IF you are paying electric and gas bills, just use natural gas for heat and skip the heat pump. Trust me, It's going to be cheaper for 99.99% of you out there.
Natural Gas prices have fallen though the floor the last ~10 years (thank you fracking) and I don't see that changing anytime soon. We literally have Natural Gas coming out our ears in the world right now. We have already developed more production than we as a world can possibly consume over the next 10 years, which was driven by the high prices of 10 years ago.
Natural Gas is CHEAPER... It's going to stay that way for a long time.
For me, the heat pump heat is far more expensive than natural gas and I live in Texas!
Natural Gas is soooo inexpensive now that when I had to replace one of the HVAC units in my house, I elected to save a pile of cash by forgoing the heat pump option because I'd never us it. It's cheaper (for me) to heat with gas.
But.... Comcast is a business, albeit a big one. The "Big Business = BAD" mind set is inappropriate. Why does it matter what size a business is? It's not like Comcast is a monopoly in the legal sense. They are big, but that doesn't mean they can or do take advantage of customers.
If Comcast is returning 4% on their investment, but that local corner grocery is turning 20% a year, who's abusing their customers? You see, THAT is the issue I have with this picking on the big companies and assuming they abuse their customers based on the amount of profits they make. Nobody cares to compare what Comcast makes per customer or per share with other businesses we just accept as valid because they may only clear $200k a year, even if their profit per customer is an order of magnitude greater than Comcast.
PLUS, if you own a part of Comcast in some mutual fund, it DOES matter. Share holders are the owners of Comcast. Share holders pick the board of directors who pick the management staff at Comcast. You may not have much control, but ALL of you DO and if enough of you don't like what Comcast is doing, you could stop it. So you carry at least some responsibility for what Comcast does if you own part of the company. Then you bite your own hand when you nip at Comcast.
In today's age, most corporations understand that happy employees are more efficient and effective than unhappy ones. In the USA today there are plenty of jobs and places to work if you are open to moving so if you are unhappy, find another job. If there isn't any around you now, move to where they exist.
Then there is the civil liability side of this. If you are injured on the job and the employer doesn't make it right, you file a civil suit. If they lose, they either pay directly, or their insurance company pays. If they are not being responsible, they won't have insurance very long. Eventually, they will be out of business from the load of civil judgments if it's really as bad as you say.
So I think this would be a self correcting problem in the long term...
Also, I've said multiple times in this thread that I don't advocate ZERO government involvement in everything. I'm advocating that government involvement should be seen as the last resort, when all else fails.
Being we are just spitbaling pet scenarios here...
I don't think that any ISP will bother with this "Cheap but filtered" internet connection thing. Why? It's WAY too hard to make work. Maintaining the route tables will be a horribly complex and labor intensive task so it will cost them a lot to maintain and blow the economics of this idea of yours. Remember, an ISP's highest variable cost here is LABOR, and they are not going to do anything that adds to that expense. Also, the "cheap" priced customers will rarely be happy with them and believe it or not, large ISPs do try to avoid upsetting their customer base (Or perhaps we should say they avoid upsetting a large percentage of customers enough that they will consider alternatives). ISP';s make the most money from the long term paying customer who doesn't consume provisioning labor hours or tech support hours and automatically pays their bill every month. (Which is why they usually give you a break on price for enrolling in auto pay and committing to one or two years).
So I don't think your scenario is likely to happen. ISP's won't bother with this. It's to hard to make work, will actually cost them money and is likely to drive more customers off than it attracts.
If you are tearing up the streets to bury cables, you are doing it wrong... Seriously wrong...
We have things like directional boring machines that allow you to shove cables under the pavement and keeps you from having to dig trenches to bury stuff. Just a couple of hand dug holes every few hundred feet.
Also... If you are a Mom and Pop shop trying to bridge that last mile, then may I suggest you use any number of RF or Laser optical options and not bother burying wires? It's a LOT less expensive than burying wires... Then as your customer base grows in specific areas, then you wire them up as it becomes cost effective? Heck, start with a couple of apartment buildings or something...
Come on, there are lots of options. The way this works is to innovate. Do something the big guys won't or can't. OR buy capacity from them in bulk for that last mile then blow the doors off them with customer service... The possibilities are endless here.
Shesh... This "Big companies make profits = bad" thing is getting old. You do release that both companies make money right?
Comcast is currently trading at about 19 P/E, earning less than $2.00/share and currently pays under $0.70/share in dividends. I'd be willing to bet that YOU benefit from this, directly, if you have any kind of investment. So Big Bad Comcast is owned by people like you and me and are not making obscene profits if you look at the situation on a per share basis.
Netflix doesn't do badly either. Althogh it's trading at nearly a 200 P/E, it earns more than $1,00/share. It's obviously the smaller company, but their profits where not bad at over $100 Million/quarter.
So why do we have this attitude about corporate profits being bad? Or that Comcast somehow took advantage of Netflix's customers?
You make my point... Granting the right of way exclusively was a government action that I feel was a mistake. Now you want to have the government do something else? Might this NN thing be a mistake too? I think that it's likely.
RESOLVED without Net Neutrality or government involvement... Given the government's ability to really hose things up, I'd recommend we leave them out of this internet thing for as long as we possibly can. It's obvious they are not necessary to fix this problem.
Um.. No. No ISP wants to tick off their customers like that.
You must not have Comcast.
You must take the PR department from Netflix at their word...
That whole episode played out in the court of public opinion exactly how Netflix wanted. But I ask you a serious question. First, has NN gone into effect yet? Nope, it hasn't. So how has this been resolved for Comcast's customers? They ARE watching their Netflix now are they not?
Seems the market worked and the internet sorted the issue out between Netflix and Comcast without any government help... I say NN is unnecessary and should be done away with on the grounds that government involvement is rarely effective or efficient and should be avoided when possible. In this case, the market fixed it.
Comcast was asking Netflix for more money for their CONNECTION based on data rates (supply side). That seems reasonable to me. Comcast wasn't throttling Netflix packets or routing them differently, but the Netflix traffic was swamping various links in Comcast's network. and Comcast was asking them to connect differently to their network, albeit though a connection purchased from Comcast.
So what you are saying is kind of true, but it's not fully explaining all the facts or what each side was saying. You are just parroting what Netflix's PR folks wanted you to hear about this. In reality, both sides had valid points and the compromise solution we now have is working without all the dire consequences you speak of or the massive expense Comcast was complaining about. In short, the market worked, Comcast's customers can stream Netflix again and despite fairly flat rates Netflix is still making money.
Hype always makes bad law and this whole thing was hyped way out of proportion.
Classic pyramid scheme... The folks in on the ground floor make money. Other people may make money as the scheme progresses... Then Everybody left loses all they invested once it falls apart.
Looks can be deceiving I guess, but not unusually.
Seriously? You want to insert the FCC into the internet to manage traffic? Trust me, nothing good will come of this.
Prior to the rules being adopted, some two years back, had ISP's actually done this thing you fear? Um.. No. No ISP wants to tick off their customers like that. Not to mention, there really is no practical way to make this happen with today's routing hardware, in a day and age where IP addresses are fluid and many content providers are constantly moving around in the cloud. I personally think this is a solution that has no problem, and being a "government" solution it should be avoided.
Also, I consider all this mostly hype and hyperbole designed to sell keeping the regulations and the governments fingers in the internet. Yea "net Neutrality" sounds good, but that's not really what the regulations accomplish if you look closely at them.
Pity that people are taught that it's impossible to compete because the other guy is too big... Come on folks, this is not rocket science (unless you started SpaceX). Sure, many attempts fail, but some succeed. The TRUTH here is that if you don't try, you will are guaranteed to fail. However, if you try, there is a chance you may succeed.
Again I point out that I'm not advocating for zero government involvement, just the least amount of it we can manage.
If you are referring to the Pinkertons getting into a shooting conflict with a bunch of Union strikers, then I ask you to tell me what the conflict was about? Why was labor upset and what was the company doing hiring the Pinkertons?
I think you miss the actual lesson from history here.
Slashdot Mirror
IF you are paying electric and gas bills, just use natural gas for heat and skip the heat pump. Trust me, It's going to be cheaper for 99.99% of you out there.
Natural Gas prices have fallen though the floor the last ~10 years (thank you fracking) and I don't see that changing anytime soon. We literally have Natural Gas coming out our ears in the world right now. We have already developed more production than we as a world can possibly consume over the next 10 years, which was driven by the high prices of 10 years ago.
Natural Gas is CHEAPER... It's going to stay that way for a long time.
For me, the heat pump heat is far more expensive than natural gas and I live in Texas!
Natural Gas is soooo inexpensive now that when I had to replace one of the HVAC units in my house, I elected to save a pile of cash by forgoing the heat pump option because I'd never us it. It's cheaper (for me) to heat with gas.
Earth sourced (using the earth as a heat sink) heat pumps are also a thing.
Quite an efficient thing too... I'd love to have one.
Problem is that it costs a pile of money to install a ground sourced heat pump.
NASA is more fake than MSM.
Dang man.. That's a reach.. Have you actually *seen* MSN lately? Talk about space cadets...
But.... Comcast is a business, albeit a big one. The "Big Business = BAD" mind set is inappropriate. Why does it matter what size a business is? It's not like Comcast is a monopoly in the legal sense. They are big, but that doesn't mean they can or do take advantage of customers.
If Comcast is returning 4% on their investment, but that local corner grocery is turning 20% a year, who's abusing their customers? You see, THAT is the issue I have with this picking on the big companies and assuming they abuse their customers based on the amount of profits they make. Nobody cares to compare what Comcast makes per customer or per share with other businesses we just accept as valid because they may only clear $200k a year, even if their profit per customer is an order of magnitude greater than Comcast.
PLUS, if you own a part of Comcast in some mutual fund, it DOES matter. Share holders are the owners of Comcast. Share holders pick the board of directors who pick the management staff at Comcast. You may not have much control, but ALL of you DO and if enough of you don't like what Comcast is doing, you could stop it. So you carry at least some responsibility for what Comcast does if you own part of the company. Then you bite your own hand when you nip at Comcast.
In your world perhaps. I don't think that's true.
In today's age, most corporations understand that happy employees are more efficient and effective than unhappy ones. In the USA today there are plenty of jobs and places to work if you are open to moving so if you are unhappy, find another job. If there isn't any around you now, move to where they exist.
Then there is the civil liability side of this. If you are injured on the job and the employer doesn't make it right, you file a civil suit. If they lose, they either pay directly, or their insurance company pays. If they are not being responsible, they won't have insurance very long. Eventually, they will be out of business from the load of civil judgments if it's really as bad as you say.
So I think this would be a self correcting problem in the long term...
Also, I've said multiple times in this thread that I don't advocate ZERO government involvement in everything. I'm advocating that government involvement should be seen as the last resort, when all else fails.
Being we are just spitbaling pet scenarios here...
I don't think that any ISP will bother with this "Cheap but filtered" internet connection thing. Why? It's WAY too hard to make work. Maintaining the route tables will be a horribly complex and labor intensive task so it will cost them a lot to maintain and blow the economics of this idea of yours. Remember, an ISP's highest variable cost here is LABOR, and they are not going to do anything that adds to that expense. Also, the "cheap" priced customers will rarely be happy with them and believe it or not, large ISPs do try to avoid upsetting their customer base (Or perhaps we should say they avoid upsetting a large percentage of customers enough that they will consider alternatives). ISP';s make the most money from the long term paying customer who doesn't consume provisioning labor hours or tech support hours and automatically pays their bill every month. (Which is why they usually give you a break on price for enrolling in auto pay and committing to one or two years).
So I don't think your scenario is likely to happen. ISP's won't bother with this. It's to hard to make work, will actually cost them money and is likely to drive more customers off than it attracts.
If you are tearing up the streets to bury cables, you are doing it wrong... Seriously wrong...
We have things like directional boring machines that allow you to shove cables under the pavement and keeps you from having to dig trenches to bury stuff. Just a couple of hand dug holes every few hundred feet.
Also... If you are a Mom and Pop shop trying to bridge that last mile, then may I suggest you use any number of RF or Laser optical options and not bother burying wires? It's a LOT less expensive than burying wires... Then as your customer base grows in specific areas, then you wire them up as it becomes cost effective? Heck, start with a couple of apartment buildings or something...
Come on, there are lots of options. The way this works is to innovate. Do something the big guys won't or can't. OR buy capacity from them in bulk for that last mile then blow the doors off them with customer service... The possibilities are endless here.
Shesh... This "Big companies make profits = bad" thing is getting old. You do release that both companies make money right?
Comcast is currently trading at about 19 P/E, earning less than $2.00/share and currently pays under $0.70/share in dividends. I'd be willing to bet that YOU benefit from this, directly, if you have any kind of investment. So Big Bad Comcast is owned by people like you and me and are not making obscene profits if you look at the situation on a per share basis.
Netflix doesn't do badly either. Althogh it's trading at nearly a 200 P/E, it earns more than $1,00 /share. It's obviously the smaller company, but their profits where not bad at over $100 Million/quarter.
So why do we have this attitude about corporate profits being bad? Or that Comcast somehow took advantage of Netflix's customers?
No.. Never worked for Verizon, though I was a customer at one point.
You make my point... Granting the right of way exclusively was a government action that I feel was a mistake. Now you want to have the government do something else? Might this NN thing be a mistake too? I think that it's likely.
Ah yes, but this got resolved right?
RESOLVED without Net Neutrality or government involvement... Given the government's ability to really hose things up, I'd recommend we leave them out of this internet thing for as long as we possibly can. It's obvious they are not necessary to fix this problem.
Guaranteed he works for Comcast.
Worse... A defense contractor... ;)
Oh, and I used to work for the phone company way back when...
Um.. No. No ISP wants to tick off their customers like that.
You must not have Comcast.
You must take the PR department from Netflix at their word...
That whole episode played out in the court of public opinion exactly how Netflix wanted. But I ask you a serious question. First, has NN gone into effect yet? Nope, it hasn't. So how has this been resolved for Comcast's customers? They ARE watching their Netflix now are they not?
Seems the market worked and the internet sorted the issue out between Netflix and Comcast without any government help... I say NN is unnecessary and should be done away with on the grounds that government involvement is rarely effective or efficient and should be avoided when possible. In this case, the market fixed it.
Comcast was asking Netflix for more money for their CONNECTION based on data rates (supply side). That seems reasonable to me. Comcast wasn't throttling Netflix packets or routing them differently, but the Netflix traffic was swamping various links in Comcast's network. and Comcast was asking them to connect differently to their network, albeit though a connection purchased from Comcast.
So what you are saying is kind of true, but it's not fully explaining all the facts or what each side was saying. You are just parroting what Netflix's PR folks wanted you to hear about this. In reality, both sides had valid points and the compromise solution we now have is working without all the dire consequences you speak of or the massive expense Comcast was complaining about. In short, the market worked, Comcast's customers can stream Netflix again and despite fairly flat rates Netflix is still making money.
Hype always makes bad law and this whole thing was hyped way out of proportion.
Classic pyramid scheme... The folks in on the ground floor make money. Other people may make money as the scheme progresses... Then Everybody left loses all they invested once it falls apart.
Looks can be deceiving I guess, but not unusually.
I'm sure the insurance company loves this scheme.... I'm also sure that they profit handsomely from selling folks on the idea that it works.
What's that saying? The only sure things in this world are "Death" and "Taxes" and you may delay them for a time, but you cannot cheat them forever.
You mean like how they crafted NN to be what they wanted with the previous FCC commissioners?
Why is it that such "right" ideas are shouted down with accusations of "Russian medaling" now days? LOL...
Seriously? You want to insert the FCC into the internet to manage traffic? Trust me, nothing good will come of this.
Prior to the rules being adopted, some two years back, had ISP's actually done this thing you fear? Um.. No. No ISP wants to tick off their customers like that. Not to mention, there really is no practical way to make this happen with today's routing hardware, in a day and age where IP addresses are fluid and many content providers are constantly moving around in the cloud. I personally think this is a solution that has no problem, and being a "government" solution it should be avoided.
Also, I consider all this mostly hype and hyperbole designed to sell keeping the regulations and the governments fingers in the internet. Yea "net Neutrality" sounds good, but that's not really what the regulations accomplish if you look closely at them.
Then move perhaps? Although in the USA this is NOT a normal situation anymore now is it?
Pity that people are taught that it's impossible to compete because the other guy is too big... Come on folks, this is not rocket science (unless you started SpaceX). Sure, many attempts fail, but some succeed. The TRUTH here is that if you don't try, you will are guaranteed to fail. However, if you try, there is a chance you may succeed.
So what do you think is the wise thing to do?
Again I point out that I'm not advocating for zero government involvement, just the least amount of it we can manage.
If you are referring to the Pinkertons getting into a shooting conflict with a bunch of Union strikers, then I ask you to tell me what the conflict was about? Why was labor upset and what was the company doing hiring the Pinkertons?
I think you miss the actual lesson from history here.
I'll be sure to direct my "students" to your thing if I can... Why shouldn't I figure out a way to game this system and make a few bucks?
Now, where did I put that old Teacher ID I used to have to get all those discounts?
I'm kidding, but you KNOW somebody will put aside their ethics and cash in if they can..
Well.. Upstart for you, you Upstart!