some movies on HBO on my Verizon DVR then later cancelled the HBO and kept the DVR. Then when I went to watch the movies, I could not. I paid for the service but I can't watch the movies I already recorded because I don't *keep* paying? Well, at least I know it wouldn't do any good to switch to Comcast... I think I need to do some research...

For the about close to the same cost of what you're paying that cable monopoly in your community for their DVR service...you can get a Windows 7 PC with either a digital TV tuner or buy a hybrid analog/digital tuner. Running Windows Media Center...you get a free program guide which comes with it. Say you don't want to keep this PC in your viewing area...get a cheap netbook with a wired switch & run that to your TV.

Might cost you more in the beginning...but when they will increase your bill every 6-12 months because they can & will...there you go...you've still got your setup & they can't take that away from you.

Re:What's the alternative?

[lorddarthpaul]

I thought this would happen with all of the "premium channel" movies on my Tivo HD when I cancelled RCN's movie package, but amazingly, they are still there and playable. It's either a technical oversight on their part, or they're just not quite as annoying as Comcast (or whatever they choose to call themselves these days). I suppose all of these are "gray area" issues, and might be covered in the provider's finely worded "service agreement"?

Re:What's the alternative?

[cynyr]

welcome to DTV where every station now is 4

Re:What's the alternative?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

To be fair the problem there was your DVD recorder refusing to record rather than something from verizon refusing to give you a copy.

OT

[waspleg]

Nothing happened to them when they imposed a 250 GB download per month cap totally violating the original contract agreements of millions. Want to bet it's in the fine print that they reserve the right to fuck you any time they want?

Re:OT

[maugle]

Want to bet it's in the fine print that they reserve the right to fuck you any time they want?

Hell, I doubt they even bother to hide it in lawyerspeak. There's probably a line in the fine print that flat-out says "Comcast reserves the right to bend you over and rape you with a sandpaper condom whensoever they please, for any duration."

Re:OT

[waspleg]

the worst part is that where i'm at there are no alternatives unless you want to pay to lay phone lines for even worse service. they have local monopolies all over and they know it.

Re:OT

[Anonymous Coward]

250GB isn't much of a download limit though. Here in Canada the largest ISP has monthly limits of 25GB for home users and 75GB for commercial users. And that's the total for download and upload combined.

Change ISP? No such thing up here. Only in major cities do you have the shadow of a choice, otherwise it's pretty much monopolies.

Re:OT

[ewieling]

You do not have a clear view of the southern sky in the USA?

Re:OT

[Anonymous Coward]

Companies can say they reserve the right to change the terms of the contract at any time without consent, but this won't hold up in a court of law. Business contracts wouldn't be worth the paper they're printed on if a party can change the terms of the contract without consent or notification to the other party. Comcast is just hoping you won't challenge them.

I wonder if there is a case for false advertising. It would be one thing to discontinue the service. It is another to begin charging for said service in the middle of a contract. The course of action I would recommend to anyone affected by this is to speak with Comcast about this. When that inevitably fails, file a complaint with the FTC. Encourage your friends and family to do so as well. The FTC will respond to a flood of complaints. But they very likely won't take action unless you do.

Re:OT

[gellenburg]

You know, for $59.95/ month you can get Comcast Business and have no bandwidth caps, no ports blocked, 4 hour response times in the event something gets frakked, and techs that actually know what the hell they're talking about, and the ability to run whatever servers you want without them saying shit about it.

(You also get your own Sharepoint server and Exchange mailboxes for those that are OS challenged.)

Best decision I ever made. (Switching to Comcast Business).

(Don't get me wrong, I hate Comcast with a passion, but it makes you wonder if Comcast is able to afford unlimited bandwidth for $10/ month than what's the real purpose of those 250GB caps?)

Re:OT

[lessthan]

Everybody keeps saying"What about satellite?" The TV is glitchy in bad weather. They don't offer Internet, except through DSL, which is much worse, speed and quality-wise than cable. Cable TV and cable internet is faster and more reliable than any other service, except FIOS. FIOS, of course, isn't available everywhere and tends to be prohibitively expensive. When people say monopoly, they mean there isn't another cable company. We like the tech, just not the provider.

Re:OT

[ewieling]

I ordered an upgrade to a 20" dish (standard is 18", I think) when I got my DirecTV service at my cabin and seldom had weather related outages. Seldom had any outages actually. I dropped DirecTV a few months ago and went with OTA DTV. I use Verizon EVDO service at that location as well. I have an apartment in the city where I have cable television and internet service. I agree with your comments about satellite internet service.

"VCR Enthusiasts"

[pushing-robot]

I'm a part-time VCR enthusiast and a card-carrying member of the Classic Video Equipment Club of America, you insensitive clod!

Re:"VCR Enthusiasts"

[Valdrax]

I'm a part-time VCR enthusiast and a card-carrying member of the Classic Video Equipment Club of America, you insensitive clod!

Agreed. Everyone knows that analog produces a warmer, more beautiful picture free of the deleterious effects of the analog-to-digital conversion process. A properly configured analog video setup produces a superior experience to a digital setup. Anyone who disagrees just doesn't have sophisticated enough eyes.

Re:"VCR Enthusiasts"

[Noodlenoggin]

Indeed, my eyes become more and more sophisticated the older I get. Before too long, that sophistication will blend all visual experiences into a gorgeous blur or browns and whites.

Re:"VCR Enthusiasts"

[Anonymous Coward]

And expensive cables.

Re:"VCR Enthusiasts"

[andolyne]

Had some friends around for dinner the other night, and a couple of them were admiring my old VHS collection... so i dug up the VCR from the cupboard and we watched Gremlins 2 on VHS for "old times sake"...

hillarious and kinda grainy.

andolyne

Re:"VCR Enthusiasts"

[CrashandDie]

At least point to the correct article.

Re:"VCR Enthusiasts"

[xbytor]

> Anyone who disagrees just doesn't have sophisticated enough eyes.

I have Monster Eyes, you insensitive clod!

Re:"VCR Enthusiasts"

[Anonymous Coward]

An I'm Bob, CVECA's other member! Frank, I didn't know you peruse Slashdot!

Re:"VCR Enthusiasts"

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone knows that analog produces a warmer, more beautiful picture free of the deleterious effects of the analog-to-digital conversion process.

The Comcast digital signal in my area suffers from serious digital artifacts, and looks much worse than their analog signal.. Especially in shadows, and on visually busy material like Formula 1. My DVD recorder produces much better results when recording the analog signal. Comcast techs would just shrug and say their head end gear was old.

I got sick of it and dumped comcast. Now I just download the F1 race. The bbc coverage is much better than speedtv.

Re:"VCR Enthusiasts"

[Anonymous Coward]

That would spoil the joke by trying to look serious, instead of lampshading which group the poster was making fun of (for the sarcasm-impaired).

Re:"VCR Enthusiasts"

[drinkypoo]

You laugh, and rightly so, but I'm still watching laserdiscs. I had the original trilogy with Han shooting first before it hit DVD, but more to the point I get $3 laserdiscs... when I can find them. And guess what? Most LDs have better picture than most DVDs. How amusing. I'll be glad to ditch the whole baroque collection just as soon as I get a blu-ray... when they get stupid cheap like DVD players.

Re:"VCR Enthusiasts"

[Anonymous Coward]

So just that everyone is clear, the guide was upgraded to a version that fully supports VCR use, look it up. Even FIOS cant support analog and the amount of channels they offer. so you would rather have under a hundred analog channels than hundreds of digital ones??? and what about the fact that most providers are moving to mpeg4 uplinks...you really want a cable company to down convert the digital satellite signal to analog??? What is wrong with you? What, do you miss betamax too??? your hilarious....dont be afraid of change, youll make it through pussy...

Re:"VCR Enthusiasts"

[mcgrew]

You jest, but the director of Star Trek shot much of the movie in analog film just for that reason. I'm not sure if the linked wikipedia article mentions it, but if you have the DVD they say so in the "making of" extra on it.

Re:That's interesting...

[MasterOfMagic]

I didn't know you had a Slashdot account! Tell me more!

Television?!?

[Krelnor]

Who cares about the VCR's. People still watch television without downloading it?

Re:Television?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup about 95% of the world. Seems you're the minority.

Re:Television?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

So were you born a prick or did it come naturally later on?

Re:Television?!?

[selven]

Thank you, I was just about to say this. I always get surprised that people are willing to put up with an entertainment system that THEY have to maneuver their schedule around.

Re:Television?!?

[SCPRedMage]

That's funny, I haven't had to "maneuver my schedule around" to watch a show in oh, I'd estimate six years. A DVR is a wonderful thing, especially when you build it yourself.

Re:Television?!?

[scotch]

Isn't this article about VCRs captain oblivious?

Re:Television?!?

[kramerd]

Who cares about the VCR's. People still watch television without downloading it?

Well yes they do. Live sports and news channels don't really make sense to watch weeks or days or even hours after the fact.

Re:Television?!?

[Stele]

Yes.

Re:Television?!?

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Live sports and news channels don't really make sense to watch weeks or days or even hours after the fact.

Weeks, sure. Days, maybe. But hours? You cannot wait hours?

Give up a few lattes

[Lije Baley]

DVRs are worth the money. End of story. DVRs and ultra-pasteurized milk are the two best things the 21st century has brought us. Just swallow your pride and get one.

Re:Give up a few lattes

[leon.gandalf]

Just not on a service that charges $20 a month for it. Damn and I was annoyed at paying $6 extra on DirecTV....

Re:Give up a few lattes

[Lije Baley]

Sorry, but I'm being sincere as hell about the DVR, and the milk. Some people are so cheap about things like this but waste just as much money on other stuff that doesn't actually improve their life. The guy who modded me Troll was W-R-O-N-G.

Re:Give up a few lattes

[Donniedarkness]

So them upping the price by $20/month for you to be able to record things in advance is perfectly ok?

It may only be $20/month, but I know PLENTY of families that can't risk that extra $$ on television each month, so therefore will just have to go without.

Re:Give up a few lattes

[Lije Baley]

I never said he had to pay Comcrap for one. I have happily paid DirecTV $5,6,7 extra for nearly 10 years. I hardly watch TV anymore, but I can watch what I want, when I want, without waiting for, or fussing with a tape. It's worth it to me

Re:Give up a few lattes

[Anonymous Coward]

That's how it is in Canada. Look up how rogers rapes us for similar services...

Even worse, Rogers eliminated all their Clear QAM programming, which I used to get the HD from high end channels on my TV... so now I pay 25$ for the use of their SHITTY PVR... and extra for "HD" channels that are already being broadcast in the clear across the US and the world, in SD and HD simultaneously.

Now, add in the fact that in their utter greed, Rogers decided to COMPRESS their HD digital so as to get 3 channels into the bandwidth of 2, you now get the same (or worse) pixelation and drop outs at the smallest line noise, which of course, they advertise as only happening to BELL because of the "weather" and the "dish."

Cable companies need competition. Not sure how to do it, but damn... and when you consider they are also the Wireless Duopoly up here, it's just terrible.... costs are ridiculous.

Just goes to show that the only place there is any profit being made anymore, is in "IP."

Re:Give up a few lattes

[Anonymous Coward]

I never said he had to pay Comcrap for one.

He is if he wants the DVR to be able to change the channel, unless he wants to deal with cablecard hell and hook the DVR up as a tuner.

Re:Give up a few lattes

[gtbritishskull]

I completely disagree. Comcast DVRs are crap and I will not pay money for one. But, third party DVRs tend to be decent and worth the money. Too bad they too tend to use the "VCR" programming feature. This is the definition of anti-competitive. They are using their monopoly in one market (cable provider) to influence their competitiveness in another (DVRs).

Re:Give up a few lattes

[hal2814]

DVR's are so last decade. If Hulu or stagevu aren't carrying it, I'm not watching it.

Re:Give up a few lattes

[laughingcoyote]

You mean like I can, by firing up a good old fashioned Bittorrent client at a total charge of nothing? Have fun paying DirecTV though.

Re:Give up a few lattes

[soundguy]

What "cablecard hell"? They work perfectly. Plug them into a digital-tuner Tivo, call the head-end, punch in a few dozen numbers, and you're done. I've set up a half-dozen for family members with Comcast and for my own Verizon FIOS service. None of them took over 5 minutes. In the Seattle area, you can go down to the Comcast office and get the card from them, then install it yourself. No idiot company installers involved at all. There's also no reason to pay for monthly DVR service. Except for a brief period a few years ago, Tivo has always offered lifetime subs. When I bought my first analog box in 1999, the lifetime sub was $200. That machine has been upgraded a few times (new drives and the ethernet mod) and is still working after 11 years. (took it to my condo in Vegas because Cox still has an analog tier down there) The lifetime subs on the new ones are about $400 retail, but you can get them for $300 if you can rattle off the serial number of an old one with a lifetime sub. (this just qualifies you for the long-term customer discount. The lifetime sub on the old box is not disabled.) Lastly, how the hell does the article relate to ANYONE besides a couple of luddites who are too cheap to join the rest of us here in the digital 21st century. You want me to care because your decades-old JUNK video technology has become more difficult to use? Don't hold your breath.

Re:Give up a few lattes

[nacturation]

It may only be $20/month, but I know PLENTY of families that can't risk that extra $$ on television each month, so therefore will just have to go without.

If their budget is that tight, why are they paying for television at all?

Re:Give up a few lattes

[Knara]

Dingdingding, you are correct, sir.

Slashdot has sure developed a weird entitlement attitude, lately.

Re:Give up a few lattes

[Lithdren]

...im a consumer whore!

...and how!

Re:Give up a few lattes

[Lumpy]

what scumbag has CableTV and cant afford to pay bills or pay for needs?

Sorry, but CableTV is only for the rich or those that can easily throw away $100 a month for it.

It's like the people I meet that cant afford a car seat for their kids and have an iphone.

WHO CARES?

[terjeber]

This is a non-event for anyone who has moved past the stone age. News for nerds? This is News For Cave Men.

Re:WHO CARES?

[Anonymous Coward]

Some nerds have to provide tech support for relatives that have VCRs and do not have DVRs. Try explaining that their VCRs are now useless and they now have to shell out $120-$240 a year.

Some nerds also own DVRs instead of renting from Comcast. The "VCR" programming feature is required to use with a non-Comcast DVR.

Re:WHO CARES?

[Enry]

The "VCR" programming feature is required to use with a non-Comcast DVR.

Uhm, no it isn't, at least with Tivos.

My series 2 had a separate IR controller that you put in front of the cable box and it sent the signal at the right time to change the channel, no messing with the cable box required.

The TivoHD (and Premiere) both support CableCard, so you don't need a separate box from the cable company.

Re:WHO CARES?

[jslaff]

Not true. Most DVRs (and other equipment) have IR blasters to control the STB. My 6-year old ReplayTV does. It's still chugging along, though SD only.

Re:WHO CARES?

[Lumpy]

$120-$240 a year? why?

tell them to buy a DVD recorder that can do IR blasting to control the box.

What is it with people refusing to point people at the correct solution?

Re:WHO CARES?

[mcgrew]

I have news for you, son. A lot of us nerds are pretty damned old, and buying the latest shiny toy is NOT being a nerd, unless you're buying it to hack.

Re:WHO CARES?

[kackle]

Comments like yours are comical to me. I know VCRs are not for everyone, but:

A) They're cheap.
B) When the media wears out, it, too, is cheap.
C) You can freely back-up whatever you want, whenever you want, forever, regardless of who's lobbying Congress.
D) There's no monthly fee, ever.
E) Media storage size in infinite.
F) You can watch a show or movie in seconds versus the 20 seconds of an unskippable DVD FBI warning screen and studio previews.
G) The media is reusable, unlike landfill-destined DVD burns.
H) (My favorite) You can freely lend or borrow recordings (TV, home movies, etc.), versus whatever is on YOUR DVR is mostly stuck on YOUR DVR.

Re:WHO CARES?

[terjeber]

I have news for you, son. A lot of us nerds are pretty damned old

Don't know how old you are. Don't care. I'm old enough to having lived through the '80s and thought all of the "young kids" were fucking nuts. They were. It was the fucking '80s. The favorite car in my garage is from 1966, and I don't think it is that old, but my niece disagrees with me.

I don't think I ever implied that having the latest shiny toy is being a nerd either. On the other hand, writing about Depends is not what I expect from Slashdot, and quite frankly, fiddling with a crappy VHS player makes you older and far less cool than wearing Depends.

Re:WHO CARES?

[terjeber]

Tape is a great medium for video. On the right formats, with the right video equipment. VCRs, which are all (unless you are in "the industry") all VHS or a derivative (S-VHS anyone?). It is crap. Crap. Crap. Crap. Its color rendition is worse than Polaroid anno 1983. Its picture quality stinks to high heaven. It stank in 1976. It stank it 1986 and 1996, and today it barely watchable.

As to your points - aside from Blu-Ray, what media is NOT cheap? I have all my video on hard drives. Minute for minute adding quality requirements, they are far cheaper than VHS. They are also a lot easier to copy and back up. There is no monthly fee. Media storage is infinite. I can watch a movie or a show in seconds, not even having to walk over to a player and put in a dumb tape, they are stored on my PC and served to my TV through my media center. The media is re-usable, and I can share them with friends without even leaving my couch.

I can't possibly fathom what would compel anyone to subject them selves to the torture that is bad picture quality and eternal tape-change routines that spells VHS. What if my kids wants to watch the movie in their room 10 minutes after I started watching it? Am I going to get a backup of the VHS tape? Of course not, they can watch the same movie on THEIR media center. Whenever they want. Even when I am watching it.

Re:WHO CARES?

[Anonymous Coward]

Some nerds have to provide tech support for relatives that have VCRs and do not have DVRs. Try explaining that their VCRs are now useless and they now have to shell out $120-$240 a year.

Aside from the alternatives others have mentioned, the explanation is easy. Tell them "Comcast are a nasty bunch of money-grabbers who have disabled a feature you needed to change channels for recording on your VCR in order to encourage to purchase their DVR service instead." See, that wasn't hard at all.

Firewire may possibly be a solution

[synthesizerpatel]

Digital cable boxes by law in the US (last time I checked) are required to have firewire ports to allow for unprotected content recording -- i.e. anything you can get over-the-air can be recorded via firewire stream. Incidentally, many basic cable channels are unprotected as well.

But, more importantly, you can change the channel through the firewire port.

I hacked together a really, really poor example of this for OSX using Apple's Firewire SDK -- http://www.remix.net/wiki/Clover

It's woefully out of date, but channel changing worked when I put it together. It would stand to reason that this feature would work for any firewire client unless they've disabled that as well.

Re:Firewire may possibly be a solution

[Mista2]

And another reason why I havn't paid to view their DRM content. And none of the DRM features seems to be stopping the TV shows making it to the torrent sites with a few hours after broadcast anyway.
Just as well, it doesn't look like our local channels are going to be picking up the second season of Dollhouse or the next season of True Blood, or the DR Who specials, etc.
If it's not available here, it's not stealing is it? 8)

 

Re:Firewire may possibly be a solution

[nvrrobx]

Firewire must be available, but it does not mean that the content is accessible.

Many providers choose to use the 5C DRM scheme to block your ability to record via Firewire.

http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Firewire_Cablebox_Compatability

Take a look at Myth's compatibility list for examples.

Re:Firewire may possibly be a solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Digital cable boxes by law in the US (last time I checked) are required to have firewire ports to allow for unprotected content recording

Almost, they were required to add the 1394 port. However, most cable companies encrypt the output with 5C which effectively renders it useless as there's fsck all to capture the normal media to make it useable. Ironically, Comcast were one of the companies that forgot to lock the content, so theirs actually works.

Re:Firewire may possibly be a solution

[deblau]

Please provide a citation to the appropriate law, thanks.

Re:Firewire may possibly be a solution

[langelgjm]

Digital cable boxes by law in the US (last time I checked) are required to have firewire ports to allow for unprotected content recording

AFAIK, that is only true for HD boxes. There is no such requirement for SD digital cable boxes. Also, the boxes aren't required to have the ports (as evidenced by the fact that the majority of HD boxes don't actually have them)... it's just that the company is technically required to give you a box with a firewire port if you have HD service and you ask for one.

I've also heard anecdotes about cablecos adding no-copy flags to content that was originally designated as freely copy.

Re:Firewire may possibly be a solution

[SCPRedMage]

The point the GP was making wasn't to record via Firewire, it's changing the channel via Firewire, which they CAN'T block. It's something I do with my own DVR; it's a HELL of a lot more reliable than an IR blaster.

VCR with IR emitter

[lalena]

Before DVR, VCRs used to have IR emitters that would change the channel on the cable box automatically at the right time. You just need to find one of these.
Granted this might be a bit high-tech for some, but if someone was already programming their cable box to change the channel for the VCR, then they should be able to figure out the IR emitter.

Re:VCR with IR emitter

[SplicerNYC]

I remember the good old days when I was able to plug my cable box directly into my TiVo and have the latter control the former. Then RCN got wise and provided their own DVR and took the capability I loved away. IR emitters have never worked reliably for me no matter how many times I've tried to set it up. Somewhere there is a company that actually thinks about its customers -- I think.

Re:VCR with IR emitter

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Lots of companies think about their customers...

Sort of the way Pedobear thinks about children.

Re:VCR with IR emitter

[Anonymous Coward]

Back when cable television didn't require a set-top box (i.e., the analogue days) VCRs used to have an internal tuner that you could program.

HTPC!

[stalky14]

Homebrew DVR with a non-DVR cable box. One should never have to pay for DVR "service" (or put up with the godawful UI on those Motorola boxes Comcast uses). It's not a service, it's a piece of hardware, dammit!

Re:HTPC!

[kenh]

The guide is the service you pay for. Comcast loans you the hardware so you'll subscribe to the guide. TiVo Sells you the hardware and requires you to subscribe to the guide. Your home-brewed DVR would rely on someone else providing you a free guide....

Re:HTPC!

[Cidolfas]

You can either scrape microsoft's free guide or, preferably, pay $20 a year for Schedules Direct in the US. And if I recall, Comcast doesn't sell you the guide, they rent you the hardware that's capable of using their system. Even if you own your own hardware, they still make you pay to rent the cable card.

Numbers are off

[kenh]

Here in Central NJ Comcast charges me $16.95/mo for a dual tuner HD cable box, able to record two HD programs at once.

If I had a TiVo I'd need what, two CableCards PLUS a monthly TiVo subscription?

Comcast's DVR service takes the place of a conventional digital cable box and adds about $7 month to give me dual-channel HD DVR service.

When I realized that, I turned in my conventional digital cable box and cancelled my TiVo subscription and saved over $20 month.

I miss TiVo's added features/interface, but saving $20/month is pretty good.

Re:Numbers are off

[jtdennis]

you'd need one multi-stream CableCard plus the monthly subscription unless you buy lifetime service for the TiVo. It's pricy, but spread out over the life of the TiVo works out to be the best deal. I wish I had done it with my Series 1 TiVo that I got in 2000. It's still kicking, but I still have to pay monthly.
The pricing for Comcast works out to be $2.00/month per CableCard, but I think the first one is free. TiVo's monthly fee is $12.95 for the first box and $6.95 for each additional box.

Re:Numbers are off

[OrangeCatholic]

Cable cards are only like $4 on verizon, so with Tivo $14.77+8=$23 versus $17, the Comcast DVR is cheaper, but not that much.

Re:Numbers are off

[SCPRedMage]

I would think an extra $6/month is an awesome deal for a DVR that isn't a total piece of shit...

Re:Numbers are off

[metalwheaties]

I have a TiVo HD (series 3) and pay $100 per year for it. I rent a cable card from Comcast for $3/month and it allows both of my tuners to record simultaneously.

I have what you have, and it's costing me $15.50 a month + the cost of the TiVo. I love the UI of the TiVo and really LOATHE the Comcast DVR's - with which I am very familiar due to my girlfriend working at Comcast and getting one for free.

Re:Numbers are off

[LanMan04]

You need one "M-stream" cablecard (can decode multiple channels at once). That costs $0 per month from Comcast (by law they have to provide one free-of-charge).

You pay a monthly Tivo fee of about $9.

Re:Numbers are off

[Anonymous Coward]

You only need one M cable card, not two... usually they are just a few $$ a month ($2-$3)... you'll need the Tivo sub, but it can also act as your set top box, so you'll make up the cost there...

Honestly, the only thing you're missing is the OnDemand stuff, and if you subscribe to NetFlix, the streaming on that pretty much makes up what you miss... and the cost is all you can eat instead of per movie, so if you watch two per month, you're already saving money.

Re:Numbers are off

[lorddarthpaul]

I have a Tivo HD that I own. This means I can do things to it, like put in a 1TB drive, so I can keep well over 100 hours of HD programming around. It has a single "M CableCard" in it for $1.50/mo that lets it decode two channels at once. I pay Tivo $99/yr subscription, and the ($220 -- plus $80 for the new drive -- though I still have the old one, kept as a spare) that I paid for the unit is long since paid off by canceling all of my movie channels. The Tivo can use Netflix, Blockbuster, and Amazon for movie content (if I want), not to mention YouTube and other downloadable web videos. It has optical digital sound output, although I didn't use that until recently -- and it's awesome. See any of that in a cable company DVR? Not to mention that my old cable DVR (since returned) drove me nuts trying to properly schedule programs. It would record the same program several times and would often reboot just when I had finally gotten something programmed, etc. Several times I have been at work when I realized I wanted to record something. Tivos do that easily; cable companies should wake up. They just aren't keeping up. So what are they doing? Yes, they're licensing Tivo (albeit a more expensive version) for their customers! I have an old Tivo Series 2 connected to the first cable box we had by a serial cable. Still works wonders, despite being "single tuner". That one has a lifetime subscription, and paid for itself several years ago. It's on my "first cable box", which is free. [additional cable boxes would be $2.95/mo.].

Re:Numbers are off

[RomulusNR]

And are you also proud of how you save money by paying only the minimum balance on your credit cards each month?

Tivo monthly subscription is $13. Add in one multi-stream cablecard from Comcast for $1.50 and you come in at $14.50 a month. That's less than $16.95 in my math.

Re:Numbers are off

[Lumpy]

Why?

I have 3 QAM tuner cards in my mythbox and only RARELY do I use 2 of the tuners at once. smart scheduling coupled with most channels rerunning the days shows over and over makes it useless to have 2 tuners.

Yes I live in a n area where comcast screwed up and did a digital changeover and used the el-cheapo boxes... they cant scramble the QAM constellation so I can tun in all the regular and extended basic channels with my MythTV. I have about 50 shows on my recording list and is shared between 2 families and we rarely get a overlap recording event when 2 tuners need to record at once.

Re:That's interesting...

[TheRaven64]

That article was published back in 2000, when not owning a TV was pretty unusual. My father was one of those people, and it was irritating. Now though? With iPlayer and similar services, along with DVD rentals through the post, owning a TV is a lot less common. It's still usual, but not owning a TV is no longer weird. I don't own one anymore, but I watch a lot more TV shows than I did back when I owned one.

$20/month DVR service?

[wisnoskij]

$20 dollars a month just for DVR service?
I have no knowledge of other services prices but that is far to much money.

It should be like 2 dollars/month.
A one time purchase of a DVR only costs a few hundred.

Re:$20/month DVR service?

[theNetImp]

The DVR service is rental of their DVR equipment, not access to a service. They are renting you hardware that is a DVR. The DVR is also your cable tuner so you are only renting one device instead of 2. Digital cable boxes via comcast are $10/month, so in reality you are paying an additional $10/month for the more advanced box. Box breaks Comcast replaces it. You buy a DVR or build one something breaks and you may have to pay out more to replace/fix it than the $120/yr for the rental. When storage in Comcasts new boxes increases, you call Comcast and can get a newer box without doling out a couple hundred more dollars for a new box or upgraded computer system..

Re:$20/month DVR service?

[oji-sama]

You can't buy the digital cable box? (or the more advanced box?)

Re:$20/month DVR service?

[MartinSchou]

What happens to the shows you recorded on Comcast's equipment, when you move somewhere that they don't cover?

Re:$20/month DVR service?

[Anonymous Coward]

So in your thinking I should just call up Ma Bell and ask to rent the phone on my wall so i don This has been tried and failed many years ago in the telcom world. Everyone is just to lazy to fix it again in the Cable world.

Re:That's interesting...

[Anonymous Psychopath]

http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/01/26/28-not-having-a-tv

time warner stopped last year

[dltaylor]

In my area, they shut off all of the guide data early last year. In addition, they shut off the PBS-channel subcarrier that had the time-of-day, so I now have to manually reset the time on my recorder when the useless, murderous (but that's another subject) "Daylight Savings Time" changes occur. Of course, they've also shut off all of the clear QAM, so I have to have a set top box to record anything that isn't a broadcast channel.

But, since all of the alternatives are no better, if not worse, I have no real choice but to pay somescum for access to whatever current video (some motorsports, some anime/cartoons, some non-presium movies) I want to watch.

Re:time warner stopped last year

[Anonymous Coward]

Modded thread already. Get rid of cable TV, keep high speed Internet, download any TV show you want to watch. And profit. You're paying for the privilege to be assraped by TWC. Fuck them, and if they go to limits, Earthlink stated they would still offer high speed with no limits through TWC pipes at the same cost. How long do you think limits will last when that starts happening?

Re:time warner stopped last year

[HTH NE1]

Years ago, Time Warner Cable updated the software on their Scientific Atlanta boxes to "mystro" which will interrupt any attempt to change channels on schedule with an update to the OSD displaying the current programming as the time changed, throwing out some or all of the digits sent to the box. I got it early by being in a beta test area for this. This effectively kills the use of pre-Series2 TiVos with their cable boxes or any other DVR where you have no manual control over its clock setting. The networks adjusting the start and end times of programs by 1 or 2 minutes exacerbates the problem: it's when the data changes on the channel you're leaving, so you have to pad the end of the program by one minute and risk having it clip the start of the next program on another channel.

Series3 and newer TiVos can now be tripped up with the newly required Switched Digital Video boxes which can fail to tune an SDV channel requiring a manual retry which the TiVo doesn't issue. Most HD cable (non-broadcast) channels are SDV channels.

The SDV boxes will also set a broadcast flag on all analog broadcast channels (including Standard Definition broadcast channels) preventing sharing of that content between units in your home. Take the SDV out of the loop and those channels are freely portable. Apparently the SDV box does its own digital encoding of the analog channel for at least one of its two tuners (it apparently can't digitally encode two analog channels at once) and it asserts the flag for the result (regardless of whether it digitized it or not).

At least the Firewire ports on the cable boxes still work for recording broadcast HD channels, though Fox is doing something to their feed to trip up computer software and some stations are setting the Copy Once flag which prevents playback on computers.

Next is the 2011 sunset on HD over Component Video.

(*) Time Warner Cable doesn't consider it a bug: a human can just re-enter the channel number to work around the problem and watch the show live. They have no interest in fixing a bug that only exhibits itself on a product that competes with their own DVR product.

One less reason to have cable tv

[portnux]

Wow, as if there wasn't enough reasons already to drop cable tv in favor of a Boxee Box!

LA- luddites anonymous

[Anonymous Coward]

a vee-cee-what?

A fairly common, and in some ways elegant, move...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Seen in a variety of places in the tech business, and businesses with a lot of underlying technology.

Here is how it works: Because technology is complex, most users are largely helpless, and incapable of realizing much of the theoretical promise of the technology available. A fairly small population of gearheads(and, if said gearheads happen to be motivated in setting up UIs, immediate friends and family of such) can realize the potential; but most cannot. At this point, you create a product that, by making things easy, gives Joe Sixpack 90% of what Jim Gearhead has always been able to do, available at the touch of a button. The last 10%, though, you take away from both Joe and Jim, in the form of DRM and/or fees. Because the population of gearheads is much smaller than the population at large, you get to look like you are "enabling new capabilities, for which you are charging a fair price/making a few reasonable concessions to content providers", even as you are, in fact, turning the screws a little tighter.

Historically, Apple has been perhaps the most talented player of this game, but there are certainly plenty of others. It's evil, certainly; but it works quite well.

It is the existence, and success, of this strategy that makes me think that user-friendliness may be a necessary survival trait for FOSS. If we can make Jim Gearhead's 100% solution easy to use, then the public at large will see the various crippled or fee-based(often both) almost-as-good-but-easier offerings as the steps down that they are, and protest loudly. If we can't, though, the companies that deliver them will, largely, receive acquiescence or even praise for doing so.

Anti-Trust?

[MagusSlurpy]

Anti-trust. . . really?

"Dear ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I come before you today with the intent to prove that Comcast, Inc. is the only company available in our area with the capability to provide this VCR-scheduling service, and moreover, is required by federal law to provide this service as a purchasable product to the public."

Re:Anti-Trust?

[nacturation]

"Dear ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I come before you today with the intent to prove that Microsoft Corporation is the only company available in our area with the capability to provide this operating system, and moreover, is required by federal law to provide this software as a purchasable product to the public."

Silly DVR boxes

[raynet]

Are the DVRs in US so dumb that they don't allow the user to set the channel and recording time manually? It shouldn't be to difficult to check when the show is airing and setting the VCR to record that, though if the VCR doesn't have digital reciever, then one might have to set timer on both the VCR and the digibox. Atleast that is how it is done here.

Re:Silly DVR boxes

[93 Escort Wagon]

Are the DVRs in US so dumb that they don't allow the user to set the channel and recording time manually? It shouldn't be to difficult to check when the show is airing and setting the VCR to record that, though if the VCR doesn't have digital reciever, then one might have to set timer on both the VCR and the digibox. Atleast that is how it is done here.

Why would a DVR owner be using a VCR in the first place? That's like using 8-track tapes to back up your AIFF files.

Re:Silly DVR boxes

[colinnwn]

I think you misunderstand, though the post wasn't very informative.

No VCRs I am aware of have digital tuners. This feature of the cable box automatically turned it on and to the correct channel, so the VCR timer could also turn on at the same time and start recording this channel. Fancier VCRs had a IR blaster feature. This is basically a substitute for the IR blaster to the cable box.

Re:Silly DVR boxes

[raynet]

Yes, I was aware of those things, but here instead you just set the recording time on both the digibox and the VCR and both turn on at the same time, the digibox changes to the correct channel and the VCR then records it via SCART (composite signal usually). Just means you need to set the recording time twice, not a biggie.

Re:Silly DVR boxes

[MtViewGuy]

Funny you should ask that because ever since I got my TiVo HD XL DVR, I had to wonder why I had to put up with the often extreme inconvenience of using a real VCR. And best of all, Comcast does not object to the use of a TiVo DVR, mostly because they will make money from M-Card CableCARD rentals and the fact TiVo users want to use a higher programming tier than normal.

Re:Silly DVR boxes

[colinnwn]

In the US, we don't have SCART. We have composite or S-video on VCRs. I don't think any consumer VCRs were made with component video, DVI, VGA, or HDMI.

Otherwise it works the same way here. The original poster was saying Comcast has disabled the feature on their digiboxes that allow you to set a recording channel and time for it to come on automatically for the VCR, unless you upgrade to the DVR package with improved digibox.

Another poster claimed this wasn't nefarious, but was the result of very limited flash RAM in the basic digiboxes used by Comcast. They needed the flash RAM for other TV guide improvements.

I believe most people are missing the real point..

[Anonymous Coward]

...Which is that this feature was there to begin with and then Comcast removed it to give their customers less choice in a blatant attempt to drive more people to their DVR service. I don't get all the arguments arguing about the merits of the feature in today's high tech world. It was there. People used it. It wasn't hurting anyone. Then Comcast removed because they decided those customers that used the feature were less important than some market research figure that said they might be able to sign up X% more people to their DVR service.

/raises hand

[Volante3192]

I still use a VCR, and I will until it starts eating tapes. (It's not that I'm some sort of zealot, it's just...well...it still works. Why fix what isn't broken?)

Course, it serves one, and only one, purpose: recording Jeopardy OTA from my DTV box. Which is, incidentally, the only reason I even need the DTV converter in the first place.

Funny story, my VCR is not year 2010 compliant, so I actually have to use a year with the same template as this year to get it working. (My VCR thinks that (as of this post) it's 11 Apr, 1999.) More useless trivia, it doesn't know about years preceeding 1990 either.

Re:/raises hand

[Anonymous Coward]

I still use a VCR, and I will until it starts eating tapes. (It's not that I'm some sort of zealot, it's just...well...it still works. Why fix what isn't broken?)

Course, it serves one, and only one, purpose: recording Jeopardy OTA from my DTV box. Which is, incidentally, the only reason I even need the DTV converter in the first place.

Funny story, my VCR is not year 2010 compliant, so I actually have to use a year with the same template as this year to get it working. (My VCR thinks that (as of this post) it's 11 Apr, 1999.) More useless trivia, it doesn't know about years preceeding 1990 either.

Same deal here. Still use a VCR and usually for one or two one-hour programs a week for part of the year. Basically just time shifting them. Very occasionally I'll use it to record something else say if a House marathon comes on or I want to tear myself away from the Food Network (mmmm food porn.)

I do kind of regret not buying a Tivo or other DVR years ago. A couple months ago I checked them out and was appalled at the monthly rate for the schedule information. Maybe once day I'll get motivated and put together a Myth TV box or something. Until then a VCR will suffice.

Re:/raises hand

[Anonymous Coward]

That I so sad. We actually designed a product to work less than 10 years. Is it so crappy or does technology really evolve that much we necessitate not using it any more in such a short time frame?

Re:/raises hand

[Volante3192]

It's actually 20 years: 1990 to 2009.

Very bizzare; wouldn't it be harder these days to explicitly make a custom time function rather than use some sort of default one that can take nearly anything?

....Yeah.

[Redlazer]

Douchebag moves that's going to affect a very small percentage of people.

I agree it's shitty, but it detracts from the fact that you have to pay an extra 20$ a month to use a DVR.

MythTV and firewire ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Using MythTV, one firewire port, and two Motorola HD boxes daisy chained from Comcast for $10.00 a month, $3.00 for the first one and $7.00 for the second. Since the kernel switched to the new firewire stack the system has been rock solid recording everything I've scheduled. The only caveat is that you can't record the premium channels, which are 5C encrypted.

Don't pay for cable

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't watch it either.

Bite the hand that feeds you, and eat it.

It's CrapTastic

[dwreid]

Seriously. This sort of crap is why I had my cable pulled out and told Comcast to jam it up their corporate asses sideways. Who needs them?

VCR?

[DragonTHC]

Really? get over it you technophobe!

There Is a work-around

[zippthorne]

but you're not going to like it much more than "set up recording a few hours in advance"

You can set a timer on the VCR itself, usually about one to two weeks in advance. Then you need to make sure the tuner is set to the proper channel. Since that bit may also be disabled, you might only be able to record consecutive shows on the same channel where you set the channel for the next recording after the last time you use the television.

But if you're a techie, then I guess you gotta get DVR, TiVo, or Myth. Otherwise you lose your cred.

TiVo

[markdavis]

Time to get a TiVo. Service is $12/mo or less. No more cable-company-box prison, lots of additional features.

Yeah, I still use a VCR

[Anonymous Coward]

A large portion of TV programming sucks, so there are few shows I care enough about to time-shift. Not enough to justify a DVR for me. Anything else, I watch on computer.

Comcast also sucks, but I was setting start/stop times manually anyway.

Not only that

[countertrolling]

If you don't buy their time service, the clock will only flash 12:00 If you don't buy their "video out" service, you will only be able to use the RF modulator to your set.

I don't understand the scenario described

[jfruhlinger]

The last time I used a VCR to record things on a timer -- back in the '90s, maybe? -- you just set the time and channel information into the VCR itself. I can't imagine there have been great advances in VCR technology since then, so why can't you do that now?

Re:I don't understand the scenario described

[mister_playboy]

The VCR can't tune into the channels anymore because they are now digital... it has to have help from another device. I've never heard of a VCR with a digital tuner.

Re:I don't understand the scenario described

[toddestan]

Because the analog tuner in the VCR isn't able to tune into the digital signal coming from the cable company*. So you have to use the cable company's cable box to decode the signal, and then the VCR can record the analog output from the cable box. This requires that the cable box be powered up and tuned to the right channel when the VCR is to record whatever you want to record. To accommodate this, many cable/satellite boxes have a VCR scheduling feature that automatically turns on the tuner and sets it to the right channel at a certain time so the VCR can do its thing. Comcast decided to remove this feature, presumably to stick it to the VCR users in an attempt to force them to buy their DVR service, hence the story.

*some of the VCRs still on the market have digital tuners, so if you get your shows over the air then it will work much like it did 15 years ago, but this won't help you if you have cable TV

better question:

[Ralph Spoilsport]

Raise your hand if you regularly use a VCR these days, too.

Raise your hand if you bother watching TV any more. I stopped years ago. If there is anything I want to see, I just DL it when I want to.

Here's ABC's line up:

20/20

AFV - America's Funniest Home Videos

The Bachelor

The Bachelor Jason and Molly's Wedding

The Bachelorette

Better Off Ted

Brothers & Sisters

Castle

Cougar Town

Dancing with the Stars

The Deep End

Desperate Housewives

Extreme Makeover: Home Edition

FlashForward

The Forgotten

Grey's Anatomy

Happy Town

Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution

Jimmy Kimmel Live!

Lost

The Middle

Modern Family

Nightline

Primetime

Private Practice

Romantically Challenged

Scrubs

Shaq vs Shark Tank

SuperNanny

This Week With George Stephanopoulos

Ugly Betty

V

Wife Swap

Wipeout

Now, how is anyone's life worse off for being denied exposure to the above noted programs? I'm fine. I'm happy, I'm living a rich and colourful life. And I don't watch any of that crap - not on NBC, CBS, or ABC or even PBS. And I'm certainly not going to pay some cable company the privilege to watch TV commercials.

Do yourself a favour. Get rid of your set. If you MUST see something, watch it online. Otherwise - go find something else to do with your time than waste it in front of the idiot box.

Re:better question:

[Anonymous Coward]

Good for you. Now I'll get back to watching my sports.

Re:better question:

[King_TJ]

I actually share your sentiment, overall. I don't watch anything on TV currently, except for the very rare occasion where I'm both bored and worn-out but not ready to sleep yet. (For example, if I'm sick and lying in bed.) On occasions like those, I tend to channel-surf for anything I can find of some interest that happens to be on. Last time, I wound up watching an episode on the Science channel of some show explaining how a few random things were made.

That said though, I'm not ready to "get rid of my set", or to preach that others should do so. If I didn't work two jobs and have a kid to worry about, I just might have a little more free time, and I might like to keep up with one or two TV shows. (Out of the lineup you listed, I think I might be entertained by the "V"series, at least? I know I've randomly seen good episodes of Nightline or 20/20 too, and I've randomly watched episodes of Scrubs over the years too. Not worth recording it or anything ... but actually a pretty well-written show with an interesting twist on what you expect to see out of a "medical themed sitcom".)

Re:better question:

[Anonymous Coward]

The *highest* quality and earliest available copy of these shows is the ATSC broadcast. DVRs are the best way to get a portable, high quality copy of these shows to view, and at no additional cost to the viewer beyond taxes and time spent skippi^H^H^H^H^H watching commercials.

I'm keeping my "idiot box".

Ok, my question is

[pgmrdlm]

What about cd/dvd recorders. Is the recording technology that much different between vcr's and dvd/cd recorders?

Can someone fact check this or provide a citation

[PNutts]

I love that the discussion is all over the place in true /. fashion (because some of the most interesting points are sidebar discussions). However, if it isn't advertised and the summary is vauge how am I supposed to know how far to twist my knickers? I use a Tivo which uses an IR blaster to change the set-top box. No Comcast P/DVR. My assumption is that Tivo appears to the set-top box no differently than a third party remote control. So is the Anonymous submission saying I can't change my channels? I seriously don't even know enough to start a search other than "Comcast $ucks" which will return far to many hits...

Just what I needed

[hivebrain]

I already have a hard enough time finding a store that sells those tiny cassettes for my answering machine.
Next thing you know, they'll stop selling computers with floppy drives. The world's gone mad I tell ya! Mad!

Typo in headline?

[Fippy Darkpaw]

Did they mean "DVR"? I've never heard of a "VCR". Apparently it is an ancient video recording device: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vcr

Minor conflict here...

[diesel66]

http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2009/03/11/123-mad-men/

Re:Minor conflict here...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/01/29/38-netflix/
http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/01/30/39-apple-products/


Conflict averted.

Why use subscription TV when we have torrents

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't believe slashdoters still pay for subscription TV while it is much easier to just download the torrents.

I just have a list of RSS feeds of my favourite TV shows downloading automatically on my NAS, and then watch them on my living-room TV trough my game console.

Lazy bums

[Anonymous Coward]

Geez how about reading the paper or TV Guide and programming the things yourself. Only in America does loosing a convenience mean the end of the world. Lazy bums...

A VC-What?

[Blackjack Joe]

Seriously, I haven't used a VCR other than to play old tapes in years. I have Comcast's HD DVR and I have a Tivo Series 2 that controls a non-dvr Comcast box. Between those, and online streaming from sites like Hulu, Netflix, and some of the networks own sites, I have no need to record using a VCR anymore. If I want to archive something, I burn a DVD.

Comcast also drops Analog TV support

[RimfoMan]

Interesting how they do this at the same time they are dropping Analog signals from the network. (at least in my area)

Google, where are ya?

[eudaemon]

This is one of those situations where people will vote with their wallet, if allowed. But even when municipalities try to set up their own broadband, they get sued by the incumbents or would-be incumbents for their trouble. Google is mooting the roll-out of very high speed connectivity in limited cities, and recently asked for volunteers via an essay contest. Their bandwidth could be the perfect vehicle to return to the older broadcast satellite model of multiple broadcasters bundling and selling channels ala carte. I don't think Comcast is as likely to sue Google as Monticello, Minnesota.

Yes and No, they took my Alarm Clock.

[lemur3]

This feature has been working and not working on the various boxes in my home for over a year...Not consistent. Some had it removed long ago and some still have it today. It has been like this for a while now, unchanged.

For my use this feature was less about the VCR, of course, there are other uses of this feature.

For one, Record works as a good Alarm Clock, my box turned the Television that was plugged into the outlet on and pumped the volume to 100%.. This worked great!

The Record feature is also superior to the boxes default 'reminder', even without a VCR, because it changes the television to the channel you want instead of just showing a passive reminder you can easily miss if you are looking away and just listening to the TV..

lame.

I love my VCR, it has a clock!

[DrTime]

I keep my VCR so there is clock in family room. What else do they do? I have stayed with Comcast even in face of FIOS availability. Why, because I can use Comcast with no set top box. When I want to record something off the "air/cable", I use EyeTV on the computer. I then convert the large file to more compact AppleTV format, and use Quicktime to remove commercials. The movies I end up with can be played on the computer, an iPod, the iPhone, or any computer with Quicktime. No DVR, no additional monthly fee. Yes, I have fewer channel options. But, no one changes the terms of service on me.

From the Personal Experience department:

[billsayswow]

Before you think VCR recording is dead, work in a Walmart electronics department, and watch how often you order more cases of blank VHS tapes. I swear, those things still sell about as well as blank DVDs.

Comcast is not my buddy either

[kheldan]

I've got TiVo, and when the FCC mandated digital changeover was about to happen, Comcast made a big point of assuring everyone "if you're on Comcast and have an analog receiver, no worries, we're not changing anything!". Then a month or so ago I get an email from TiVo -- TiVo, not even Comcast! -- telling me Comcast is changing everything over to digital and that I'd have to get a freakin' cable box again. To add insult to injury, I've been reading reports all over the place of the DTA Comcast gives you not being 100% compatible or reliable with TiVo's IR blaster, so I had to get one of each cable box and see which one works: the DTA with no superfluous onscreen displays I don't need, or the full-blown cable box with all the useless bells and whistles. That and they keep raising the rates. I am NOT a happy Comcast customer, and if there were ANY other choices where I'm situated I'd go with them!

Re:Comcast is not my buddy either

[Regolith]

I bought my Tivo used off of Craigslist so it didn't have the IR blaster with it. I found a solution that I think works even better. I purchased a direct link cable from a guy named g-gray on Ebay. It links from the IR blaster port of the Tivo directly into the DTA. Still don't have the second tuner, but the channel change is about as reliable as it can be with a second (worthless) box in the stream. He even has schematics posted, if you would like to simply build your own. It's been a long time since I've messed with soldering electronics, so I just opted to buy a complete cable. Schematics here: http://grayeng.net/TiVotoComcast.htm

Re:Comcast is not my buddy either

[Anonymous Coward]

FCC mandated digital changeover was about to happen, Comcast made a big point of assuring everyone "if you're on Comcast and have an analog receiver, no worries, we're not changing anything!".

True statement. Don't confuse over-the-air broadcast with satellite or coax feeds. The air broadcast stations turned off their analog broadcast, so anyone receiving the signal would have to install a digital receiver... but since your cable company is the one receiving the signal and then re-broadcasting it over their coax plant, you didn't have to do anything. They just swapped out their receiver.. in many cases they then proceeded to convert it right back to analog and fire it over the coax to your house.

Most cable companies, however, have been in the process of releasing analog programming in order to free up spectrum so that they can add more channels & more HD channels. Analog takes up a huge chunk of spectrum so for every analog channel they drop they can add several digital channels. If you don't like it you can bitch at the laws of physics, or everybody who is demanding HD programming. Or you can invent a new transmission technology that magically works with old equipment, in which case there's a Nobel Prize with your name on it

As for their rates, I'd like to point something out. And I'm not defending Comcast, I work at a different (competing) cable company and we're stuck with it too. We don't make jack shit on our cable TV programming- most of what you pay goes right to the parent networks. And you can bitch at them about cable companies having to clear analog space as well. You see we don't get to pick & choose what channels we carry. If we want to carry one channel, then we usually have to buy a whole pack of anywhere from 3 to a dozen other channels, and we aren't allowed to only broadcast one or two of them we have to send them all. Our spectrum is packed with useless channels that nobody watches, which are only there because we are forced to carry them in order to get a few which ARE in demand, and they are eating up our space. If we could drop all the bullshit channels we wouldn't have to drop analog transmission, at least for a few more years.

Again, I'm not defending Comcast- in fact I hate their guts, and if anyone in the industry is in a position to put pressure on the networks they're the ones to do it. But most of what you're bitching about should be directed somewhere else. The IR blaster in your TiVo is just an embedded universal remote, so if it doesn't work on the DTA's then you should be bitching at TiVo to release a firmware update. I've used both the DTA's as well as the full DCT's (many, many different models) and they work with all but the most retarded universal remotes.

Re:Comcast is not my buddy either

[MtViewGuy]

Huh?

One of the reasons why I did get a TiVo HD XL DVR was because Comcast was going to turn off all the analog channels above 30 in my area (which will happen in early May 2010). Since with the M-Card CableCARD installed my TiVo box can pick up all the digital channels, I don't have to worry because my TiVo box even accommodates an external Switched Digital Video (SDV) box if necessary.

Re:Comcast is not my buddy either

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, Comcast has certainly screwed over the many loyal (by choice or not) consumers of their analog service. The writing has been on the wall for many years though. They have limited bandwidth to for their services that simply has to be freed up for both rising Internet and HD content consumption. Analog stations eat up a lot of bandwidth in comparison to their digital counterparts. That's why Comcast has been gradually moving everything off of analog. Of course it doesn't hurt that the situation provides them with an excuse to extort some money. Throughout the process they had the nerve of removing analog stations while still jacking up rates for access to less content along with a decreasing quality of service if your neighborhood gets heavy usage.

Definitely glad to be living an an area where I have a better option.

Re:Comcast is not my buddy either

[Anonymous Coward]

DirectTV or Dish are both satellite providers. How do they not cover you? (Larget apartment on w/o view of their satellites? Under a bridge?)

Re:Comcast is not my buddy either

[kheldan]

Thanks for the link. As it turns out I was able to get it to work reliably using the IR link, but I've printed out the page you linked in case I start having problems in the future.

Re:Comcast is not my buddy either

[kheldan]

I have no interest in bloated, overpriced satellite TV, Anon.

Can buy the same boxes in Canada that C* forces yo

[Joe The Dragon]

Can buy the same boxes in Canada that C* forces you to rent why can't WE DO THE SAME HEAR? $16/m - $22 /m per box is joke. And comcast makes cable card a joke as well. http://consumerist.com/2010/04/how-many-comcast-techs-does-it-take-to-hook-up-a-tivo.html

I like the how the cable co killed tru2way as well what is up with the new tivo not having it?

This new guide has stuff directv has had for years

[Joe The Dragon]

This new guide has stuff directv has had for years and they don't rip you off on box rent as well.

also there remote dvr control does NOT FORCE you to get comcast HSI to use it like comcast systems does.

If you blink you might miss it.. Firewire solution

[synthesizerpatel]

f you blink, you might miss it.. But I think this backs up my original assertion..

Section 76.640:

(iii) Ensure that these cable operator-provided high definition set-top boxes shall comply with ANSI/SCTE 26 2001 (formerly DVS 194): ? Home Digital Network Interface Specification with Copy Protection? (incorporated by reference, see 76.602), with transmission of bit-mapped graphics optional, and shall support the CEA? 931? A:

?Remote Control Command Pass-through Standard for Home Networking? (incorporated by reference, see 76.602), pass through control commands: tune function , mute function, and restore volume function. In addition these boxes shall support the power control commands (power on, power off, and status inquiry) defined in A/VC Digital Interface Command Set General Specification Version 4.0 (as referenced in ANSI/SCTE 26 2001 (formerly DVS 194): ? Home Digital Network Interface Specification with Copy Protection? (incorporated by reference, see 76.602)).

Re:If you blink you might miss it.. Firewire solut

[synthesizerpatel]

Bah. The PDF in question.. http://www.fcc.gov/mb/engineering/part76.pdf

Re:Can someone fact check this or provide a citati

[pavon]

Older cable boxes and and some of the new ATSC tuners have a feature where you can program the box to change channels at a specific time. It is kind of a pain because you have to program both the cable box and the VCR for each show you want to record, but it is the only way possible to use existing VCRs with these boxes.

This is especially important for the ATSC boxes because they are mandated by law* to ship with a feature that shuts them off after a certain amount of inactive time, so even if you switch the box to the correct channel before you leave the house, your VCR will still end up recording garbage if you didn't have the box programed to wakeup and change channels at the correct time. I don't know if Comcast's boxes have this problem.

I use a Tivo which uses an IR blaster to change the set-top box.

That is nice for Tivo but 99% of VCR's out there don't have this feature. Besides an even bigger problem is the fact that Comcast updated people's cable boxes remotely, removing this feature. People had a perfectly functional setup and now without any warning their VCR is worthless thanks to Comcast's actions.

* or was it just required to be eligible for the government rebate? I don't remember.

DTA do not get full payed for line up / CSN CHI +

[Joe The Dragon]

DTA do not get full payed for line up / csn chicago +. CSN + is the part time over flow and was on analog up to a last year.

And the loss of csn chicago + is big as WOW cable has it on analog still so you need full cable box per tv ($5+) to get it on comcast. Why have CSN main channel work on DTA but not the over flow channel.

Email comcast about it and they act like they want to sell a better package that includes CSN even when it is in BASIC and you are paying for it is like they do not even what I said as I asked why does the DTA not get CSN + but they do get CSN and they did see the part of needing to have a full cable box to get it.

what odd is that CSN + HD just has looping help videos when off air so why does CSN + SD have to shear with a channel that needs a full cable box when there is open sd ver of the looping help channle that comes in on the dta?

It's not malicious

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

This isn't a malicious attempt to get you to upgrade to DVR service. It has to do with the fact that the digital cable box you have (Motorola DCT2000 series) has 2MB of flash memory.

The VCR recording feature requires an IR database (that stores the correct power/record codes for each VCR), code to operate the IR blaster, and of course UI and other features. All of this takes space. It may only be a few KB, but Comcast keeps adding features to the DCT2000 boxes and eventually something has to go. The VCR feature is one that isn't particularly popular (it's hard to configure and most people don't even have a VCR anymore), and it takes up more space than many other features, so it gets the axe.

Comcast's guide software (i-guide) is not particularly great, but it's a hell of a lot better than what used to run on the DCT2000. Those boxes are very old at this point, but the i-guide software has given them a reasonable level of functionality for people who don't want HD or a DVR.

If you don't like the change, you are free to do any of the following:
- Return the Comcast box and use a video recording device (TiVo, Moxi, Media Center, etc.) that uses a CableCard. Comcast charges $1.50/mo for a CableCard.
- Use a recording device or software (Media Center, MythTV, TiVO series 1/2) that supports your cable box with an IR blaster.
- Switch to Comcast's DVR.

FYI, Comcast's DVR is $15.99/mo if it's the first box on the account in most areas ($20 if it's an additional box). Conventional boxes are free (first box) or $6 (additional boxes). Some of these rates vary by area, but they're increasingly standardized.

Re:It's not malicious

[gooman]

What are you talking about?
This is Slashdot. Everything is a conspiracy.

 

Re:It's not malicious

[cynyr]

i thought the feature in question was simply "tune to channel X at time Y for length Z" no need for the devices to talk, simply set it up on both.

Re:That's interesting...

[Anonymous Coward]

I know a few people who have given up cable/satellite, but nobody throws away their TV so that they can huddle over a laptop to watch movies.

OK yes I use a VCR

[Anonymous Coward]

Two of them. Am I a technophobe? Hardly. I like things that just work. I can record something and watch it whenever for as long as the tape is good. They are dropping the analog cable signal too. OK that sucks because one of the VCRs plugs straight into the cable. OK other way around but you know what I mean. I've been playing with getting rid of cable TV for a couple months now and this pretty much seals the deal. Getting rid of the land line too (also through ComCa$t). If I had a choice of a different broadband provider with the same speed I would switch that too. I suppose I'm in the minority but geez...

Re: must carry

[colinnwn]

If you are in the US, this is against FCC regs. Local broadcast channels carried in digital must be carried in clear QAM. I believe only the SD version is required to be in the clear, but if they don't carry the SD version, the HD must be in the clear. On TWC in Dallas, several other basic channels like WGN are also in the clear.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1072309

In this thread, someone suggests rather than going midevil on TWC, first try calling your local channel, ask for the network engineer, and let them know TWC is not carrying their channel in the clear. They frequently have contacts in the cable company, and have a desire to get their channel carried correctly so they have the largest possible number of viewers.

Free Comcast DVRs

[b4upoo]

If you check out the bundled packages from Comcast you may find that the DVR can be free or very low cost as long as you take the right package deal.
              I will say that Comcast is thin on content these days and we need to find a way to force prices down and get better movies etc..

MythTV + Hulu + Netlix Cable

[Digicrat]

This just adds yet another reason to why I refuse to pay Comcast for TV ... an extra 20-50 a month for the handful of channels I want to watch just isn't worth it. A Linux MythTV Box with an OTA antenna gets all of my broadcast shows, Hulu covers those rare instances that something malfunctions and I miss a show I actually care about, while Netflix (streaming to the Xbox360] gets me all of the cable-only shows that I want [albeit a year late]. Oh, and I also get a handful of random unencrypted channels via QAM from comcast [my landlord has a $10 a month super-basic plan] - subject to the whims of comcast's annual channel reshuffles.

Now, if I could only get both Hulu and Netflix to work well under MythTV, I'd truly be able to have all my entertainment on one device . . .

Re:MythTV + Hulu + Netlix > Cable

[Digicrat]

That subject should have been "MythTV + Hulu + Netflix > Cable" ... apparently /. doesn't like straight '>' signs in the subject (though it accepts the HTML entity) ... I wonder whether that's a bug.

Re:Lawyer? How we got VHS

[Nom du Keyboard]

There's one class of customers that just wants the cheapest crap available, and damn the consequences.

And that's how we got VHS over Betamax.

Drat

[jollyreaper]

I guess I'll have to bittorrent the shows instead of recording them off the cable I'm not paying for either.

Gee I know set the timer on your VCR the old fashi

[BlackBloq]

Gee I know set the timer on your VCR the old fashion way... Set the clock on your VCR then set it to record off the main input channel of choice (line 1,2,3 or channel 3/4) at the time your show is on. WTF is this rocket science or are you so sad that you need to watch a different show as your show is on, cuz that's sad and retarded. If you paid for cable and you miss a show I don't see that harm in downloading it then erasing it. No bloody different than taping it in my view.

Re:Gee I know set the timer on your VCR the old fa

[BlackBloq]

Oh yea and the best show on TV is Spartacus Blood and Sand!

Re:Lawyer? How we got VHS

[I'm not really here]

VHS was longer tapes and cheaper. Lower quality, but the length of the tapes was one of the primary reasons for its success.

Waaah!

[drfreak]

Most of this stuff is available on-demand anyways through, you guessed it, Comcast!

VCR?

[Nitewing98]

VCR? What's that?

The Solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Who needs DVRs when you have torrents?
Don't get mad, get even.

Re:DTA do not get full payed for line up / CSN CHI

[Fastball]

Sure sentence somewhere there. But not able +.

Seriously, put the mobile down, and keep your hands on the steering wheel and eyes on the road when you're driving.

if you are tech inclined get MythTV

[Dan667]

It even skips commercials without even needing a remote key press. Is it work to set up? Yes, but once you have one there is no going back. You are in control of what you watch.

I don't understand...

[Anonymous Coward]

Most VCRs lack IR blasters so the fact that comcast is moving more and more programming to digitial/cable box required is much more significant than anything else.

If what is being claimed is that there is an extra button you need to press to change a channel after inputting it into the remote control I don't see any documentation in the link in TFA to support that? Such a scheme would seem only to piss everyone off and needlessly generate complaints?

IR Blasting Isn't The Issue

[Anonymous Coward]

An IR blaster is not what's needed; what's needed is for a cable box to change its own channel.

1) Find a program using the onscreen guide
2) Set the cable box to tune its output to that cable channel when the program comes on
3) The cable box will output that signal on Video-Out (RCA) and Channel 4 (coax/tuner signal)
4) Set the VCR to record on Channel 4 or Video-Out

VCR owners don't need to have the cable box change the VCR's tuner channel. Some VCRs don't even use tuners.

So maybe the 2MB flash database isn't big enough to store schedules days in advance, but it has nothing to do with the IR.

Re:Gee I know set the timer on your VCR the old fa

[Hamsterdan]

It sure will work for shows on *different* channels...

And downloading is not an option when you have a really small internet package (because, you know, you don't need more than email?)

What they did was not OK. Besides, those IR codes don't take that much space, otherwise you wouldn't find universal remotes at the dollar store.

UTOPIA

[butlerm]

You mean like UTOPIA? Municipal fiber / Ethernet infrastructure. Multiple ISPs, telephone, and video providers run on different VLANs. World class bandwidth at affordable prices. The sticking point is the deployment cost. $3K per connected home / business must be funded one way or another, and it takes a long time to recover an investment like that.

Re:UTOPIA

[Anonymous Coward]

The sticking point is the deployment cost.

Along with the fact that you have to live in Utah to get it.

my $0.02

[lindoran]

here's the deal, I work for a cable operator (not comcast) so I'm fairly consumer non-partial (though i realize the presence of an industry bias ) I go on between 8-10 trouble calls a day and over the span of 6 years I've probably thought 20 people how to set a delay timer to record to VHS or even DVD-R. in my experience I've put more DVR's in than that in a month. Weather this is because people don't want the trouble of setting a delay timer in two places or having to watch what you are recording OR simply wanting a DVR remains to be seen. Cable as an industry has a right to offer products however they feel they can recover their cost --- because cable (or subscription video service for that matter) is a business. throwing the monopoly card doesn't quite work any more because their are simpley too many choices. For example dish subscription TV service, uverse (or other VOtP services) or... heaven forbid FREE TV SERVICE OFF THE AIR. so perhaps its just me but I really don't see the point of the whole argument. Add to all of that the feature being argued wasn't well received by anybody who I have ever shown it to.

Re:Can buy the same boxes in Canada that C* forces

[lindoran]

tru2way was not industry developed, it didn't meet the needs of the rapidly expanding need for network flexibility. another point cable boxes are expensive case in point (the TiVO) they are typically between 300 and 400 us... why is 7$ / mo for a box unreasonable if when it breaks you get a new one and you don't have to pay for the trouble call in most cases ether. People have been paying for convenience of replacement for a long time ever hear of a little thing called insurance. Besides that fact you CAN purchase your own set top box as long as it supports ocap your good to go with a cable provided cable card.

also the TV manufacturers killed tru2way, their were 3 tvs available that sported the product and all 3 were horrible failures at supplying support for their product. The fact of the matter is that as an industry to remain competitive we have to continuity adapt our product to bring the services that our subscribers want. you don't see AT&T getting crap for their set top boxes not working with TiVO but when the cable company trys to supply a product that works fairly well we are bunglers. I don't see the point of the argument i guess. working in the industry this one feature hasn't come up a lot. at least not as much as people asking about the DVR and weather or not i have one on my truck.

Who cares?

[kamk2k8]

I fail to see why this is a problem for anyone: why in god's name would you use a VCR when data can be had for under a dollar a GB, do you have some weird fetish because it reminds you of better times? I don't see how else you could use a VCR and also be a viewer of a website LIKE THIS

VCR users raise hands

[dugeen]

As requested (handup). I use my video tape recorders regularly. Quality might not be quite so good, but I'll never wake up one day to find that all my recordings have been remotely erased, or DRMed, by the service provider. I will give up my analogue technology when you prise it from my cold dead fingers.

Re:VCR users raise hands

[16384]

I have a DVD recorder, much more practical and with better quality. It's affordable and it can record on rewritable discs. The reliability of the rw discs varies a lot, some will stand only 2 or 3 re-writes, but some others will last much more.

Re:VCR users raise hands

[kerashi]

For most things I use the DVR of my Dish Network receiver, however for broadcast TV I usually use a VCR (it's a combination VCR/DVD recorder, but I have tons of old tapes laying around). Mom has to have her Oprah and Dr. Phil.

Re:VCR users raise hands

[snooo53]

I have a DVD recorder too, but the problem for me is changing discs all the time. Don't get me wrong, there's a ton of advantages to DVDs. But if I go over 2 hours on a DVD the pixelation is too much to put up with. But a VCR recording in SLP is more watchable than my DVD recorder doing the same 4 or 6 hours. Sure the picture isn't as crisp, and you have wait while fast forwarding to get to the next show, but I find the pixellation in fast moving scenes far more annoying any of the VCR's disadvantages. Now practically this is all just a big rant, because what I find myself doing is just recording less rather than bothering with VHS anyway.

I really wish there were some cheaper options for DVD recorders with HDDs that were say $200 or less instead of $500. I mean when you get to the $500 range, sucking it up and paying for Tivo seems to make more sense.

Re:VCR users raise hands

[daveime]

but I'll never wake up one day to find that all my recordings have been remotely erased, or DRMed, by the service provider.

True, but your cat pissing on analogue tapes will seriously ruin your day. As will leaving them near any electromagnetic sources such as stereo speakers. No to mention heat and cold differentials affecting the physical tape, moisture which tends to deposit a nice coating of mould on tapes after a while, and the all time favourite, when the VCR machine itself decides to eat your tape.

We don't need no stinking modern technology here, you go tell the man to stick his new-fangled digital up his bum.

Oh, and get off my lawn.

two better words

[Anonymous Coward]

municipal monopolies

your numbers are off

[Anonymous Coward]

Here in Central NJ Comcast charges me $16.95/mo for a dual tuner HD cable box, able to record two HD programs at once.

If I had a TiVo I'd need what, two CableCards PLUS a monthly TiVo subscription?

No, just one CableCard PLUS a monthly TiVo subscription gets you a dual-tuner HD cable box-replacement and ComCast doesn't charge for your first CableCard, so ... $12.95/mo. Of course you have to buy the TiVo hardware and amortize that over your usage timeline so it's not actually less expensive unless you're willing to keep the box for a couple of years.

I miss TiVo's added features/interface, but saving $20/month is pretty good.

You're not saving any money. Selecting the Comcast box only got you an extended hardware warranty. Good geeks always buy the extended warranty...

Re:Lawyer? How we got VHS

[digitalunity]

You are correct.

Cassettes didn't beat 8 track because it was better quality either. They were cheaper and smaller.

And while we're on the topic of media... I switched from VHS to DVD because the media lasted longer and fast forwarding and rewinding is faster. Why is it when I put a DVD in, I have to fuck with the remote for 30 seconds to get to the goddamned menu because of "Acceptable user operations"?

Who the fuck decided the media producers could decide when I can fast forward, rewind, pause or go to the next track?

The most ubiquitous DRM is in every household already and it's obnoxious. Bluray isn't any better either.

Re:Lawyer? How we got VHS

[FireFury03]

Who the fuck decided the media producers could decide when I can fast forward, rewind, pause or go to the next track?

You did, by deciding to use a DVD player that cares about the restricted user operations flags. Go get a DVD player that ignores them (or even better: auto-skips any content that is flags as unskippable).

hope they fix their bugs too

[Anonymous Coward]

If only they'd fix their crappy response time to pushing the buttons, I might not miss my TiVo quite so much.

Re:Lawyer? How we got VHS

[Ceiynt]

I am interested in your product and wish to purchase one. Please let me know how to get one.

Re:Lawyer? How we got VHS

[FireFury03]

I am interested in your product and wish to purchase one. Please let me know how to get one.

Pretty much all the Free software for DVD playing ignores the restricted user operations flags. My MythTV set top box does this by default...

I can remember being quite shocked at not being able to skip stuff when I first tried using my parents' DVD player since it is not something I've ever experienced on my own hardware (nor is it something I would personally ever put up with - if I bought a device that exhibited this behaviour it would go straight back to the shop as defective).

Hmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't use Comcast to fix my breakfast either - I have to do that manually, too. Maybe I'll sue.

Post Free Market

[Punctuated_Equilibri]

If you think that there should be "National Cable TV Administration" that would take over all the cable tv companies and provide cable tv as a public service, and that that would be more consumer-friendly and provide better service, I gape in amazement.

If you believe we should change the regulatory environment, one way or another, unless you are going to go all Hugo Chavez and ignore the existing laws, you are talking about a multi-year if not multi-decade effort.

Either way we are talking about slow, tactical changes to a complex regulated environment. "More regulation" vs "more competition" comes down to what initiatives and how they are drafted. Like the parent post.

The heated philosophical debate on this just shows how people like to hear the sound of their own voices.

Re:Post Free Market

[jedidiah]

...sounds a lot like the Interstate Freeway system actually.

You're whining that monopolists should not have their monopolies stripped from them.
They've all basically gained free passage through cities and now are abusing those
rights of way that were probably gained far too easily. Much like robber barons of
old, they are abusing the corporate welfare that's been granted them.

This stuff probably should have never been granted to private corporations and should
have been held by the relevant local municipality just like roads are and many utilities. ...and of course the administration doesn't have to be national. That's just unecessary
hyperbole to make the whole thing sound more nasty than it would really be.

Re:That's interesting...

[TheRaven64]

Who said anything about a laptop? A projector costs less than a big TV and a decent sized LCD monitor costs about the same amount. My 28" TV died, and I replaced it with a projector connected to a spare computer and a DVD player. Now I get a bigger picture, no ads, and to no messing around trying to record things so I can watch them when I want.

I also didn't say anything about throwing away a TV. A lot of people leaving home for the first time are simply not buying them in the first place. They've got a computer already, they can watch TV shows on it, why buy a dedicated machine for it?

Customer Ignorance

[Lorien_the_first_one]

Perhaps it would then follow that customer ignorance of how a supplier makes its money is a requirement in capitalism. If every business relies upon lies of omission in order to generate a profit, then I think the problem is much bigger than the question of whether or not the market is really free.

The question then becomes whether or not the customer is informed enough to make a profitable decision. To put this in perspective, the most successful businesses employ many years of experience focusing on suppliers. Their collective intelligence about their suppliers create downward pressure on pricing since they know more about a supplier than any single individual could.

To me, the cell phone bill is a perfect example of how customer ignorance works to the benefit of the service provider.

Hmm..

[crossmr]

For us techies there might be a way around this, but ordinary VCR enthusiasts and owners of other recorders are left in the dust. Anyone know a good antitrust lawyer?

I'm getting the sneaking suspicion that kdawson might have changed his name... it seems strange that all that kdawson used to be every story and now that I don't see him anymore timothy seems to be here. And every time I read a story and go "Goddammit kdawson" and then look at the summary it says "timothy".

I can't imagine that many "techies" who would still use a VCR (and yes you few outliers who are going to reply and regale us with tales of how you use a VCR powered by maggots and compost are excepted)

what is with the sensationalist talk of antitrust lawyers. Is there a clause in your user agreement that states you must be provided with channel switching capabilities that go on forever?

Re:Hmm..

[daveime]

Live-a-lie Timmy !

Although I always pictured kdawson more as J-J-Jimmy B-b-be-errrrr-balmer. He does seem to stutter his stories over multiple days.

Bit Torrent - The Great Equalizer

[Junior Samples]

You can still use bit torrent to to download the programming that you want!

But then, if your ISP is Comcast, it may take a little longer.

The over flow feed is called csn plus but + is use

[Joe The Dragon]

The over flow feed is called csn plus but + is used all the time by papers and in the guide.

Thanks for sharing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Presumably you'd rather be sculpting or reading Proust instead... ;-)

Re:Lawyer? How we got VHS

[JasterBobaMereel]

VHS was better, just not technically better

I was better at the things people cared about (Convenience : a whole movie on one tape), and price (Cheaper)

I was initially worse on the things people did not care about (Picture quality, tape wear)

Comcast were better on two counts - Cost, and availability - Where they have competition they are cheaper where they do not they are a effective monopoly ...

Re:Lawyer? How we got VHS

[Anonymous Coward]

Who the fuck decided the media producers could decide when I can fast forward, rewind, pause or go to the next track?

It's amusing to think that the only thing that would make this go away is somebody sociopathic to start killing people in the RIAA/MPAA/verizon/comcast/whatever when they do something retarded like force the playback of advertisements nobody is watching anyway.

And people wonder where terrorists come from. It's that they're wrong in the head, and you did something someone should bitch at you for, and instead they just stabbed you in the throat.

Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

comcast DVRs use the same SEAGATE hardware and TIVO software, they are no different...AND, idiot COMCAST doesnt make the set top MOTOROLA or SA/CISCO does...

XBMC + Hulu + Netflix + BW3's

[Anonymous Coward]

well I guess I only need to explain BW3's you see, it's this place that plays a lot of sports games on large TV's and has alcohol and bar food; in fact some may argue it is a bar! That was the only thing missing from my previous setup. (Still cheaper than Dish/Direct and I live 7 miles from the nearest town :-)

99.95% Digital QAM/ClearQAM

[Anonymous Coward]

8 months ago, Comcast converted my area into mostly digital channels and requires a digital tuner for all but 5 good/network channels. The analog channels left are just the 15 shopping and 6 local access channels. NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox, CW, WB, a local "network" and a few spanish channels are still analog.

Not to be mad, but they left about 100 channels in ClearQAM, so my media center PVR is working except for premium, non-network HD and the other 300 channels on the system. Sadly, my dual HDTV/QAM tuner only works with 1 method at a time and changing is like reinstalling the setup from scratch. Basically, I'm forced to choose between analog OR digital ClearQAM tuning by the PVR software.

The short answer is the VCR stopped working as a recorder in any useful way back in August. OTOH, ClearQAM recording ROCKS, so overall I'm actually happier and record all the 2nd level ClearQAM channels nicely except the FOX-HD channel often fails due to low signal.

I have a TiVo S2 that is still connected to the digital receiver and working 99.95% the time via IR blaster. Every once in a while it fails to change to the correct channel, but it has always worked with FOX-HD.

Tivo Fans stand up

[Anonymous Coward]

Another strong arm tactic a cable company. My money will go to a provider that caters to my needs. The cable/Sat/Phone companies seem a bit full of themselves. I'll go with a provider that will allow me to use Tivo. Plain and simple.

Problem solved

[OhHellWithIt]

Like you, I don't have cable; I rely on broadcast. For a long time, my justification was that I didn't see any reason to pay money to encourage my daughter to watch more television. Besides, she's perfectly happy watching her stuff via the web on the DSL link.

My in-laws still use multiple VCRs

[flibbidyfloo]

However, they just have basic cable and don't use a cable box, so this won't affect them. However, as Comcast is slowly switching even their basic service to low-level encryption, requiring decoding for all channels, it looks like they will finally be dragged into the DVR age along with the rest of us. This is why everyone hates Kabletown.

Programming a VCR

[sjanich]

Related Question: Does anybody reading SlashDot not know how to program a recording on their VCR? I find that hard to believe.

VCR

[Anonymous Coward]

Forget VCRs, what this means is that nobody with an external PVR would be cable to record unless they had an IR link setup, which not everybody does.

This in effect means that you can't set the box up to flip channels with a DVDR or a hard disc recorder, either. You 'd need to use manually change the channel, or pay to use ComCast's service, to record two programs on different channels on the same day. This sucks big time and is clearly a move aimed at forcing you to upgrade your service.

Comcast have effectively neutered subscribers who do not have an integrated hard disc recorder in their set top boxes.

FiOS ask for it by name...

[Anonymous Coward]

Call Verizon and ask when/if FiOS will be available in your area. Comcast is DOA - ancient technology that they are trying to keep moving and suck every last penny out of, before it goes completely belly up. I just upgraded to 35/35 Mb/s on FiOS and they don't have any "capping" nonsense...

The more I read stuff like this

[wwphx]

the more I love my Tivo. Yes, it has its limitations, but there are limits to how much I want to mess with things outside of work. I just want things to work. Tivo might screw with me, but at least my cable provider cannot.

OMFG

[Anonymous Coward]

Comcraptic is the EA of the cable industry apparently. Just when you think that they can't possibly sink any lower to screw more $$$ out of people... Apparently Comcast is a money printing machine that is going into high gear now, just wait until they start restricting data access under the guise of traffic shaping. (Their cable TV quality isn't that good either, given all the breakup that I see on my Dad's digital version which is extremely hilarious(and sad) because I've opted to retain analog until they force me to switch to digital and have no breakup...)

Now if we only had some REAL competition in the cable industry instead of local monopolies, granted I could get TV elsewhere, however data would still be a problem for reasonable speeds/latencies(which may not be much of problem any longer once Comcraptic gets their traffic shaping going...)

ROFLMAO "- Switch to Comcast's DVR." -- this is NOT free guys, they get to charge a "rental" fee and not even a reasonable one as you could buy the equipment(if you could) in less than a year at their monthly rates, sort of like their "modems"
Oh! Wait! Let's give Comcraptic even more monies... WTF?!

re: Libertarian free market leads to feudalism?

[King_TJ]

A few thoughts in response to all of this:

1. It seems to me that no matter WHAT political system you put in place, you wind up with the "haves" and the "have nots" anyway. I think it's foolish to believe that ANY form of government can magically make this go away. Under many political systems, it's those IN the government who constitute the majority of the "haves".

2. I think the important component of Libertarian philosophy isn't the "Utopian ideal" portion, but the fact that in real, every-day practice, it tries to ensure that each individual is able to live his/her life with the minimum amount of negative impact on personal freedom. Most political systems mandate that a portion of your earnings (labor) be taken from you by force, for others in the government to spend however they see fit. This doesn't *guarantee* anything, but at least it empowers the individual -- rather than letting an elite group of individuals at the top of the power structure call the shots for them.

Record by Time?

[sherriw]

I assume you can still record with a VCR by setting the date and time of the recording right?

comcast doesn't know about this news...

[tahyk]

I just contacted comcast about some other issues. I asked about this as well:

Comcast (Ramon) > Is there anything else I can assist you with today?
Me > One more thing: I just learned that you removed the ability to schedule VCR-compatible channel flipping any time more than a few hours in advance for people who don't buy the $20/month DVR service.
Me > Is it affects both digital and analog subscriptions?
Me > Is it affect my DVR capabilities if I'm using a computeR?
Comcast (Ramon) > No, Me. That is a different not true.
Comcast (Ramon) > We did not remove the ability to remove the ability to schedule VCR.
Comcast (Ramon) > If so, you will be receiving a notification about this.
Me > http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/04/11/2256251/Comcast-Disables-VCR-Scheduling-In-New-Guide
Me > than you might want to answer this news officially
Me > will I have the option to save this chat after we end the session?
Comcast (Ramon) > Let me double check our tools here as I don't see a notification about disabling of the VCR functions.
Me > I think it refers to channel changing capabilities of 3rd party VCRs, it is not about comcast VCR service
Comcast (Ramon) > Thank you for that information.
Comcast (Ramon) > I don't see a notification about the disabling of the third party VCR service in our bulletin board.
Me > ok
Me > I will try after I fixed my service...
Me > thanks, no more questions
Comcast (Ramon) > I believe that will not happen now as we are offering cable cards for TiVo and this device is a third party equipment.

So they don't know about such limitations. This news might not be true

If I was a VCR owner, I'd be raising my hand...

[Tomsk70]

....if I wasn't *too old*...

Re:Lawyer? How we got VHS

[MiniMike]

The information you requested is available in his newsletter.

Re: Libertarian free market leads to feudalism?

[epoxide]

in real, every-day practice, libertarianism in the U.S. is about property rights, not personal freedom. Individual libertarians will cast aspersions on particular laws centered on codifiying personal speech and actions that they individually don't find objectionable, but are generally silent about government regulating the actions they do find objectionable. What libertarians focus on as a political group are property rights and business/tax regulation.

Re:Lawyer? How we got VHS

[mcgrew]

Cassettes didn't beat 8 track because it was better quality either.

Actually, eight tracks should have been better quality, as the transport speed was twice cassettes' speed, but they weren't. The powers that be decided illogically that eight tracks were going to be for cars, which had terrible acoustics (worse than today's cars) and low-end radios... when eight tracks first came out, FM in cars was new. So the players sucked and the recordings were poor quality as well.

The cassettes actually sounded better than eight tracks, especially after the advent of dolby; you could fit them in a shirt pocket (an eight track was the same size as 4 cassettes); the clever design of the eight track transport made them more prone to being eaten by the player and harder to repair when they did get eaten; and there were four places on the tape where it had to change tracks. Many songs would fade out, change track, and fade back in.

Eight track tapes sucked in every way. The only thing that made them superior was the transport speed, and that speed was never used, making them inferior to cassettes in avery way.

Why is it when I put a DVD in, I have to fuck with the remote for 30 seconds to get to the goddamned menu because of "Acceptable user operations"?

I agree, it's a clusterfuck. Some movies do it right, in that you put it in and the movie starts, but most are just retarded insults to their customers.

Who the fuck decided the media producers could decide when I can fast forward, rewind, pause or go to the next track?

The fucktard who designed your DVD player. Unfortunately they seemingly were all designed by the same fucktard.

Not everyone gets an upgrade

[CodingHero]

If you're upset that they're scrapping the service, just move to the greater northern Virginia area. The on-screen guide we get looks like something from 1990.

Re:That's interesting...

[Lumpy]

Not a decent projector.

My 42" Panasonic Plasma cost me $600.00 at sears. and it's viewable with all the windows open in the room. The cheapest projector that does not need the room dimmed starts at $3500.00 and I really need a $7800.00 projector to work with windows shades wide open and lights on.

Yes my set is only 720p (the HORROR!) but I get HD quality, can watch all the broadcast HD in full res (720p is the MAX res broadcast sends and will ever send) My xbox 360 looks great, and netflix looks even better.

owning a TV has advantages, keeping the room bright while watching is one of the bigger ones.

Re:Lawyer? How we got VHS

[KDR_11k]

The fucktard who designed your DVD player. Unfortunately they seemingly were all designed by the same fucktard.

I believe it's a requirement of the DVD license that you need to use the patents and trademarks involved.

Re:Lawyer? How we got VHS

[digitalunity]

I'm pretty sure the content owners, hardware designers and DVDCCA got together and said "we can make more money by forcing consumers to watch ads for movies, even years after the movies have come out. Get to work."

And with the wonders of patents, the DVDCCA forces all DVD format licensees to build players that honor the AUP table. It's pretty anti-consumer, but with patents they had a stranglehold on the format and consumers couldn't do much about it. Of course this is the same DVDCCA that forces manufacturers to produce DVD players that honor region coding.

This irks me even more than acceptable user operations tables. The movie producers are basically saying "globalization is only good if we can charge every penny each individual customer will pay". I know all companies seek perfect discrimination, but it shouldn't be that way. Content producers shouldn't decide WHERE you can view your legally purchased(not licensed) media.

Sigh, I need a hobby. Bitching about copyrights gets really tiring. Fuck the media companies. I should have just said that from the start and saved my finger strength for a more compelling topic.

Re:Lawyer? How we got VHS

[Lunzo]

My favorite example - a free DVD came with the Saturday paper of finalists in some short film festival. It still had the copyright/piracy stuff at the start that you couldn't skip - on a free disk. Who's losing money if I do copy it?