How 'Pandora' and other streaming services really aren't all that different from broadcast radio.
How 'cutting the cord' means having an ANTENNA on your roof (or at least connected to the TV), and that paying for Internet and Hulu is NOT 'cutting the cord' at all, it's just paying for a different cord.
How there were 'operating systems' before Windows, and that there was no such thing as a 'GUI'.
Public payphones.
That you could (and still can!) build a working radio receiver with 5 components, and a length of wire for an antenna (crystal AM radio).
That you could (and still could, if you hunted around a bit!) build a working computer (of sorts!) on perfboard. (My first one was like that).
'Video games' were something you had to go to a public place to find, and you'd need a bunch of quarters to play.
'Pinball machines' used to be a Real Thing. Not so much anymore. They're still out there, but hard to find.
Hardest Mode: Completely electromechanical pinball machines. The average Millennial, if you opened one up to show them, would still think you were kidding them, even after they saw it working and played it themselves. As someone else said in their comment: "Doing things yourself". More and more there are too many 'conveniences' that mean you don't have to learn how to actually DO anything yourself -- and people are getting dumber and lazier because of it. This worries me greatly -- and annoys the hell out of me.
Here I was going to post my own comment to the effect of "Is it just me, or does Uber look and act like a totally criminal enterprise, like literally run by the Mob or something?", and you beat me to it.;-)
We are in complete agreement. Uber needs to go away.
Go right ahead, Comcast, kill the golden goose if that's what you really want to do. People will put up with all sorts of crap, but as soon as you start literally hamstringing the basic service they're paying for, then demanding what amounts to danegeld to put it back the way it was, there will be a revolt. I'm already prepared to ditch you and the Internet in general if it comes to that, rather than put up with this sort of bullshit.
The television networks will absolutely lose their minds over this, and sue the pants off Plex for it. As I recall there was quite a bit of negotiating between TiVo and the networks over their DVR, TiVo having to assure the networks that people wouldn't be able to automatically skip commercials (which is why the 30-second skip feature requires a 'cheat code' to turn on; it's off by default), and the capability to prevent fast-forwarding even being built in to TiVo's software.
Uh, what the actual fuck are you even talking about? Are you being ironic or sarcastic, or do you really believe that the Internet becoming unusable will result in some sort of Apocalypse? Seriously I have NO idea what you're on about.
All I am saying is: If ISPs are allowed to do whatever the fuck they want, and there is no real value in paying for Internet anymore, I'll dump it and do without -- and recommend everyone else do the same. I can manage without it. Won't be fun at first but so is going on a diet. Enough people dump the internet because it's becokme too shitty to use, and either Net Neutrality comes back with a vengeance, or there's no more Internet anymore, and nothing of value is lost. Either way it's shoe-on-head retarded to keep paying for it *IF* ISPs turn it into 'walled gardens' or otherwise turn it into completely unusable shit for what it costs.
Same stupid bullshit every single time this comes up. "You're being tracked anyway". Blah blah blah.
My phone is a $50 dumbphone that is TURNED OFF 95% of the time. The most time it's on is when I'm HOME.
The GPS antenna inside the phone is shorted to ground as soon as I got it; even when it's on, you only know what tower it's connected to.
I rarely get or make any calls or texts. I'd get a landline instead except for the odd emergency where it's useful to have a wireless phone.
I pay CASH for everything I purchase in person anyway, there is nothing to track.
You can't scare me with "you're on cameras EVERYWHERE" or "EVERYONE ELSE'S PHONE sees and hears you!" because there's nothing anyone can do about that because you morons all fell for the smartphone meme. Besides which I'm not out in public much anyway, I have more important things to do!
People like you are just butthurt that you fell for the smartphone troll-meme and now have ZERO privacy, meanwhile people like me never fell for it in the first place and have retained at least SOME of our privacy. Do find some way to enjoy having your life under a microscope/being on a dissection tray/however you want to describe it. You may as well, you're fucked yourself, and you probably can't take any of it back now anyway -- as if you could withstand being ostracized by your 'peers' for suddenly not being a lemming/sheep/whatever like you've been all along. Never know though you might grow a backbone someday.
You speak of 'the adults', yet you're not willing to put your name (ANY name) to your words. Gotcha.
Note, everyone, that I said nothing about 'not fighting'. I am speaking only of the resistance there will be, the push-back from 'The Establishment' to any 'uppity citizens' daring to challenge their monopoly and hegemony over the Internet, and by extension, everyone who uses it.
For the record: The 'fight' will occur when the one-term 'president' (using the term as loosely as possible) we're currently cursed with is tossed out of office (the sooner the better), and someone who actually has the best interests of The People, not Corporations, is elected to office, and cleans house, tossing out these corporate fuccbois like Ajit Pai and the rest of his pandering lot. Then we can get things back on track.
What makes this guy or anyone else think that we, The People, will be 'allowed' to build our own Internet replacement? Think about this: if the government is taking the leash off ISPs, what's to stop them from eventually buying out backbone providers, or otherwise using leverage to prevent them from providing backbone connectivity to this upstart Internet 3.0? For that matter, what if ISPs use pages out of the Starbucks playbook, and saturate any given market with their services, even if they're taking a loss overall, just to squeeze small startup Internet 3.0 providers out of the market? Then buy them up, absorb or liquidate them. The phrase 'uphill battle' doesn't even really begin to describe the situation. Now consider this: Ajit Pai is clearly in the pocket of the telecom industry. To my mind that makes him corrupt as hell. What's stopping him from putting any roadblocks he can in the way of Internet 3.0 companies, to either stop them from happening at all, or hamstring them so much that they're not viable? There apparently isn't going to be any 'fair play' anymore, so anything is going to be possible. Add to all this, that the general public, who don't even know what 'net neutrality' is in the first place, is completely oblivious to all this. They just pay their money because they think they have to, and so long as they can see Facebook on their phones, and watch movies and play games on the Internet, they really don't give a damn. It's only when things aren't working that they care; they aren't going to be sold on 'Internet 3.0' because why should they change?
The whole situation sucks. ISPs, greedy companies, and oppressive governments are destroying the Internet for everyone, everywhere, not just here in the U.S.. It may not be possible to save it, and it may never be possible to create a viable alternative to it.
I do not have and never will have a so-called 'smartphone', for reasons made clear in this article, along with a plethora of other reasons. My advice to everyone is to wean yourself off smartphones, and then finally dump them completely -- unless you're an exhibitionist or attention-seeking type with a bad case of look at me, look at me!! Isn't it clear to everyone by now they're just surveillance and data-collection devices, masquerading as a phone? Not trolling, not kidding, and seriously I do not have or want a smartphone, ever.
Let me tell you what the real problem is: The Internet itself. It's a clear case of 'too many people ruining a good thing'. When the Internet was a new thing, with few people using it, it started out to be a great thing. Then more people got involved, and it was still a great thing. To be fair, it's still a great thing -- in some ways. But now Too Many People are involved in it, it's been weaponized, subverted, twisted, distorted, and adulterated into something that is just overall a piece of shit. You've got some countries that censor the living fuck out of it, making it more or less useless for anything other than influencing weak-minded people who don't know any better than to believe their own governments propaganda, and you have countries like Russia that are using it literally as a weapon to socially destabilizes the U.S. and other countries, throw them into chaos, fuck up their elections, so that while everyone is distracted by pussy-grabber this and BREXIT that and fake news over there, Putin can be doing whatever it is that Putin is planning on doing. As-is, using social media of any kind, for any reason, is a non-starter anymore, even if it wasn't for the trolls, foreign national agents, terrorists, white supremacists, neo-nazis, and other yet-to-be-identified agitators/shit-stirrers/dickheads mucking up the works with their sewage, because all so-called 'social media' is just data-collection platforms out to profile everyone for purposes ranging from trying to suck as much money as they can out of their bank accounts for shit they probably don't need, to domestic surveillance of citizens just in case they're terrorists or somesuch shit. Then there's the fact that ISPs have wanted to turn it all back into walled gardens for years and years now, and with the current shit Administration in power, looks like they'll get their way; so much for any real value you might still squeeze out of your broadband bill every month, because they'll raise the prices even more, and slow down anything that they don't want you to see (and pay for) -- assuming that is they don't block access to things outright if it doesn't profit them. Then there's the recurrence of SPAM, widespread hacking of any Internet-facing computer or mobile device, and so on, and so on, and so on. If you're worrying about Google 'censoring' the Internet still after reading all this, then your focus is too narrow. Google is only one tiny part of the problems that are rendering the Internet, in general, pointless to bother with anymore.
Why not just post all our Top Secret documents on Twitter where all enemies of the U.S. can find them easily? Would be cheaper and about as secure as any gods-be-damned 'cloud service'! Since when do U.S. Intelligence agencies, or ANY government agency for that matter, not hosting their own data!?
This was thought of a long time ago and experimented with, but the real problem with it was heat. You stack silicon on top of silicon, and there's heat build-up, and heat kills. The real 'breakthrough' and 'innovation' is being down to the 10nm scale, and other lower-power options, enabling silicon to run cooler yet at faster speeds.
LOL the only things I watch on TV are entertainment, I don't watch TV news, so I have no idea what the relevance of your statement is to this conversation. Our government uses propaganda of one flavor or another on it's own citizens just like any other country does, uses tragedies that occur as political footballs, and so on, and if you don't believe that then you're in denial, friend. LEOs and DOJ types in this country would love nothing better than to have all-access to everything about regular citizens, and whether that compromises our personal security or not is irrelevant to them, so long as they get what they want. The debate over encryption is just the latest iteration of all that.
This isn't FUD so far as I'm concerned, it's something someone is inevitably going to do. All the more reason to shoot down drones encroaching on your privacy. Seriously, I wish no one had invented the damned things in the first place, they've become nothing more than a nuisance at best, and a scourge at worst.
All these BP 'standards' are based on statistical averages and as such may or may not apply to any given individual. It's like BMI charts: also based on statistical models centered around a theoretical 'average person', and as such may tell you you're obese when in fact you just have a lot of lean muscle mass and/or very dense bones (like I have; DXA scan confirmed for both) making you heavier overall. Don't necessarily listen to the scare tactics your doctor may be feeding you, you may not need any medication at all if your BP is slightly higher than normal (like mine is, and always has been, since I was a kid; I'm an endurance athlete, vigorous exercise 5-6 days a week 52 weeks out of the year).
Nice to not be the first person for once to say this in a conversation. Facebook is toxic and cancerous with regards to humanity and I agree, it -- and most other so-called 'social media' -- should go away.
They refused Apple's voluntary help just so they could have a nice court order to set future precedent.
Exactly, precisely, THIS. It's a war of attrition versus the tech industry; all it'll take is ONCE for Apple to give in, or be forced legally, for any reason, and it'll be Game Over for encryption (except for The Rich and The Powerful, and the cops, of course; they can have all the non-compromised encryption they like, but use peasants/plebs/proles/poor pond scum only get shitty, useless 'backdoored' ersatz encryption, and FUCK US if we don't like it. Well I say FUCK THEM, it's all or nothing: either proper encryption for ALL, or NO encryption for ANYONE.
He isn't wrong, though. The Internet has become rather shitty, is getting shittier as time goes by, and if it keep up the way it's going, it's not going to be worth paying for anymore, not for the risks, intrusions to privacy, and other bullshit we're all increasingly having to try to work around and otherwise put up with.
Slashdot Mirror
..and again, and again, ad infinitum. They keep trotting this out, and it keeps falling flat on it's face. When will they learn?
Let this be a lesson.
He's not some old guy who misunderstands technology, and he's not dumb.
This is an act of malevolence.
Hear, hear.
How 'Pandora' and other streaming services really aren't all that different from broadcast radio.
How 'cutting the cord' means having an ANTENNA on your roof (or at least connected to the TV), and that paying for Internet and Hulu is NOT 'cutting the cord' at all, it's just paying for a different cord.
How there were 'operating systems' before Windows, and that there was no such thing as a 'GUI'.
Public payphones.
That you could (and still can!) build a working radio receiver with 5 components, and a length of wire for an antenna (crystal AM radio).
That you could (and still could, if you hunted around a bit!) build a working computer (of sorts!) on perfboard. (My first one was like that).
'Video games' were something you had to go to a public place to find, and you'd need a bunch of quarters to play.
'Pinball machines' used to be a Real Thing. Not so much anymore. They're still out there, but hard to find.
Hardest Mode: Completely electromechanical pinball machines. The average Millennial, if you opened one up to show them, would still think you were kidding them, even after they saw it working and played it themselves.
As someone else said in their comment: "Doing things yourself". More and more there are too many 'conveniences' that mean you don't have to learn how to actually DO anything yourself -- and people are getting dumber and lazier because of it. This worries me greatly -- and annoys the hell out of me.
Here I was going to post my own comment to the effect of "Is it just me, or does Uber look and act like a totally criminal enterprise, like literally run by the Mob or something?", and you beat me to it. ;-)
We are in complete agreement. Uber needs to go away.
Are people really getting so goddamned dumb that this is all they think they can handle? Dumbing it down to a preschool level?
Go right ahead, Comcast, kill the golden goose if that's what you really want to do. People will put up with all sorts of crap, but as soon as you start literally hamstringing the basic service they're paying for, then demanding what amounts to danegeld to put it back the way it was, there will be a revolt. I'm already prepared to ditch you and the Internet in general if it comes to that, rather than put up with this sort of bullshit.
The television networks will absolutely lose their minds over this, and sue the pants off Plex for it. As I recall there was quite a bit of negotiating between TiVo and the networks over their DVR, TiVo having to assure the networks that people wouldn't be able to automatically skip commercials (which is why the 30-second skip feature requires a 'cheat code' to turn on; it's off by default), and the capability to prevent fast-forwarding even being built in to TiVo's software.
You're referring to the average stupid person. That's not all of us though. Some of us have to play the role of the Adults.
Uh, what the actual fuck are you even talking about? Are you being ironic or sarcastic, or do you really believe that the Internet becoming unusable will result in some sort of Apocalypse? Seriously I have NO idea what you're on about.
All I am saying is: If ISPs are allowed to do whatever the fuck they want, and there is no real value in paying for Internet anymore, I'll dump it and do without -- and recommend everyone else do the same. I can manage without it. Won't be fun at first but so is going on a diet. Enough people dump the internet because it's becokme too shitty to use, and either Net Neutrality comes back with a vengeance, or there's no more Internet anymore, and nothing of value is lost. Either way it's shoe-on-head retarded to keep paying for it *IF* ISPs turn it into 'walled gardens' or otherwise turn it into completely unusable shit for what it costs.
Are you old enough to remember life before the Internet? Some of us are, and some of us are prepared to go back to living without it, if necessary.
Same stupid bullshit every single time this comes up. "You're being tracked anyway". Blah blah blah.
My phone is a $50 dumbphone that is TURNED OFF 95% of the time. The most time it's on is when I'm HOME.
The GPS antenna inside the phone is shorted to ground as soon as I got it; even when it's on, you only know what tower it's connected to.
I rarely get or make any calls or texts. I'd get a landline instead except for the odd emergency where it's useful to have a wireless phone.
I pay CASH for everything I purchase in person anyway, there is nothing to track.
You can't scare me with "you're on cameras EVERYWHERE" or "EVERYONE ELSE'S PHONE sees and hears you!" because there's nothing anyone can do about that because you morons all fell for the smartphone meme. Besides which I'm not out in public much anyway, I have more important things to do!
People like you are just butthurt that you fell for the smartphone troll-meme and now have ZERO privacy, meanwhile people like me never fell for it in the first place and have retained at least SOME of our privacy. Do find some way to enjoy having your life under a microscope/being on a dissection tray/however you want to describe it. You may as well, you're fucked yourself, and you probably can't take any of it back now anyway -- as if you could withstand being ostracized by your 'peers' for suddenly not being a lemming/sheep/whatever like you've been all along. Never know though you might grow a backbone someday.
You speak of 'the adults', yet you're not willing to put your name (ANY name) to your words. Gotcha.
Note, everyone, that I said nothing about 'not fighting'. I am speaking only of the resistance there will be, the push-back from 'The Establishment' to any 'uppity citizens' daring to challenge their monopoly and hegemony over the Internet, and by extension, everyone who uses it.
For the record: The 'fight' will occur when the one-term 'president' (using the term as loosely as possible) we're currently cursed with is tossed out of office (the sooner the better), and someone who actually has the best interests of The People, not Corporations, is elected to office, and cleans house, tossing out these corporate fuccbois like Ajit Pai and the rest of his pandering lot. Then we can get things back on track.
What makes this guy or anyone else think that we, The People, will be 'allowed' to build our own Internet replacement? Think about this: if the government is taking the leash off ISPs, what's to stop them from eventually buying out backbone providers, or otherwise using leverage to prevent them from providing backbone connectivity to this upstart Internet 3.0? For that matter, what if ISPs use pages out of the Starbucks playbook, and saturate any given market with their services, even if they're taking a loss overall, just to squeeze small startup Internet 3.0 providers out of the market? Then buy them up, absorb or liquidate them. The phrase 'uphill battle' doesn't even really begin to describe the situation. Now consider this: Ajit Pai is clearly in the pocket of the telecom industry. To my mind that makes him corrupt as hell. What's stopping him from putting any roadblocks he can in the way of Internet 3.0 companies, to either stop them from happening at all, or hamstring them so much that they're not viable? There apparently isn't going to be any 'fair play' anymore, so anything is going to be possible. Add to all this, that the general public, who don't even know what 'net neutrality' is in the first place, is completely oblivious to all this. They just pay their money because they think they have to, and so long as they can see Facebook on their phones, and watch movies and play games on the Internet, they really don't give a damn. It's only when things aren't working that they care; they aren't going to be sold on 'Internet 3.0' because why should they change?
The whole situation sucks. ISPs, greedy companies, and oppressive governments are destroying the Internet for everyone, everywhere, not just here in the U.S.. It may not be possible to save it, and it may never be possible to create a viable alternative to it.
I do not have and never will have a so-called 'smartphone', for reasons made clear in this article, along with a plethora of other reasons. My advice to everyone is to wean yourself off smartphones, and then finally dump them completely -- unless you're an exhibitionist or attention-seeking type with a bad case of look at me, look at me!! Isn't it clear to everyone by now they're just surveillance and data-collection devices, masquerading as a phone? Not trolling, not kidding, and seriously I do not have or want a smartphone, ever.
Let me tell you what the real problem is: The Internet itself. It's a clear case of 'too many people ruining a good thing'. When the Internet was a new thing, with few people using it, it started out to be a great thing. Then more people got involved, and it was still a great thing. To be fair, it's still a great thing -- in some ways. But now Too Many People are involved in it, it's been weaponized, subverted, twisted, distorted, and adulterated into something that is just overall a piece of shit. You've got some countries that censor the living fuck out of it, making it more or less useless for anything other than influencing weak-minded people who don't know any better than to believe their own governments propaganda, and you have countries like Russia that are using it literally as a weapon to socially destabilizes the U.S. and other countries, throw them into chaos, fuck up their elections, so that while everyone is distracted by pussy-grabber this and BREXIT that and fake news over there, Putin can be doing whatever it is that Putin is planning on doing. As-is, using social media of any kind, for any reason, is a non-starter anymore, even if it wasn't for the trolls, foreign national agents, terrorists, white supremacists, neo-nazis, and other yet-to-be-identified agitators/shit-stirrers/dickheads mucking up the works with their sewage, because all so-called 'social media' is just data-collection platforms out to profile everyone for purposes ranging from trying to suck as much money as they can out of their bank accounts for shit they probably don't need, to domestic surveillance of citizens just in case they're terrorists or somesuch shit. Then there's the fact that ISPs have wanted to turn it all back into walled gardens for years and years now, and with the current shit Administration in power, looks like they'll get their way; so much for any real value you might still squeeze out of your broadband bill every month, because they'll raise the prices even more, and slow down anything that they don't want you to see (and pay for) -- assuming that is they don't block access to things outright if it doesn't profit them. Then there's the recurrence of SPAM, widespread hacking of any Internet-facing computer or mobile device, and so on, and so on, and so on. If you're worrying about Google 'censoring' the Internet still after reading all this, then your focus is too narrow. Google is only one tiny part of the problems that are rendering the Internet, in general, pointless to bother with anymore.
Why not just post all our Top Secret documents on Twitter where all enemies of the U.S. can find them easily? Would be cheaper and about as secure as any gods-be-damned 'cloud service'! Since when do U.S. Intelligence agencies, or ANY government agency for that matter, not hosting their own data!?
This was thought of a long time ago and experimented with, but the real problem with it was heat. You stack silicon on top of silicon, and there's heat build-up, and heat kills. The real 'breakthrough' and 'innovation' is being down to the 10nm scale, and other lower-power options, enabling silicon to run cooler yet at faster speeds.
LOL the only things I watch on TV are entertainment, I don't watch TV news, so I have no idea what the relevance of your statement is to this conversation. Our government uses propaganda of one flavor or another on it's own citizens just like any other country does, uses tragedies that occur as political footballs, and so on, and if you don't believe that then you're in denial, friend. LEOs and DOJ types in this country would love nothing better than to have all-access to everything about regular citizens, and whether that compromises our personal security or not is irrelevant to them, so long as they get what they want. The debate over encryption is just the latest iteration of all that.
This isn't FUD so far as I'm concerned, it's something someone is inevitably going to do. All the more reason to shoot down drones encroaching on your privacy. Seriously, I wish no one had invented the damned things in the first place, they've become nothing more than a nuisance at best, and a scourge at worst.
All these BP 'standards' are based on statistical averages and as such may or may not apply to any given individual. It's like BMI charts: also based on statistical models centered around a theoretical 'average person', and as such may tell you you're obese when in fact you just have a lot of lean muscle mass and/or very dense bones (like I have; DXA scan confirmed for both) making you heavier overall. Don't necessarily listen to the scare tactics your doctor may be feeding you, you may not need any medication at all if your BP is slightly higher than normal (like mine is, and always has been, since I was a kid; I'm an endurance athlete, vigorous exercise 5-6 days a week 52 weeks out of the year).
Nice to not be the first person for once to say this in a conversation. Facebook is toxic and cancerous with regards to humanity and I agree, it -- and most other so-called 'social media' -- should go away.
It's modded down by the government trolls who are under orders to try to control the narrative.
They refused Apple's voluntary help just so they could have a nice court order to set future precedent.
Exactly, precisely, THIS. It's a war of attrition versus the tech industry; all it'll take is ONCE for Apple to give in, or be forced legally, for any reason, and it'll be Game Over for encryption (except for The Rich and The Powerful, and the cops, of course; they can have all the non-compromised encryption they like, but use peasants/plebs/proles/poor pond scum only get shitty, useless 'backdoored' ersatz encryption, and FUCK US if we don't like it. Well I say FUCK THEM, it's all or nothing: either proper encryption for ALL, or NO encryption for ANYONE.
He isn't wrong, though. The Internet has become rather shitty, is getting shittier as time goes by, and if it keep up the way it's going, it's not going to be worth paying for anymore, not for the risks, intrusions to privacy, and other bullshit we're all increasingly having to try to work around and otherwise put up with.
You're clearly and objectively an idiot, or a shill, or both, and need to shut up and get the fuck out.