If you were a real geek, you'd put a small shed by the road.
In that shed, you'd put a laptop. It doesn't need power: A small, hidden UPS will do fine.
You would call this your "home," and have them install cable to it, which they will do for a nominal low cost.
Afterward, you'd string your own coax (whether RG-6 or RG-11 or 1/2" hardline or whatever) to your house, down your driveway along your "bump poles" (whatever those are).
Terminate both ends of the wire, optionally keep the shed for future reference, and call it a day.
What is wrong with you?
I think my neighbor who owns the property at the end of my driveway might object to me building on it maybe? Seriously I almost bought a small trailer that was for sale across the street from the end of my driveway just to get cable internet there and do wireless back to my house.
their entire monopoly areas? Comcast has a government-granted monopoly over most of Seattle, but they don't offer service to a lot of Capitol Hill or many poor or mostly minority areas. If you think cable companies are bad, imagine not even having the option of getting cable TV or Internet from them. I probably wouldn't buy from them, but it would be nice to have an option.
My new house is in the same boat. Charter's contractors want $6,500 to run a cable down my driveway (about 900 ft). I have bump poles for power all the way to the house but of course they don't want to use those. Charter will pay up to $3,000 for it so I would have to pay the other $3,500. Or I'm stuck with AT&T 18/1 service.
No caps = higher base price / forced hardware rent
My price went down with the plan change that got rid of caps at Charter, and my speed went up from 30 to 100mb/s. They require you use their modem but they don't charge a fee for it. Charter hasn't been all that bad, at least by comparison to other cable companies. Hope TWC doesn't rub off on them.
Amazon, regardless of 3rd party sellers and "competitors", have the market cornered.
Now they can drop the hammer and get away this shit!
Disgusting.
Really, Amazon has the market cornered? How. There are tons of places to buy online, not to mention brick and mortar stores virtually everywhere that sell the same games and movies.
I wrote about this before here too, but the summary is this: the idea that standing desks provide health benefits is based more on well-intentioned ignore-proof-or-lack-thereof feel-good rationalization than the anti-vaxxer movement.
There is way too much of this when it comes to health and nutrition and it's infuriating. Science is supposed to be based on actual science. Not "well it's pretty obvious this is how it should be so let's just go with that", or jumping on one or two initial study results and not digging deeper until decades later, only to discover that nope, it's not that way, and the new way is worse. Woops, our bad!
Every president ever impeached was impeached after they were sworn in;) Kind of hard to do it before.
Now if you are talking about right after he's sworn in, to invalidate his election, well.... That would be political suicide on a grand scale if Trump won with a majority vote. it would set the modern precedent that Congress, if so inclined, could just override and cancel out the election of any president they didn't like. Considering the extremism present in both parties these days this would not be a good precedent to set.
Now if he does something to get legitimately impeached, then well what are you going to do. He's a tool and probably will.
>> The system is designed to pay authors out of a single pool of money based on how many pages of their books are actually read
Seriously? I guess I'll have to start writing wordier and larger then.
Funny enough it was done this way to prevent this exact type of fraud. In this case, they wanted to prevent authors from uploading crap then incentivising people to download it. Or even legit authors from using social media and such to get people to download their book knowing they wouldn't read it, just to "support" the author. Guess they didn't see this one coming though.
Funny, because every time I get coffee from one of those little cups it taste like it's already been composted.
Then I have to ask, why the hell are you drinking coffee from them? Your comment implies that you've done it more than once. Unless you enjoy the taste. I know taste is subjected but still....
Presumably because every hotel, outhouse and barnhouse have replaced their previously drinkable machines with this garbage?
Do you suffer from some kind of mental problem that makes the bleeding obvious invisible?
The OP stated they taste like composted coffee grounds. Do you enjoy the taste of composted coffee grounds? Is your caffeine addiction such that you would actually go out back, dig coffee grounds out of a composting pile, and make a cup with them?
Funny, because every time I get coffee from one of those little cups it taste like it's already been composted.
Then I have to ask, why the hell are you drinking coffee from them? Your comment implies that you've done it more than once. Unless you enjoy the taste. I know taste is subjected but still....
Typically when the dryer starts up, I can feel a fine spray of water hit me in the face. I avoid these dryers now, even if it means using my pant legs to dry my hands.
At least the old fashioned blow dryers that take forever to dry your hands don't direct a spray of water into your face.
Yea but the old fashioned ones are great at spewing microbes all over your hands too. When I was in college the "Go swab the bathrooms" was a standard experiment for the 101 microbio classes. The instructor made sure we ran a plate under the hand dryer. The results were an eye opener. The big issue is that no one ever cleans the damn things after they are installed. Most have filters but they are not maintained. So bacteria builds up over time and sets up home in them. Two decades later and I still avoid them whenever possible.
And tell the vendor what? "Please turn your back and ignore any noise and funny smells for the next few hours." You don't seriously thing the vendor consented to just mail the hardware to the FBI do you? They would have had techs on site, hell they may have even had the FBI come to them instead of the other way around.
Then that's fair enough but don't expect many of the ultracheap customers to remain customers if you only offer them the choice between a high price plan and an ultra high price plan. The fact that they are relatively cheap compared to other ultra fast connections is most likely irrelevant to people happy with 5M and will likely be able to find other plans under $50 from a different provider to switch to. Myself, I'm perfectly happy with my 1M connection although I wish I could get faster upload.
True, but there may not be any value in keeping them by offering a lower tier plan. I mean, they are paying $0 right now, so it's not like Google will lose any revenue from them departing for a cheaper ISP. It's possible based on the number of subscribers that are on that tier now that it wouldn't be worth it to offer a lower tier. I'm sure Google has done the math on this already before they decided how to proceed.
This is more analogous to paying for installation of a beer tap, but then having it dispense unlimited free beer (but at a slower rate than you might like). Google's saying that now you need to fork over $50/mo, but you'll get unlimited beer dispensed at 20x the rate. It's still a way better deal than anything the competitors are offering, especially considering how vital the beer is for getting any work done.
Yes, but if I paid for the installation of a beer tap that promised to give me 3 beers a day indefinitely then I would be pissed if all of a sudden they said I had to pay $50/month for 60 beers for day. I have no desire to drink 60 beers a day. The extra beer is wasted on me. Even if they can no longer offer a free service, they need to respect their original agreement by refunding the construction fee or at the very least offer a similar low bandwidth option for $10/month. At $50/month anyone who was happy with 5M/s is likely going to move to something else. There are plenty of cheaper options under $50/month whether it is DSL or tethering that will net you 5M/s. The people on the 5M plans don't want 100M, if they did then they likely would have signed up for the 1G plan at only $20/month more.
Except that it wasn't indefinitely. The contract was for 7 years, which Google has said that they are going to honor. They are just not going to sign up any new customers for that plan.
As AI puts lawyers, doctors, and other highly paid professionals out of business... suddenly liberal arts majors are in high demand. At what point did I fall down that rabbit hole?
...it's almost as if there's some tangible, real-world value in a liberal arts education that's been neglected in tech circles through years of derision and mockery...
Your example is a little inaccurate. This case is more like buying a car from a small manufacturer that runs on a fuel only provided by that manufacturer, and then throwing a fit when that manufacture goes out of business and said fuel is no longer available. I suppose you can't blame people for being a little irked, but its also a case for "buyer beware". Avoid buying products from any manufacture that tries to make you dependent on them for your products functioning.
This is the correct car analogy. It's also not like this is a new thing. Plenty of hardware has been rendered useless over the past 100+ years due to manufacturers dropping support for consumables. Just look at film cameras. There are plenty of dead film formats. It's just in this case, the "consumable" is a cloud service, so it feels new.
It's just that all those lovely cloud servers it relies on to do useful stuff will go away. You still own the hardware though. Feel free to use it as a paperweight or door stop all you like.
As an aside, are there any decent non-cloud-dependent home automation controllers that a) don't cost a fortune (aka most commercially available ones), b) actually work properly*, and c) work with common off-the-shelf protocols like zigbee and zwave?
*and by that, I mean something who's primary property isn't being a Rube Goldberg contest entry?
"news for people who kinda like plunking around digging a new room for their bunkers, tightening their tinfoil hats, and screaming at kids to get off their lawns, but don't really want to have to, y'know, think about this stuff"
30 bucks per movie and I don't even get a copy to store?
So what happens when the service goes out of business? I lose everything I've bought?
Thank you, no.
For the same price you can buy the UHD Blu-ray which will also include a digital UV copy (probably only HD but still) and the regular HD Blu-ray copy as well.
And just how well is this going to work on AT&T DSL?
Simply put, it won't work at all. I'm stuck with AT&T at my new house and I have the best they can do at 18mb/s. 4K Netflix is a no-go. I can't imagine this will be any different.
RTFA. With the exception of Comcast exempting their own IPTV service this is all still external content. We are talking ISP asking content sources to pay for preferential treatment for their bits, or giving it to their own. They just shifted it from "fast lanes" to "free lanes" and suddenly it's A-OK. No, it's not.
Don't let the fact that net neutrality is a thing, a federal regulation that they have to abide by, and that this is just a tactic to completely sidestep it deter you from your rantings.
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If you were a real geek, you'd put a small shed by the road.
In that shed, you'd put a laptop. It doesn't need power: A small, hidden UPS will do fine.
You would call this your "home," and have them install cable to it, which they will do for a nominal low cost.
Afterward, you'd string your own coax (whether RG-6 or RG-11 or 1/2" hardline or whatever) to your house, down your driveway along your "bump poles" (whatever those are).
Terminate both ends of the wire, optionally keep the shed for future reference, and call it a day.
What is wrong with you?
I think my neighbor who owns the property at the end of my driveway might object to me building on it maybe? Seriously I almost bought a small trailer that was for sale across the street from the end of my driveway just to get cable internet there and do wireless back to my house.
their entire monopoly areas? Comcast has a government-granted monopoly over most of Seattle, but they don't offer service to a lot of Capitol Hill or many poor or mostly minority areas. If you think cable companies are bad, imagine not even having the option of getting cable TV or Internet from them. I probably wouldn't buy from them, but it would be nice to have an option.
My new house is in the same boat. Charter's contractors want $6,500 to run a cable down my driveway (about 900 ft). I have bump poles for power all the way to the house but of course they don't want to use those. Charter will pay up to $3,000 for it so I would have to pay the other $3,500. Or I'm stuck with AT&T 18/1 service.
No caps = higher base price / forced hardware rent
My price went down with the plan change that got rid of caps at Charter, and my speed went up from 30 to 100mb/s. They require you use their modem but they don't charge a fee for it. Charter hasn't been all that bad, at least by comparison to other cable companies. Hope TWC doesn't rub off on them.
Amazon, regardless of 3rd party sellers and "competitors", have the market cornered.
Now they can drop the hammer and get away this shit!
Disgusting.
Really, Amazon has the market cornered? How. There are tons of places to buy online, not to mention brick and mortar stores virtually everywhere that sell the same games and movies.
I wrote about this before here too, but the summary is this: the idea that standing desks provide health benefits is based more on well-intentioned ignore-proof-or-lack-thereof feel-good rationalization than the anti-vaxxer movement.
There is way too much of this when it comes to health and nutrition and it's infuriating. Science is supposed to be based on actual science. Not "well it's pretty obvious this is how it should be so let's just go with that", or jumping on one or two initial study results and not digging deeper until decades later, only to discover that nope, it's not that way, and the new way is worse. Woops, our bad!
Every president ever impeached was impeached after they were sworn in ;) Kind of hard to do it before.
Now if you are talking about right after he's sworn in, to invalidate his election, well.... That would be political suicide on a grand scale if Trump won with a majority vote. it would set the modern precedent that Congress, if so inclined, could just override and cancel out the election of any president they didn't like. Considering the extremism present in both parties these days this would not be a good precedent to set.
Now if he does something to get legitimately impeached, then well what are you going to do. He's a tool and probably will.
Fish have gill arches and fins, which may, the paper proposes, have also evolved from early gill arches.
>> The system is designed to pay authors out of a single pool of money based on how many pages of their books are actually read Seriously? I guess I'll have to start writing wordier and larger then.
Funny enough it was done this way to prevent this exact type of fraud. In this case, they wanted to prevent authors from uploading crap then incentivising people to download it. Or even legit authors from using social media and such to get people to download their book knowing they wouldn't read it, just to "support" the author. Guess they didn't see this one coming though.
Funny, because every time I get coffee from one of those little cups it taste like it's already been composted. Then I have to ask, why the hell are you drinking coffee from them? Your comment implies that you've done it more than once. Unless you enjoy the taste. I know taste is subjected but still....
Presumably because every hotel, outhouse and barnhouse have replaced their previously drinkable machines with this garbage?
Do you suffer from some kind of mental problem that makes the bleeding obvious invisible?
The OP stated they taste like composted coffee grounds. Do you enjoy the taste of composted coffee grounds? Is your caffeine addiction such that you would actually go out back, dig coffee grounds out of a composting pile, and make a cup with them?
Funny, because every time I get coffee from one of those little cups it taste like it's already been composted.
Then I have to ask, why the hell are you drinking coffee from them? Your comment implies that you've done it more than once. Unless you enjoy the taste. I know taste is subjected but still....
The newer models us super-heated plasma, although there are some issues with flesh coming off with the water....
Typically when the dryer starts up, I can feel a fine spray of water hit me in the face. I avoid these dryers now, even if it means using my pant legs to dry my hands.
At least the old fashioned blow dryers that take forever to dry your hands don't direct a spray of water into your face.
Yea but the old fashioned ones are great at spewing microbes all over your hands too. When I was in college the "Go swab the bathrooms" was a standard experiment for the 101 microbio classes. The instructor made sure we ran a plate under the hand dryer. The results were an eye opener. The big issue is that no one ever cleans the damn things after they are installed. Most have filters but they are not maintained. So bacteria builds up over time and sets up home in them. Two decades later and I still avoid them whenever possible.
And tell the vendor what? "Please turn your back and ignore any noise and funny smells for the next few hours." You don't seriously thing the vendor consented to just mail the hardware to the FBI do you? They would have had techs on site, hell they may have even had the FBI come to them instead of the other way around.
I'd be more amused if you'd said Chicago since that's the correct address for Wrigley Field
Pretty sure this was just a clever ploy to out Cubs fans :)
Then that's fair enough but don't expect many of the ultracheap customers to remain customers if you only offer them the choice between a high price plan and an ultra high price plan. The fact that they are relatively cheap compared to other ultra fast connections is most likely irrelevant to people happy with 5M and will likely be able to find other plans under $50 from a different provider to switch to. Myself, I'm perfectly happy with my 1M connection although I wish I could get faster upload.
True, but there may not be any value in keeping them by offering a lower tier plan. I mean, they are paying $0 right now, so it's not like Google will lose any revenue from them departing for a cheaper ISP. It's possible based on the number of subscribers that are on that tier now that it wouldn't be worth it to offer a lower tier. I'm sure Google has done the math on this already before they decided how to proceed.
This is more analogous to paying for installation of a beer tap, but then having it dispense unlimited free beer (but at a slower rate than you might like). Google's saying that now you need to fork over $50/mo, but you'll get unlimited beer dispensed at 20x the rate. It's still a way better deal than anything the competitors are offering, especially considering how vital the beer is for getting any work done.
Yes, but if I paid for the installation of a beer tap that promised to give me 3 beers a day indefinitely then I would be pissed if all of a sudden they said I had to pay $50/month for 60 beers for day. I have no desire to drink 60 beers a day. The extra beer is wasted on me. Even if they can no longer offer a free service, they need to respect their original agreement by refunding the construction fee or at the very least offer a similar low bandwidth option for $10/month. At $50/month anyone who was happy with 5M/s is likely going to move to something else. There are plenty of cheaper options under $50/month whether it is DSL or tethering that will net you 5M/s. The people on the 5M plans don't want 100M, if they did then they likely would have signed up for the 1G plan at only $20/month more.
Except that it wasn't indefinitely. The contract was for 7 years, which Google has said that they are going to honor. They are just not going to sign up any new customers for that plan.
As AI puts lawyers, doctors, and other highly paid professionals out of business ... suddenly liberal arts majors are in high demand. At what point did I fall down that rabbit hole?
...it's almost as if there's some tangible, real-world value in a liberal arts education that's been neglected in tech circles through years of derision and mockery...
No, I'm pretty sure that can't be right...
Your example is a little inaccurate. This case is more like buying a car from a small manufacturer that runs on a fuel only provided by that manufacturer, and then throwing a fit when that manufacture goes out of business and said fuel is no longer available. I suppose you can't blame people for being a little irked, but its also a case for "buyer beware". Avoid buying products from any manufacture that tries to make you dependent on them for your products functioning.
This is the correct car analogy. It's also not like this is a new thing. Plenty of hardware has been rendered useless over the past 100+ years due to manufacturers dropping support for consumables. Just look at film cameras. There are plenty of dead film formats. It's just in this case, the "consumable" is a cloud service, so it feels new.
woosh
It's just that all those lovely cloud servers it relies on to do useful stuff will go away. You still own the hardware though. Feel free to use it as a paperweight or door stop all you like.
As an aside, are there any decent non-cloud-dependent home automation controllers that a) don't cost a fortune (aka most commercially available ones), b) actually work properly*, and c) work with common off-the-shelf protocols like zigbee and zwave?
*and by that, I mean something who's primary property isn't being a Rube Goldberg contest entry?
"news for people who kinda like plunking around digging a new room for their bunkers, tightening their tinfoil hats, and screaming at kids to get off their lawns, but don't really want to have to, y'know, think about this stuff"
FTFY :)
30 bucks per movie and I don't even get a copy to store?
So what happens when the service goes out of business? I lose everything I've bought?
Thank you, no.
For the same price you can buy the UHD Blu-ray which will also include a digital UV copy (probably only HD but still) and the regular HD Blu-ray copy as well.
And just how well is this going to work on AT&T DSL?
Simply put, it won't work at all. I'm stuck with AT&T at my new house and I have the best they can do at 18mb/s. 4K Netflix is a no-go. I can't imagine this will be any different.
RTFA. With the exception of Comcast exempting their own IPTV service this is all still external content. We are talking ISP asking content sources to pay for preferential treatment for their bits, or giving it to their own. They just shifted it from "fast lanes" to "free lanes" and suddenly it's A-OK. No, it's not.
Don't let the fact that net neutrality is a thing, a federal regulation that they have to abide by, and that this is just a tactic to completely sidestep it deter you from your rantings.