I think you're not including internet access, but point is valid. You don't need cable, and you don't really need phone either. A data connection does everything.
It's really expensive for the content that most people actually watch.
If you have a good ATSC receiver, you get a SIGNIFICANTLY better looking (less compressed) picture off the antenna for free than you do off the cable for large bucks.
Netflix is, what, $4.99 a month for unlimited streaming, which is not an "introductory offer" that's going to triple in 6 months, and Roku boxes are about $100, a one-time cost, not the monthly rental that the cable companies want you to pay.
"Triple play" packages are not really a very good deal. Minimal phone and internet is less than half the cost of the total package, and you're not paying for content you're not watching. Consider, even HBO and Showtime original series eventually make it onto DVD, and become available on Netflix.
Even with the "triple" discount, our cost went from $135/month to $60/month just by dropping cable and returning the two set-top boxes. Now, they'll tell you that you're paying a (slightly) higher price for phone and internet, but the important thing is that your total bill is down by more than 50%. In a down economy, that's increasingly important.
Get a phone base station that'll pair with your cell, (about $60) and you can even drop the land line and buy internet service only.
Even if netflix gets extinguished, those red boxes at the supermarket are good enough for a significant number of people.
Cable TV is becoming this century's AOL. More and more people are realizing it's a crappy high priced service for shlubs who don't realize that all you really need from them is an internet connection. I think this is why Comcast is trying to leverage their current capital (as did AOL) and branch out now, before the inevitable collapse comes.
Frontier, the company that took over Fios from Verizon in our area, is getting out of the cable TV business. Comcast comes by about twice a month to remind us of that and try to get us to switch, so we can keep our cable TV. But we've already dropped it, and we suspect Frontier has seen the handwriting on the wall.
I first learned RPN in the seventies on my first calculator, an HP 45. When it was stolen in the eighties, I got an HP 16c which I still have and which still works flawlessly. At work I mostly use RealCalc on Android with radix and rpn modes turned on, but I also keep a 48C in reach. I *can* operate a regular calculator, but RPN makes so much more sense to me.
My daughter took to RPN easily at 13 years old, but it confused her teachers so she had to go back to conventional notation.
My 16C saw hard usage in the eighties when I did military electronics. It does still work, but I'm afraid to carry it around because if I lost it I couldn't possibly replace it.
These days I make do with RealCalc for Android with RPN and Radix modes turned on. It's not exactly the same, but it's free, usable and always on me.
...that it would be clear and sunny today. I opened the garage door to pull out the motorcycle and it was POURING rain. It never occurred to me to look out the window. So yeah, maybe they have a point.
Let me put on my tinfoil hat. Wait... there it is... Ok. I have to wonder how useful it would be to manipulate the data presented by gadgets. In fact, there could be an intriguing experiment there... Say, trick the iphone into reporting it's raining today, and all other smartphones report it's sunny, and then do a poll at the town square. Do it when it's raining, and when it's sunny, to identify the segment of the population (large, I hope, but you never know) who looked out the window.
Not only that, but didn't AMD state that they have no interest in fabbing an ARM processor? So if Apple made that kind of statement, both Intel and AMD would burst out laughing.
> You can't get where Apple is by being vindictive and petty - contrary to the public rumors about Jobs.
That's a truthful statement but perhaps not exactly the way you meant it. Apple as a company can not afford to be petty and vindictive, and as a whole it has not been. Jobs, however, can and does exhibit these characteristics.
The answer is, there hasn't yet been a good design at a compelling price. I was almost sold on the Galaxy tablet, because it had something that even the ipad didn't have, (a 7 inch form factor) but there were some parts that were half baked, and Samsung priced it out of the market. I'm seeing similar things from the other major players -- they want a premium, high-end-laptop price point on designs that haven't been completely thought out.
Moreover, the tablet-centric version of Android (3.0) isn't completely mature yet, and is running on very few actual tablets.
And finally, the rash of cheap wannabes with resistive screens and Android 1.X are muddying the waters. Fred and Ethyl aren't going to know the difference between a Coby and a Toshiba, so they'll buy the $149.95 model and be disappointed.
Well, I don't think the behemoths were truly innovators for quite awhile. Each generation was a refinement of something that already existed, with an almost exclusive focus on Winders on conventional PCs and laptops. They're not equipped to compete in the tablet marketplace, not because the processor can't handle it, but because the tablet marketplace has already standardized on ARM. Even if, for instance, Android gets ported to x86, (I'm aware there's a project for that), or IOS surfaces on x86, (extremely unlikely) what would they run for apps? Fer cryin' out loud, even Windows Phone 7 runs on ARM.
What would an AMD tablet run? Surely they don't think they're going to sell a lot of tablets running Windows 7? What truly mature, tablet-ready OS runs on Intel? (And I'm not talking about Parsimonious Palembang or some other future Ubuntu release -- what's available in, say, June?)
All they'd have to do is incorporate the rfid detector with popup tire slashers, iron crossing barriers, klaxons and klieg lights. Locals could sit in lawn chairs across the street at checkout time and watch the show.
I wasn't "trying to get out of a ticket". I wasn't guilty of the infraction of which I was accused. Have we really gotten to the point where professing innocence is a sign of guilt?
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I think you're not including internet access, but point is valid. You don't need cable, and you don't really need phone either. A data connection does everything.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00138AJPO
Comes with two phones.
Here's the thing about cable TV:
It's really expensive for the content that most people actually watch.
If you have a good ATSC receiver, you get a SIGNIFICANTLY better looking (less compressed) picture off the antenna for free than you do off the cable for large bucks.
Netflix is, what, $4.99 a month for unlimited streaming, which is not an "introductory offer" that's going to triple in 6 months, and Roku boxes are about $100, a one-time cost, not the monthly rental that the cable companies want you to pay.
"Triple play" packages are not really a very good deal. Minimal phone and internet is less than half the cost of the total package, and you're not paying for content you're not watching. Consider, even HBO and Showtime original series eventually make it onto DVD, and become available on Netflix.
Even with the "triple" discount, our cost went from $135/month to $60/month just by dropping cable and returning the two set-top boxes. Now, they'll tell you that you're paying a (slightly) higher price for phone and internet, but the important thing is that your total bill is down by more than 50%. In a down economy, that's increasingly important.
Get a phone base station that'll pair with your cell, (about $60) and you can even drop the land line and buy internet service only.
Even if netflix gets extinguished, those red boxes at the supermarket are good enough for a significant number of people.
Cable TV is becoming this century's AOL. More and more people are realizing it's a crappy high priced service for shlubs who don't realize that all you really need from them is an internet connection. I think this is why Comcast is trying to leverage their current capital (as did AOL) and branch out now, before the inevitable collapse comes.
Frontier, the company that took over Fios from Verizon in our area, is getting out of the cable TV business. Comcast comes by about twice a month to remind us of that and try to get us to switch, so we can keep our cable TV. But we've already dropped it, and we suspect Frontier has seen the handwriting on the wall.
Unless it's actually released, at which time the world really comes to an end.
I first learned RPN in the seventies on my first calculator, an HP 45. When it was stolen in the eighties, I got an HP 16c which I still have and which still works flawlessly. At work I mostly use RealCalc on Android with radix and rpn modes turned on, but I also keep a 48C in reach. I *can* operate a regular calculator, but RPN makes so much more sense to me.
My daughter took to RPN easily at 13 years old, but it confused her teachers so she had to go back to conventional notation.
My 16C saw hard usage in the eighties when I did military electronics. It does still work, but I'm afraid to carry it around because if I lost it I couldn't possibly replace it.
These days I make do with RealCalc for Android with RPN and Radix modes turned on. It's not exactly the same, but it's free, usable and always on me.
Let me put on my tinfoil hat. Wait... there it is... Ok. I have to wonder how useful it would be to manipulate the data presented by gadgets. In fact, there could be an intriguing experiment there... Say, trick the iphone into reporting it's raining today, and all other smartphones report it's sunny, and then do a poll at the town square. Do it when it's raining, and when it's sunny, to identify the segment of the population (large, I hope, but you never know) who looked out the window.
Not only that, but didn't AMD state that they have no interest in fabbing an ARM processor? So if Apple made that kind of statement, both Intel and AMD would burst out laughing.
> You can't get where Apple is by being vindictive and petty - contrary to the public rumors about Jobs.
That's a truthful statement but perhaps not exactly the way you meant it. Apple as a company can not afford to be petty and vindictive, and as a whole it has not been. Jobs, however, can and does exhibit these characteristics.
> Who actually pays $200 for Windows?
Well, anyone who wants to upgrade from Home Starvation edition, or wants to (or is forced to) upgrade to the next major release.
I still have the blimp.
Yeah, but it'd take a nerd to think of any of those, and nerds can afford towels. (Well, maybe not in this economy...)
Yes, I'm aware of that project, but what apps would it run? Even java apps would need some tweaking, I suspect.
The answer is, there hasn't yet been a good design at a compelling price. I was almost sold on the Galaxy tablet, because it had something that even the ipad didn't have, (a 7 inch form factor) but there were some parts that were half baked, and Samsung priced it out of the market. I'm seeing similar things from the other major players -- they want a premium, high-end-laptop price point on designs that haven't been completely thought out.
Moreover, the tablet-centric version of Android (3.0) isn't completely mature yet, and is running on very few actual tablets.
And finally, the rash of cheap wannabes with resistive screens and Android 1.X are muddying the waters. Fred and Ethyl aren't going to know the difference between a Coby and a Toshiba, so they'll buy the $149.95 model and be disappointed.
Well, I don't think the behemoths were truly innovators for quite awhile. Each generation was a refinement of something that already existed, with an almost exclusive focus on Winders on conventional PCs and laptops. They're not equipped to compete in the tablet marketplace, not because the processor can't handle it, but because the tablet marketplace has already standardized on ARM. Even if, for instance, Android gets ported to x86, (I'm aware there's a project for that), or IOS surfaces on x86, (extremely unlikely) what would they run for apps? Fer cryin' out loud, even Windows Phone 7 runs on ARM.
It's too late for x86 tablets.
I bet it'll even run Desqview!
What would an AMD tablet run? Surely they don't think they're going to sell a lot of tablets running Windows 7? What truly mature, tablet-ready OS runs on Intel? (And I'm not talking about Parsimonious Palembang or some other future Ubuntu release -- what's available in, say, June?)
All they'd have to do is incorporate the rfid detector with popup tire slashers, iron crossing barriers, klaxons and klieg lights. Locals could sit in lawn chairs across the street at checkout time and watch the show.
They've got to work that into an episode of Raising Hope.
Oh, c'mon. Certainly Gaddafi would have outsourced the bomb part. What kind of fools do you take us for?
I wasn't "trying to get out of a ticket". I wasn't guilty of the infraction of which I was accused. Have we really gotten to the point where professing innocence is a sign of guilt?
It was a few years ago...
> The M-16 was a weapon characterized by an occasional failure to fail.
That's my favorite phrase for this week.
Sorry, had to say it...