Yes, they could, but their strategy is to continue with the current model and lock people in with unique content. For now that means sports, as they've lost out on everything else while they were sleeping.
If they really wanted to copy the competition, Comcast would create their own channels and fund high-quality programming that isn't available elsewhere.
I think they're waking up now, but I don't think they know what to do about the situation, so they're digging their heels in.
The truth is that many more people are cutting cords than the numbers reflect. Cable companies mask this by creating bundles that have more services that are cheaper than going with just data. Many people keep a minimum TV service because it's cheaper than the unbundled Internet service. Some cable companies put data caps on only for non-TV customers. They want to pad their phone sales, too, so they'll do the same tricks there, making a triple play cheaper than a double play, at least for the initial contract period. (I did that once and never even had a cable modem with a phone-out plug.)
If cable companies were forced to price Internet, TV, and phone completely separately, I think the number of cord cutters would jump dramatically.
The first plan that they dropped was for software-only cable cards. This would mean you wouldn't have to pay a monthly rental fee for your cable card. If you terminate service or start new service, there would be no physical equipment to mess with.
What I don't understand is why you can't already go out and buy a cable-card set-top box and stop renting one from the cable company. Unfortunately, with the rental cost of a cable card, it might not save that much money.
The previous plan to require the cable companies to support a software-only cable card was better. That would allow TVs and set-top boxes to be built with native cable support--you would just need to do some configuring. It would use the same encrypted QAM signal that is coming in over the coax.
The app approach can be helpful, but it involves streaming the channels over the Internet instead of using the QAM signal that is already being sent. This has a number of downsides. Streamed video may be more highly compressed. It may be subject to dropped packets. Streaming may be subject to WiFi interference in places where coax already runs to the TV.
Another advantage of the virtual cable card is that cable cards allow for recording. I know people are shifting to streaming on demand as the most popular option, but many of us like to record on DVRs. I love my MythTV, and many people love their TiVos.
And then there's the privacy issue. How many times have I heard people complain about smart TVs sending data back to corporate servers for who-knows-what purpose? With a streaming app, you can't easily block that.
All said, what really makes sense is both. Require both a freely licensed streaming app and a software-only cable card. Prohibit charging a rental fee for cable cards or set-top boxes until they comply with the regulation.
There are laws that prohibit becoming a monopoly by merging with your competition. That's why mergers have to be approved by the government (many governments in the case of multinational corporations). Often mergers require spinning off divisions or other conditions to maintain some level of competition. Some have complained that regulators have been too lax or have applied the wrong standards in approving deals that lessened competition, but the point is that we do have laws. Amazon in acquired a lot of smaller companies, but most of their dominance has been grown internally.
There are laws that prohibit companies from abusing their dominance to force out competitors or to use their monopoly in one market to force a monopoly in another. These are the rules that led to the AT&T breakup and almost lead to a Microsoft breakup. In retrospect, many people thing the AT&T breakup was the best thing that could have happened to the company, and I would assert that Microsoft would have been a much better off if it had broken up into several separate companies. These are the rules that Google is often accused of breaking, using their dominance in search to gain dominance in other areas. All large companies have to watch out for these rules.
But if a company becomes a monopoly without buying out their competition and doesn't use their position in such a way to block potential competitors, then they are doing nothing illegal.
In short, there are no laws against monopolies in general, only against abusive monopolies.
Yes, it does make sense. They're already using the rocket engines to land. The trick is that they're landing empty, so the thrust required is tiny compared to the thrust required for launch.
No, there's no good reason for the solar shingles to use inferior PV cells, but they do. The shingle design is bad because they're much smaller than a typical panel, requiring much more wiring for a given surface area.
I'm guessing that they'll have something that mimics a metal roof more than a shingle roof, but we'll find out soon enough.
What would be absolutely revolutionary would be something that is self-healing, such that roofers can drive nails through it, cut holes in it, etc., and have it still work. Just roll out sheets of it over the wood, nail it down, and hook up wires at the top (running down through the attic to the side of the house). I don't think we're going to see that anytime soon.
Standard panels are mounted over the top of standard roofing shingles, often with a small air gap. There have been some solar shingle products in the past where special photovoltaic shingles are used instead of asphalt shingles. The problems include that they're much more expensive, much less efficient, and must more labor intensive to install. From the sound of the hype, I'm expecting a new product that overcomes all three of those shortfalls.
Amazon has charged tax in most states for quite a while. If they have any physical presence, they have to collect tax, including warehouses. Around here, they're now using their own vans for deliveries instead of UPS or USPS. They reached a deal with a number of states to start collecting tax a few years ago.
Are there still any states where Amazon doesn't collect sales tax? (Well, other than states like Oregon and New Hampshire that don't have a sales tax?)
What I really hope this means is that if I need to return something that I bought on Amazon (if it was fulfilled by Amazon), and I need to return it, that I can do so by driving it to the Amazon store instead of dealing with packing it back up and shipping it back to them. That's the one part of online shopping that I hate dealing with, and this would give me another option.
If the planet is lifeless, then we need to seed it with microbes to prepare it for the larger life forms. You'll probably need plankton in the oceans before they can sustain fish. It might only take a century to have thriving oceans, but it could be much longer depending on how much the chemistry of the water and atmosphere has to be adjusted by the microbes first.
I would think of this as being pre-colonization. The probes would analyze the planets in the target star system, determine if any are both suitable for life and lifeless, and then determine the fastest way to bring those planets up to human standards.
I don't think we're talking millions of years here. Depending on the state of the planet when found, it would be hundreds to thousands of years.
The probe could even include more advanced species as frozen embryos with artificial gestation pods to introduce all sorts of species when the conditions are right. That could even include humans.
The question for me is not if we should do this, but when we should do this. What technologies should we wait for before building and launching the probes? How urgently do we need to get an off-system presence to ensure the survival of humanity?
After they first denied then ignored the leaky Galaxy S7 Active, I don't have much confidence in Samsung. This time they're afraid of more damage than just the phone, so they have to take it seriously, but with the Active, they just said they would replace them under warranty if they failed (about half would, but who is going to test theirs?). Considering that it's a known defect and they didn't recall them, I hope they get sued for data loss.
As an EMC employee (make that Dell Technologies now), I find that absolutely hilarious!
I can report that there is absolutely no worry about jobs in my engineering division. Dell wouldn't have bought us if they wanted to scale back the product I'm working on.
I'm glad they mentioned Dartmouth College. The administration at Dartmouth has long tried to restrict alcohol, while the culture there fully embraces it. There's even an unofficial mascot, Keggy the Keg.
Peter Koutoujian: He's the Middlesex Sheriff. In Massachusetts, a sheriff is mostly responsible for prisoners. Koutoujian has been working for prison reform to make changes so that people who are released are less likely to return. I have no idea why someone would mount a challenge to him--he's generally popular, and I doubt that there's much risk of him losing the primary.
Bob Jubinville: He's the member of the Governor's Council from the second district (of eight). In most other states, the senate will approve gubernatorial appointments, but in Massachusetts, we have a separate body to do this. Jubinville has been very independent in his role, sometimes being the only vote against a nominee. He's very concerned that judges ruling on criminal cases have a good understanding of addiction, as that is often a significant factor in the circumstances leading up to the infraction. He makes a significant effort to attend public events throughout his huge district, so I see him regularly, which is not something you can usually say about someone in his office.
State Rep: If you're actually in my district (parts of Framingham and all of Ashland), let me know, and I'll fill you in.
If the idea of your kernel no longer getting point releases bothers you, you should stick with the Long Term Stability releases. For most users, this is done by default using the distribution kernels. For users that build their own kernels, upgrading to the next release isn't much more difficult than upgrading to the next bugfix point release. If you're building your own kernel and use commercial kernel modules (e.g., VMWare), then stick with LTS kernels to minimize version conflicts.
So for most Linux users, this story is a non-story.
Skype works fine on my Android phone, and it works on my mother's Windows laptop. When we tried Google Hangouts, something didn't work. We're sticking with Skype because the core functionality works for us: video phone calls.
Yes, it has it's problems: *) Encryption is sub-par. *) It drops connections if my phone jumps networks.
But it works on the platforms we need it to work on, and it solves our problem. Switching would require that the core video conferencing of the new alternative be noticeably better. Otherwise it's not worth the effort to walk my mother through it.
Seriously, this was working just fine twenty years ago. Why is this still a problem? Granted, CUSeeMe didn't have encryption, but you could do multi-way video conferences, and it was cross-platform.
Skype at least covers all the major platforms. We use it for a weekly video call with our son's grandparents across the country who would otherwise rarely see him. It's not perfect, but it works well enough (Android to Windows laptop).
Google Hangouts also covers all the major platforms. We tried it for our weekly video call, but ran into too many glitches, and Skype does the job.
This may add end-to-end encryption, which is a plus, but it needs to be significantly better than Skype to take over. That means a *good* desktop interface, as well as mobile. You might even be able to do an HTML5 version and have it work everywhere.
If you're only looking at the Presidential general election, then it's probably true that Facebook posts aren't going to be flipping votes. But that's not the only election. Political posts can make a huge difference in primaries. Political posts can also make a difference in down-ticket races.
Several times people have told me that my posts have convinced them to change their vote in a primary to a different candidate in the same party. I once had someone tell me that they flipped their vote to a candidate in a different party in a general election (down-ticket) based on my Facebook post (in what turned out to be the closest state-wide race on the ballot).
For example:
If you're in Massachusetts, please vote in the state primary on September 8th. If you take a Democratic ballot, I've met the Middlesex Sheriff, Peter Koutoujian, several times, and he's working on important criminal justice reforms. Please vote for him. Also, Bob Jubinville is doing an excellent job on the Governor's Council--please reelect him (I could go on and on and on as to the reasons why). If you're in Tom Sannicandro's district, he's stepping down, and Brett Walker is the best of the three seeking to replace him; I was briefly running myself and withdrew to support him--I'm that convinced he's the best candidate.
With the fingerprint scanner, you can add multiple fingerprints. This can be useful for reading the same finger in a different orientation, recording fingerprints from both thumbs, or letting multiple people unlock the same phone. There's no technical reason that they couldn't do the same with the iris scanner.
In my case, I like to let my wife unlock my phone so that she can handle it if someone texts me while I'm driving (or other similar situations). I'm sure lots of other people have legitimate reasons for wanting to have multiple people easily unlock the same phone.
I use the Hacker's Keyboard, but some apps require a password and don't let me rotate the screen. The profile keyboard doesn't have all the symbols as conveniently on the screen. I know you can turn them on, but I'm not happy with that, either.
Also, I've had to enter my password on other devices, such as to log in on the Xerox copier. (I often use it to scan to PDF, which requires logging in. I call it "unprinting.")
So regardless of the device or keyboard, the period is the one special character that seems to always be available as a primary key without any alternate keyboard or shifting.
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Yes, they could, but their strategy is to continue with the current model and lock people in with unique content. For now that means sports, as they've lost out on everything else while they were sleeping.
If they really wanted to copy the competition, Comcast would create their own channels and fund high-quality programming that isn't available elsewhere.
I think they're waking up now, but I don't think they know what to do about the situation, so they're digging their heels in.
The truth is that many more people are cutting cords than the numbers reflect. Cable companies mask this by creating bundles that have more services that are cheaper than going with just data. Many people keep a minimum TV service because it's cheaper than the unbundled Internet service. Some cable companies put data caps on only for non-TV customers. They want to pad their phone sales, too, so they'll do the same tricks there, making a triple play cheaper than a double play, at least for the initial contract period. (I did that once and never even had a cable modem with a phone-out plug.)
If cable companies were forced to price Internet, TV, and phone completely separately, I think the number of cord cutters would jump dramatically.
The first plan that they dropped was for software-only cable cards. This would mean you wouldn't have to pay a monthly rental fee for your cable card. If you terminate service or start new service, there would be no physical equipment to mess with.
What I don't understand is why you can't already go out and buy a cable-card set-top box and stop renting one from the cable company. Unfortunately, with the rental cost of a cable card, it might not save that much money.
The previous plan to require the cable companies to support a software-only cable card was better. That would allow TVs and set-top boxes to be built with native cable support--you would just need to do some configuring. It would use the same encrypted QAM signal that is coming in over the coax.
The app approach can be helpful, but it involves streaming the channels over the Internet instead of using the QAM signal that is already being sent. This has a number of downsides. Streamed video may be more highly compressed. It may be subject to dropped packets. Streaming may be subject to WiFi interference in places where coax already runs to the TV.
Another advantage of the virtual cable card is that cable cards allow for recording. I know people are shifting to streaming on demand as the most popular option, but many of us like to record on DVRs. I love my MythTV, and many people love their TiVos.
And then there's the privacy issue. How many times have I heard people complain about smart TVs sending data back to corporate servers for who-knows-what purpose? With a streaming app, you can't easily block that.
All said, what really makes sense is both. Require both a freely licensed streaming app and a software-only cable card. Prohibit charging a rental fee for cable cards or set-top boxes until they comply with the regulation.
There's no law against monopolies.
There are laws that prohibit becoming a monopoly by merging with your competition. That's why mergers have to be approved by the government (many governments in the case of multinational corporations). Often mergers require spinning off divisions or other conditions to maintain some level of competition. Some have complained that regulators have been too lax or have applied the wrong standards in approving deals that lessened competition, but the point is that we do have laws. Amazon in acquired a lot of smaller companies, but most of their dominance has been grown internally.
There are laws that prohibit companies from abusing their dominance to force out competitors or to use their monopoly in one market to force a monopoly in another. These are the rules that led to the AT&T breakup and almost lead to a Microsoft breakup. In retrospect, many people thing the AT&T breakup was the best thing that could have happened to the company, and I would assert that Microsoft would have been a much better off if it had broken up into several separate companies. These are the rules that Google is often accused of breaking, using their dominance in search to gain dominance in other areas. All large companies have to watch out for these rules.
But if a company becomes a monopoly without buying out their competition and doesn't use their position in such a way to block potential competitors, then they are doing nothing illegal.
In short, there are no laws against monopolies in general, only against abusive monopolies.
Mars has more than double the gravity of the Moon. .38G as opposed to .165G. That makes Mars a more suitable environment for human biology.
I'm not sure how much this matters, but it's probably a factor.
Yes, it does make sense. They're already using the rocket engines to land. The trick is that they're landing empty, so the thrust required is tiny compared to the thrust required for launch.
No, there's no good reason for the solar shingles to use inferior PV cells, but they do. The shingle design is bad because they're much smaller than a typical panel, requiring much more wiring for a given surface area.
I'm guessing that they'll have something that mimics a metal roof more than a shingle roof, but we'll find out soon enough.
What would be absolutely revolutionary would be something that is self-healing, such that roofers can drive nails through it, cut holes in it, etc., and have it still work. Just roll out sheets of it over the wood, nail it down, and hook up wires at the top (running down through the attic to the side of the house). I don't think we're going to see that anytime soon.
Standard panels are mounted over the top of standard roofing shingles, often with a small air gap. There have been some solar shingle products in the past where special photovoltaic shingles are used instead of asphalt shingles. The problems include that they're much more expensive, much less efficient, and must more labor intensive to install. From the sound of the hype, I'm expecting a new product that overcomes all three of those shortfalls.
Amazon has charged tax in most states for quite a while. If they have any physical presence, they have to collect tax, including warehouses. Around here, they're now using their own vans for deliveries instead of UPS or USPS. They reached a deal with a number of states to start collecting tax a few years ago.
Are there still any states where Amazon doesn't collect sales tax? (Well, other than states like Oregon and New Hampshire that don't have a sales tax?)
What I really hope this means is that if I need to return something that I bought on Amazon (if it was fulfilled by Amazon), and I need to return it, that I can do so by driving it to the Amazon store instead of dealing with packing it back up and shipping it back to them. That's the one part of online shopping that I hate dealing with, and this would give me another option.
If the planet is lifeless, then we need to seed it with microbes to prepare it for the larger life forms. You'll probably need plankton in the oceans before they can sustain fish. It might only take a century to have thriving oceans, but it could be much longer depending on how much the chemistry of the water and atmosphere has to be adjusted by the microbes first.
I would think of this as being pre-colonization. The probes would analyze the planets in the target star system, determine if any are both suitable for life and lifeless, and then determine the fastest way to bring those planets up to human standards.
I don't think we're talking millions of years here. Depending on the state of the planet when found, it would be hundreds to thousands of years.
The probe could even include more advanced species as frozen embryos with artificial gestation pods to introduce all sorts of species when the conditions are right. That could even include humans.
The question for me is not if we should do this, but when we should do this. What technologies should we wait for before building and launching the probes? How urgently do we need to get an off-system presence to ensure the survival of humanity?
The probe would have to be able to analyze the planets in the target system to look for any signs of native life, and switch from seeding to analysis.
Is it at least waterproof?
After they first denied then ignored the leaky Galaxy S7 Active, I don't have much confidence in Samsung. This time they're afraid of more damage than just the phone, so they have to take it seriously, but with the Active, they just said they would replace them under warranty if they failed (about half would, but who is going to test theirs?). Considering that it's a known defect and they didn't recall them, I hope they get sued for data loss.
As an EMC employee (make that Dell Technologies now), I find that absolutely hilarious!
I can report that there is absolutely no worry about jobs in my engineering division. Dell wouldn't have bought us if they wanted to scale back the product I'm working on.
I'm glad they mentioned Dartmouth College. The administration at Dartmouth has long tried to restrict alcohol, while the culture there fully embraces it. There's even an unofficial mascot, Keggy the Keg.
But to fully appreciate Dartmouth drinking, you need to understand Drinking Time: https://youtu.be/avYUL1A-WUM?t...
I have a Galaxy S7. Is there an easy way to tell if it is a regular LTE connection vs. an LTE Advanced connection?
Is there an app that will tell you what the theoretical bandwidth based on the channels in the current connection?
Peter Koutoujian: He's the Middlesex Sheriff. In Massachusetts, a sheriff is mostly responsible for prisoners. Koutoujian has been working for prison reform to make changes so that people who are released are less likely to return. I have no idea why someone would mount a challenge to him--he's generally popular, and I doubt that there's much risk of him losing the primary.
Bob Jubinville: He's the member of the Governor's Council from the second district (of eight). In most other states, the senate will approve gubernatorial appointments, but in Massachusetts, we have a separate body to do this. Jubinville has been very independent in his role, sometimes being the only vote against a nominee. He's very concerned that judges ruling on criminal cases have a good understanding of addiction, as that is often a significant factor in the circumstances leading up to the infraction. He makes a significant effort to attend public events throughout his huge district, so I see him regularly, which is not something you can usually say about someone in his office.
State Rep: If you're actually in my district (parts of Framingham and all of Ashland), let me know, and I'll fill you in.
If the idea of your kernel no longer getting point releases bothers you, you should stick with the Long Term Stability releases. For most users, this is done by default using the distribution kernels. For users that build their own kernels, upgrading to the next release isn't much more difficult than upgrading to the next bugfix point release. If you're building your own kernel and use commercial kernel modules (e.g., VMWare), then stick with LTS kernels to minimize version conflicts.
So for most Linux users, this story is a non-story.
Skype works fine on my Android phone, and it works on my mother's Windows laptop. When we tried Google Hangouts, something didn't work. We're sticking with Skype because the core functionality works for us: video phone calls.
Yes, it has it's problems:
*) Encryption is sub-par.
*) It drops connections if my phone jumps networks.
But it works on the platforms we need it to work on, and it solves our problem. Switching would require that the core video conferencing of the new alternative be noticeably better. Otherwise it's not worth the effort to walk my mother through it.
No thanks. I'll stick with CUSeeMe.
Seriously, this was working just fine twenty years ago. Why is this still a problem? Granted, CUSeeMe didn't have encryption, but you could do multi-way video conferences, and it was cross-platform.
Skype at least covers all the major platforms. We use it for a weekly video call with our son's grandparents across the country who would otherwise rarely see him. It's not perfect, but it works well enough (Android to Windows laptop).
Google Hangouts also covers all the major platforms. We tried it for our weekly video call, but ran into too many glitches, and Skype does the job.
This may add end-to-end encryption, which is a plus, but it needs to be significantly better than Skype to take over. That means a *good* desktop interface, as well as mobile. You might even be able to do an HTML5 version and have it work everywhere.
If you're only looking at the Presidential general election, then it's probably true that Facebook posts aren't going to be flipping votes. But that's not the only election. Political posts can make a huge difference in primaries. Political posts can also make a difference in down-ticket races.
Several times people have told me that my posts have convinced them to change their vote in a primary to a different candidate in the same party. I once had someone tell me that they flipped their vote to a candidate in a different party in a general election (down-ticket) based on my Facebook post (in what turned out to be the closest state-wide race on the ballot).
For example:
If you're in Massachusetts, please vote in the state primary on September 8th. If you take a Democratic ballot, I've met the Middlesex Sheriff, Peter Koutoujian, several times, and he's working on important criminal justice reforms. Please vote for him. Also, Bob Jubinville is doing an excellent job on the Governor's Council--please reelect him (I could go on and on and on as to the reasons why). If you're in Tom Sannicandro's district, he's stepping down, and Brett Walker is the best of the three seeking to replace him; I was briefly running myself and withdrew to support him--I'm that convinced he's the best candidate.
With the fingerprint scanner, you can add multiple fingerprints. This can be useful for reading the same finger in a different orientation, recording fingerprints from both thumbs, or letting multiple people unlock the same phone. There's no technical reason that they couldn't do the same with the iris scanner.
In my case, I like to let my wife unlock my phone so that she can handle it if someone texts me while I'm driving (or other similar situations). I'm sure lots of other people have legitimate reasons for wanting to have multiple people easily unlock the same phone.
I use the Hacker's Keyboard, but some apps require a password and don't let me rotate the screen. The profile keyboard doesn't have all the symbols as conveniently on the screen. I know you can turn them on, but I'm not happy with that, either.
Also, I've had to enter my password on other devices, such as to log in on the Xerox copier. (I often use it to scan to PDF, which requires logging in. I call it "unprinting.")
So regardless of the device or keyboard, the period is the one special character that seems to always be available as a primary key without any alternate keyboard or shifting.