Note that Time Warner already offers streaming ESPN. I'm betting that won't be counting against your 5GB.
So I still think it's effectively a net neutrality issue. The caps and overage charges are just the framework being put in place to allow them to violate net neutrality later.
And crippling my Internet connection so Time Warner's digital movies on demand are cheaper than Netflix streaming isn't a net neutrality problem? I guess if you view "net" as just TCP/IP that's true, but if you view "net" as the cable and the signals down it, then it's nonsense.
Time Warner already offer streaming ESPN. You can bet they won't be including those GB in your 5GB a month. So effectively, punitive per-GB data transfer fees are a way to violate net neutrality for video services.
All the other costs you talk about are incorporated into my monthly service fee already.
The point is, if I download 100GB instead of 1GB this month, all the costs for Time Warner are exactly the same, except for the backbone data transfer cost, which is about 3 cents per GB.
Re:"at war with my parents over who is in control"
on
Bringing Up Bill
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· Score: 1
Steve Jobs is known for exactly the same kinds of tantrums. Ballmer too. Maybe that's just the kind of person you have to be to dominate an industry?
Without the producers being able to subsidize niche channels through fees for their popular, flagship channels - which is, of course, exactly why they sell channels in packages like they do now - the price of those niche channels will go up dramatically for those who choose to subscribe to them.
I think you're wrong. The truly niche channels are currently usually sold only as add-ons or in premium packages, precisely because they don't have the clout to force their inclusion in the core packages. For example, if I wanted the Science Channel or Logo via DirecTV, I'd have to upgrade to the $61/month package. In the mean time, I was left subsidizing channels like ESPN and FOX News, which frankly don't need subsidy.
[I've written about the whole a la carte thing in more detail.]
There's no reason why cable companies can't continue to offer bundles of channels for those who prefer bundles. But they're going to need to start offering a la carte if they want to get back people like me. (Just canceled my satellite subscription for AppleTV.)
PBS and CSPAN programming are generally not available online.
PBS programming is available from the iTunes store. C-SPAN is available as live streams from their web site. In addition, some PBS stations have online streams of their shows.
I was talking about the market for unreliably gas-guzzling SUVs.
Yeah, if you're talking about cars, Toyota and Honda.
Re:What about MySQL?
on
Oracle Buys Sun
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Bertrand Model predicts that a duopoly pushes costs and profits down to marginal levels and is the ultimate result of any sufficiently competitive marketplace.
Supposing it forks, you would in essence end up with 3 different dialects of Java: Oracle, IBM, and RedHat (FOSS) which may or may not remain binary compatible.
I develop using OpenJDK and deploy on IBM JRE. I've yet to encounter any incompatibility between them. Are you actually aware of any proprietary extensions in the IBM Java runtime?
Re:What about MySQL?
on
Oracle Buys Sun
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· Score: 2, Insightful
In the long run, FOSS converges to one winner, challenged by many (much smaller) creatures.
According to economic theory, in most markets you get two market leaders--e.g. Coke and Pepsi, Bud and Miller, Ford and GM--and I don't see FOSS as any different.
Think about it: for almost every mature most-popular open source project, there's a second-place project that's superior.
Sendmail has postfix. MySQL has PostgreSQL. Apache has LigHTTPd. Emacs has vim. Python has Ruby. Git has bazaar. GNOME has KDE. Dia has Kivio. And so on.
If iPods were as picky about Music as they are about Movies, most people would conclude that they were proprietary.
iPod plays 3 audio formats: MPEG-1 layer III, MPEG-4, and Apple Lossless.
iPod plays 2 video formats: MPEG-4, and MPEG-4 with H.264.
It doesn't get a lot more standard than MPEG-4. I can play MPEG-4 on PSP, BlackBerry, Nokia N800, Mac, Linux, Windows, AppleTV, PS3. It's the industry standard, which makes it the most appropriate choice for the iPod.
Perhaps you should be asking yourself why you have so much video in weird formats like MPEG-4 codecs crammed into obsolete AVI containers.
Slashdot Mirror
Looks like it may have gone, but you can still get MLB.com premium audio and video through TW.
Note that Time Warner already offers streaming ESPN. I'm betting that won't be counting against your 5GB.
So I still think it's effectively a net neutrality issue. The caps and overage charges are just the framework being put in place to allow them to violate net neutrality later.
And crippling my Internet connection so Time Warner's digital movies on demand are cheaper than Netflix streaming isn't a net neutrality problem? I guess if you view "net" as just TCP/IP that's true, but if you view "net" as the cable and the signals down it, then it's nonsense.
And that's exactly the problem.
Time Warner already offer streaming ESPN. You can bet they won't be including those GB in your 5GB a month. So effectively, punitive per-GB data transfer fees are a way to violate net neutrality for video services.
All the other costs you talk about are incorporated into my monthly service fee already.
The point is, if I download 100GB instead of 1GB this month, all the costs for Time Warner are exactly the same, except for the backbone data transfer cost, which is about 3 cents per GB.
Steve Jobs is known for exactly the same kinds of tantrums. Ballmer too. Maybe that's just the kind of person you have to be to dominate an industry?
I think you're wrong. The truly niche channels are currently usually sold only as add-ons or in premium packages, precisely because they don't have the clout to force their inclusion in the core packages. For example, if I wanted the Science Channel or Logo via DirecTV, I'd have to upgrade to the $61/month package. In the mean time, I was left subsidizing channels like ESPN and FOX News, which frankly don't need subsidy.
[I've written about the whole a la carte thing in more detail.]
There's no reason why cable companies can't continue to offer bundles of channels for those who prefer bundles. But they're going to need to start offering a la carte if they want to get back people like me. (Just canceled my satellite subscription for AppleTV.)
PBS programming is available from the iTunes store. C-SPAN is available as live streams from their web site. In addition, some PBS stations have online streams of their shows.
Yeah, I work from home too, and I'm using just over 1GB per day, about the same as you.
I think people would probably have been fine with that, had the proposed prices been reasonable.
$1/GB for bandwidth that costs them 3 cents per GB isn't reasonable.
One Communications don't seem to serve Austin, though.
Verizon's switching to GSM and CDMA is dying, so I kinda doubt Apple would waste any time on a CDMA iPhone at this point.
Hans Reiser has multiple accounts.
You only need kindlepid if you want to buy and read DRM-protected .mobi documents.
DRM-free .mobi files work without any hacks.
I convert HTML e-books to .mobi format using free, open source tools untouched by Amazon. (*)
I copy those files to the Kindle 2 using regular file copy.
I have no unsupported firmware hacks on the Kindle.
(*) The Kindle also supports HTML e-books in HTML, but putting them in .mobi files (which are just HTML in a Palm PDB database) saves space.
I was talking about the market for unreliably gas-guzzling SUVs.
Yeah, if you're talking about cars, Toyota and Honda.
Bertrand Model predicts that a duopoly pushes costs and profits down to marginal levels and is the ultimate result of any sufficiently competitive marketplace.
Disclaimer: I'm not an economist.
I develop using OpenJDK and deploy on IBM JRE. I've yet to encounter any incompatibility between them. Are you actually aware of any proprietary extensions in the IBM Java runtime?
According to economic theory, in most markets you get two market leaders--e.g. Coke and Pepsi, Bud and Miller, Ford and GM--and I don't see FOSS as any different.
Think about it: for almost every mature most-popular open source project, there's a second-place project that's superior.
Sendmail has postfix. MySQL has PostgreSQL. Apache has LigHTTPd. Emacs has vim. Python has Ruby. Git has bazaar. GNOME has KDE. Dia has Kivio. And so on.
(Have I poured enough gasoline yet?)
iPod plays 3 audio formats: MPEG-1 layer III, MPEG-4, and Apple Lossless.
iPod plays 2 video formats: MPEG-4, and MPEG-4 with H.264.
It doesn't get a lot more standard than MPEG-4. I can play MPEG-4 on PSP, BlackBerry, Nokia N800, Mac, Linux, Windows, AppleTV, PS3. It's the industry standard, which makes it the most appropriate choice for the iPod.
Perhaps you should be asking yourself why you have so much video in weird formats like MPEG-4 codecs crammed into obsolete AVI containers.
Unmask a disloyal CIA agent and win a FOX News T-shirt!
No, you're wrong. I own a Kindle 2, and I copy books to it via USB with the wireless totally disabled.
Guess what? You can do exactly the same with the Kindle.
Backbone bandwidth costs around 3 cents per GB. Time Warner plan to charge me $1 per GB for it. How is that "fair"?
I'll pick
e) Charge users a per-GB rate which is no more than 100% higher than the cost of backbone bandwidth.