I can't speak to cable rates everywhere, but where I live (Northeast) Time Warner Cable controls it all and the basic package (about 50 analog channels including local and public-access) runs about $60-$65. Add in Roadrunner (broadband Internet access) for another $40 and you've hit $100/mo for TV and Internet or just $60/mo for non-digital TV. Digital TV packages start at $75+/mo.
It's not a couple bucks difference, it's a lot of money. Dish, OTOH is $25 for basic 50 all-digital channels ($30 if you have a second receiver) and you can still buy Roadrunner from TWC for $45 (non-cable subscriber rate) which brings the total to $75-$80/mo for digital TV and Internet or just $25/mo for digital TV.
As for pitying DirecTV subscribers, it may very well be true that they have a slightly better picture (though they have less satellites in orbit and don't have the ability to reach as many people as DISH), but to my knowledge Dish hasn't frivously suedtheirsubscribers.
Call me quirky, but I just don't like companies that assume I'm a criminal (much less those who track my purchasing behaviors).
that Dish Network will not be changing their lowest-tier programming and not increasing the rates for that tier. At the higher tiers the price gets less competitive with DirecTV and for those brackets (like America's Top 180) that got additional channels (Nicktoons) the price probably will increase slightly.
Fortunately their biggest market niche is the low-end tier for not a lot of money and they were able to successfully defend that market. Being a subscriber to that tier, I'm glad this is the outcome (and I got a free movie out of the deal!).
How many people are *actually* going to switch services? Not many.
No? Oh yes my friend, very few will.
Unfortunately there were enough people switching in the span of a day to warrant news articles across the country (check Google News yesterday for 'Viacom Dish Network') stating that cable companies are/were getting an influx of cable orders from people jumping off Dish. In some cases, these people will have to wait up to a week for cable service because of the demand.
I'm sure most of these 'jumpers' did not break their contract because it wouldn't be worth it. Rather, their contract was up already and they needed their Nickelodeon for little Timmy (age 3-4) because he won't go to bed until he watches his Spongebob Squarepants or Dora the Explorer. One day was too much to take after his screaming fit (or they wanted to prevent that fit if possible).
Sadly, now they're just stuck in the position of paying more for cable because they're probably too proud (or frightened) to go back to Dish. I feel even more pity for the few fools who jumped into a DirecTV contract within that 36 hours' time.
Being one of the people who decided to wait this out, I also sent an email yesterday to CEOofDishNetwork@dishnetwork.com and lent them my support of their move.
Today I got the standard letter to all Dish subscribers who sent email (and it's on their website) saying they've reached an agreement and all subscribers will still get their $1 off plus a free Video On-Demand movie as a thank you for being patient.
I bet the people still waiting for their new (more expensive) cable/DirectTV subscription are hitting themselves for being so reactionary. I mean for crissake, it was only 36 hours!
As a DISH subscriber, I should call them up and attempt to extort money from them because they stopped the Viacom feed (who are attempting to extort DISH) to prevent an infringement lawsuit?
That's customer loyalty for ya!
Don't get me wrong. I highly doubt Charlie is being the public defender he proports to be. But at the same time, I don't think Viacom should be able to easily strong-arm all the distributors into paying whatever fees they feel are due to them.
Not to mention the pool table and dart board. And were the games so exhausting that you needed to do your laundry at work (what's with the washing machine and dryer)? =^)
Seriously though...what was it like working there? Inquiring minds want to know...
Actually, after I RTFA a little closer it appears they're not even planning on launching from the earth's surface. The robots would be launched from a platform in a stationary orbit around the earth.
So my arguments are moot.
I still think it's not a practical approach even given that nuclear robots are practical to manufacture and get into orbit by the time they're needed. Namely it's impractical because of reasons stated in other highly-modded posts -- let's assume you got thousands of robots to land on the surface of this asteroid...how do you coordinate them to dig and throw chunks of rock away in the correct direction? What if this asteriod is the size of a continent? A few thousand robots throwing golf ball-sized rocks off it ain't going to move it very much!
I think if you're going to go with the Lots Of Robots (LOR) approach you should make them nanobots that are designed to geologically alter the asteroid to create fault lines (notice lines is plural) and when sufficiently weakened join together around the center and create a vibration (perhaps through an explosion) to shake the rock apart. Then you can use more conventional weaponry to play Asteroids to break up the smaller pieces into much less harmful pieces.
Yes, but the implication was more than an handful of nations. Unless the suggestion was to install thousands of launch sites across space-capable nations and/or the rest of the world.
Thousands of MADMEN could be built by many nations and when launched, each would land on the object...
How many nations have put rockets (with significant payloads) successfully into orbit? Right, I can count them on one hand too. So where do the other 995+ nations come in and what makes us think that any rouge nation that can lauch a rocket into space has the ability to aim it, much less land it on the surface of the asteriod?
And finally, are we suggesting that we want thousands of nations to have the ability to launch rockets with payloads into outer space (or at least orbit)? I'm not being elitist here, but I think most of use agree that nuclear proliferation wasn't quite the boon we all thought it was going to be.
With regard to point #6 I think this won't stop Linux from running on the XBox since we already have live Linux discs that can simply be inserted in the drive and booted into linux. With MandrakeMove a USB port would be necessary to store information, but I haven't heard weather or not the next XBox will have any USB ports (sorry, haven't RTFA yet).
I have had Dish Network since about February last year and it's gone through a complete summer and two very snowy, icy winters in Rochester, NY. I've never had the signal noticably fade while I was watching (and this includes during storms).
As a matter of fact, one day after a particularly nasty ice storm I checked the dish (mounted on the south side of my roof) and it was covered with about a 1/2 inch thick layer of ice, but the signal I was getting was still above 100 (usually around 120).
Other friends of mine who also have satellite have not had any problems with inclement weather affecting the signal.
My only regrets with satellite:
no local channels (though that's partially remedied by an on-dish antenna)
DVR costs/costed about $500 extra that I wasn't about to spring for
need a receiver for each television that you want to tune differently in the house (if you want them to all have the same program at the same time, then one receiver is fine).
the guide load time is much slower for satellite than for cable
My previous bill with Time Warner Cable was $65+ for the standard package (31 channels, analog signal) and with Dish Network it's about $30/mo with two receivers and 50 digital channels. Dish also gives me the PPV stuff that TW never did for their most basic package.
I'm never going back. But then again, I don't watch an inordinate amount of tv either.
Or did you mean that Trillian does not support IRC?
I meant I wasn't sure if Gaim supported IRC because I don't use it and was typing in a hurry. Upon closer inspection I realize that Gaim does indeed support IRC (and Jabber, and Gadu-Gadu which I'm not familiar with).
To communicate with other AOL AIM users, you MUST connect to their servers. Most AOL AIM users do not use Gaim or Trillian. Also, if they did, it does not necessarily mean they use XMPP
This gets to the point of my first message. If a critical mass of users moved to Gaim/Trillian instead of the native AIM/Yahoo!/ICQ clients and Gaim/Trillian used XMPP in addition to the proprietary protocols, then even if AIM et. al. change their protocols the user base is large enough that Gaim/Trillian could fail-over to a list of open Jabber servers and upload the user information Gaim/Trillian has about the IM avatar to the open server. Obviously this information wouldn't be anything more than you've already submitted to your respective service(s) and it could even prompt you before sending to make sure you're aware that you're being connected to a different network.
It's all about making Gaim/Trillian intelligent enough to be able to continue supporting the IM communication even if the original servers become unavailable. Granted it will likely not be possible for an AIM user to talk with a Gaim user if AOL changes their server location/configuration such that Gaim can no longer connect. But if both of those users were using Gaim/Trillian, the client failover to an open server could preserve their ability to chat.
I'm not saying this could happen tomorrow, or that it's even easy. I'm simply saying it's an interesting way for Gaim/Trillian to pull out ahead of AIM et. al. since those companies seem to dislike entirely the concept of unifying the IM "market" (for lack of a better word).
Gaim allows you to connect to all the services that Trillian supports (except possibly IRC) and even allows inter-protocol messages. However, this is just a GUI trick because you have to actually have an account with each service in order to connect to it and talk with your buddies on each one.
Even with XMPP I don't think, in the short term, you'll be able to get away with only one IM account (such as AIM) and be able to talk to your buddy on Yahoo!. But as software like Gaim and Trillian move toward XMPP and people use Gaim and Trillian more and more, the independant services AIM, Yahoo! MSN, ICQ, will have to move to XMPP or risk being left in the dust (because once people are using XMPP and Gaim/Trillian, they don't really need AIM or Yahoo! servers to communicate.
Ah, ok. Thanks. The fifth H2G2 book is actually Mostly Harmless and Young Zaphod Plays It Safe was never (to my knowledge) part of the 5 book triology of Hitchhiker's Guide. Though for some reason the publishers felt it was a good idea to put the first four books together with this book about young Zaphod instead of the real fifth book. Perhaps the fifth book wasn't written yet and they wanted filler? As I gather, the young Zaphod book is from Salmon of a Doubt and not the H2G2 series.
But if you're trying to convince someone to move away from IE (for which they are paying nothing - in their mind), moving to Opera for a fee is not likely going to happen.
Firebird is a better alternative for getting people to switch. Then after they get used to what a browser can be, you can more easily convince them that Opera is even better for a small price.
...with the Life of Young Zaphod as one of the books?
There was a single book that combined the first four H2G2 books plus this Life of Young Zaphod or something like that, which I gathered was an all around bad read.
Just curious. My friend had that book and I loaned him Mostly Harmless so he could get the full 5-book triology. Most of the books are out of print now, though I'm they're available at the library and for sale privately on Amazon.com or Ebay.com.
Unless you're attention span is so limited or work better audibly. The books have more detail than even the books on tape (sometimes) and you can read at your own pace.
Additionally, the first three books are the best (Hithchiker's Guide to the Galaxy; Resturant at the end of the Universe; and Life, the Universe, and Everything -- I may have mixed up the order of the last two). So Long and Thanks For All the Fish and Mostly Harmless are ok, but get worse and worse. The trilogy probably would have been best if it had remained thus.
The draw, at least to me, is the sci fi humor and use of language that Adams used, "Huge yellow spaceships that hung in the air exactly the way bricks don't," and "'Hyperspace travel is rather unpleasantly like being drunk,' said Ford. 'What's wrong with being drunk?' asked Arthur. 'Ask a glass of water,' responded Ford."
So are you telling me you simply remove thier installation of Windows and install Knoppix when they ask you to fix their Wintel boxen?
I certainly hope you tell them you're doing this before destroying all their data. You must have some pretty tech-savvy friends and family because I know at least half of mine wouldn't be satisfied with Linux simply because it's too hard for them to run PrintShop (if it's even possible).
Don't get me wrong, like many/.'ers I'm a Linux advocate and have been running Linux on a second machine for many years (until the CPU recently died, so now I'm trying out MandrakeMove given to me by a "Silver level" member, so it has USB key support).
My father, who is an ex-IBMer, used to try to keep up fairly well with new technologies and OSes, but recently he's told me that the only reason he'd move to Linux is if it made his life easier (and still ran all the software he likes with the same level of ease). As much as I like to work with desktop linux, I don't think it fits that description and I wouldn't install it on anyone's machine who isn't willing to go through some growing pains.
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According the the FCC, as a tenant, you have a right to have satellite as a choice and your landlord/landlady has to comply or risk a fine.
Check out this page, and this one for some help on what your rights are.
It's not a couple bucks difference, it's a lot of money. Dish, OTOH is $25 for basic 50 all-digital channels ($30 if you have a second receiver) and you can still buy Roadrunner from TWC for $45 (non-cable subscriber rate) which brings the total to $75-$80/mo for digital TV and Internet or just $25/mo for digital TV.
As for pitying DirecTV subscribers, it may very well be true that they have a slightly better picture (though they have less satellites in orbit and don't have the ability to reach as many people as DISH), but to my knowledge Dish hasn't frivously sued their subscribers.
Call me quirky, but I just don't like companies that assume I'm a criminal (much less those who track my purchasing behaviors).
Fortunately their biggest market niche is the low-end tier for not a lot of money and they were able to successfully defend that market. Being a subscriber to that tier, I'm glad this is the outcome (and I got a free movie out of the deal!).
No? Oh yes my friend, very few will.
Unfortunately there were enough people switching in the span of a day to warrant news articles across the country (check Google News yesterday for 'Viacom Dish Network') stating that cable companies are/were getting an influx of cable orders from people jumping off Dish. In some cases, these people will have to wait up to a week for cable service because of the demand.
I'm sure most of these 'jumpers' did not break their contract because it wouldn't be worth it. Rather, their contract was up already and they needed their Nickelodeon for little Timmy (age 3-4) because he won't go to bed until he watches his Spongebob Squarepants or Dora the Explorer. One day was too much to take after his screaming fit (or they wanted to prevent that fit if possible).
Sadly, now they're just stuck in the position of paying more for cable because they're probably too proud (or frightened) to go back to Dish. I feel even more pity for the few fools who jumped into a DirecTV contract within that 36 hours' time.
Today I got the standard letter to all Dish subscribers who sent email (and it's on their website) saying they've reached an agreement and all subscribers will still get their $1 off plus a free Video On-Demand movie as a thank you for being patient.
I bet the people still waiting for their new (more expensive) cable/DirectTV subscription are hitting themselves for being so reactionary. I mean for crissake, it was only 36 hours!
That's customer loyalty for ya!
Don't get me wrong. I highly doubt Charlie is being the public defender he proports to be. But at the same time, I don't think Viacom should be able to easily strong-arm all the distributors into paying whatever fees they feel are due to them.
Not to mention the pool table and dart board. And were the games so exhausting that you needed to do your laundry at work (what's with the washing machine and dryer)? =^)
Seriously though...what was it like working there? Inquiring minds want to know...
I still think it's not a practical approach even given that nuclear robots are practical to manufacture and get into orbit by the time they're needed. Namely it's impractical because of reasons stated in other highly-modded posts -- let's assume you got thousands of robots to land on the surface of this asteroid...how do you coordinate them to dig and throw chunks of rock away in the correct direction? What if this asteriod is the size of a continent? A few thousand robots throwing golf ball-sized rocks off it ain't going to move it very much!
I think if you're going to go with the Lots Of Robots (LOR) approach you should make them nanobots that are designed to geologically alter the asteroid to create fault lines (notice lines is plural) and when sufficiently weakened join together around the center and create a vibration (perhaps through an explosion) to shake the rock apart. Then you can use more conventional weaponry to play Asteroids to break up the smaller pieces into much less harmful pieces.
There is no way this makes sense.
"[They] probably got a room full of guys right now, just sittin' around thinkin' shit up." - Bruce Willis, Armegeddon
How many nations have put rockets (with significant payloads) successfully into orbit? Right, I can count them on one hand too. So where do the other 995+ nations come in and what makes us think that any rouge nation that can lauch a rocket into space has the ability to aim it, much less land it on the surface of the asteriod?
And finally, are we suggesting that we want thousands of nations to have the ability to launch rockets with payloads into outer space (or at least orbit)? I'm not being elitist here, but I think most of use agree that nuclear proliferation wasn't quite the boon we all thought it was going to be.
...that there was an advertisement for the Univerisity of Pheonix in an article talking about crappy tech schools?
With regard to point #6 I think this won't stop Linux from running on the XBox since we already have live Linux discs that can simply be inserted in the drive and booted into linux. With MandrakeMove a USB port would be necessary to store information, but I haven't heard weather or not the next XBox will have any USB ports (sorry, haven't RTFA yet).
As a matter of fact, one day after a particularly nasty ice storm I checked the dish (mounted on the south side of my roof) and it was covered with about a 1/2 inch thick layer of ice, but the signal I was getting was still above 100 (usually around 120).
Other friends of mine who also have satellite have not had any problems with inclement weather affecting the signal.
My only regrets with satellite:
My previous bill with Time Warner Cable was $65+ for the standard package (31 channels, analog signal) and with Dish Network it's about $30/mo with two receivers and 50 digital channels. Dish also gives me the PPV stuff that TW never did for their most basic package.
I'm never going back. But then again, I don't watch an inordinate amount of tv either.
100 MILLION [EUR] DOLLARS
*Bill Gates breaks out in fits of laughter*
You owe us...
100 BILLION [EUR] DOLLARS
*Bill stops laughing*
I meant I wasn't sure if Gaim supported IRC because I don't use it and was typing in a hurry. Upon closer inspection I realize that Gaim does indeed support IRC (and Jabber, and Gadu-Gadu which I'm not familiar with).
To communicate with other AOL AIM users, you MUST connect to their servers. Most AOL AIM users do not use Gaim or Trillian. Also, if they did, it does not necessarily mean they use XMPP
This gets to the point of my first message. If a critical mass of users moved to Gaim/Trillian instead of the native AIM/Yahoo!/ICQ clients and Gaim/Trillian used XMPP in addition to the proprietary protocols, then even if AIM et. al. change their protocols the user base is large enough that Gaim/Trillian could fail-over to a list of open Jabber servers and upload the user information Gaim/Trillian has about the IM avatar to the open server. Obviously this information wouldn't be anything more than you've already submitted to your respective service(s) and it could even prompt you before sending to make sure you're aware that you're being connected to a different network.
It's all about making Gaim/Trillian intelligent enough to be able to continue supporting the IM communication even if the original servers become unavailable. Granted it will likely not be possible for an AIM user to talk with a Gaim user if AOL changes their server location/configuration such that Gaim can no longer connect. But if both of those users were using Gaim/Trillian, the client failover to an open server could preserve their ability to chat.
I'm not saying this could happen tomorrow, or that it's even easy. I'm simply saying it's an interesting way for Gaim/Trillian to pull out ahead of AIM et. al. since those companies seem to dislike entirely the concept of unifying the IM "market" (for lack of a better word).
Even with XMPP I don't think, in the short term, you'll be able to get away with only one IM account (such as AIM) and be able to talk to your buddy on Yahoo!. But as software like Gaim and Trillian move toward XMPP and people use Gaim and Trillian more and more, the independant services AIM, Yahoo! MSN, ICQ, will have to move to XMPP or risk being left in the dust (because once people are using XMPP and Gaim/Trillian, they don't really need AIM or Yahoo! servers to communicate.
Ah, ok. Thanks. The fifth H2G2 book is actually Mostly Harmless and Young Zaphod Plays It Safe was never (to my knowledge) part of the 5 book triology of Hitchhiker's Guide. Though for some reason the publishers felt it was a good idea to put the first four books together with this book about young Zaphod instead of the real fifth book. Perhaps the fifth book wasn't written yet and they wanted filler? As I gather, the young Zaphod book is from Salmon of a Doubt and not the H2G2 series.
Firebird is a better alternative for getting people to switch. Then after they get used to what a browser can be, you can more easily convince them that Opera is even better for a small price.
There was a single book that combined the first four H2G2 books plus this Life of Young Zaphod or something like that, which I gathered was an all around bad read.
Just curious. My friend had that book and I loaned him Mostly Harmless so he could get the full 5-book triology. Most of the books are out of print now, though I'm they're available at the library and for sale privately on Amazon.com or Ebay.com.
Additionally, the first three books are the best (Hithchiker's Guide to the Galaxy; Resturant at the end of the Universe; and Life, the Universe, and Everything -- I may have mixed up the order of the last two). So Long and Thanks For All the Fish and Mostly Harmless are ok, but get worse and worse. The trilogy probably would have been best if it had remained thus.
The draw, at least to me, is the sci fi humor and use of language that Adams used, "Huge yellow spaceships that hung in the air exactly the way bricks don't," and "'Hyperspace travel is rather unpleasantly like being drunk,' said Ford. 'What's wrong with being drunk?' asked Arthur. 'Ask a glass of water,' responded Ford."
I certainly hope you tell them you're doing this before destroying all their data. You must have some pretty tech-savvy friends and family because I know at least half of mine wouldn't be satisfied with Linux simply because it's too hard for them to run PrintShop (if it's even possible).
Don't get me wrong, like many /.'ers I'm a Linux advocate and have been running Linux on a second machine for many years (until the CPU recently died, so now I'm trying out MandrakeMove given to me by a "Silver level" member, so it has USB key support).
My father, who is an ex-IBMer, used to try to keep up fairly well with new technologies and OSes, but recently he's told me that the only reason he'd move to Linux is if it made his life easier (and still ran all the software he likes with the same level of ease). As much as I like to work with desktop linux, I don't think it fits that description and I wouldn't install it on anyone's machine who isn't willing to go through some growing pains.
ah...you got me.