So you are fine with people skipping commercials and if that is not possible they should get pirated content? Who pays for the content then? The bottom line is that commercials give you the ability to watch content for free. Without commercials you would ahve to have some mechanism for paying for each item of content, perhaps each second of content. Commercials also educate you on what is available in the marketplace, so they do ahve a purpose. The problem is irrelevant commercials or poorly made commercials.
The #1 reason tech is in a funk is that there are monopolies - Microsoft on the Software side, and the Telcos and Cable Companies on the Access side. The phone and cable companies are even worse than Microsoft because they use all the tactics and worse that Microsoft has ever used but no one can tell, because most people are not savvy enough to figure out what they are doing. For example, Cable does not allow anyone to sell Internet access over their network, yet the Bells are required to. Cable sells it below cost (you really think 1.5 Mbps costs 39.95/month?), but you know the price will go up once they put all their competitiors out of business. Same thing with DSL - phone companies sell the copper for DSl at $32-$39 to ISPs and then sell the whole thing (including Internet bandwidth and the copper and tons of other freebies) for $29.95.
Microsoft is like a babe in the woods to these guys - the Telco management have been acting anti-competitively for oh, about 50 years now.
The point is no one has the money to fight these people in court. The government has to break up these monopolies and bring the "free" back into "free market".
Slashdot Mirror
So you are fine with people skipping commercials and if that is not possible they should get pirated content? Who pays for the content then? The bottom line is that commercials give you the ability to watch content for free. Without commercials you would ahve to have some mechanism for paying for each item of content, perhaps each second of content. Commercials also educate you on what is available in the marketplace, so they do ahve a purpose. The problem is irrelevant commercials or poorly made commercials.
The #1 reason tech is in a funk is that there are monopolies - Microsoft on the Software side, and the Telcos and Cable Companies on the Access side. The phone and cable companies are even worse than Microsoft because they use all the tactics and worse that Microsoft has ever used but no one can tell, because most people are not savvy enough to figure out what they are doing. For example, Cable does not allow anyone to sell Internet access over their network, yet the Bells are required to. Cable sells it below cost (you really think 1.5 Mbps costs 39.95/month?), but you know the price will go up once they put all their competitiors out of business. Same thing with DSL - phone companies sell the copper for DSl at $32-$39 to ISPs and then sell the whole thing (including Internet bandwidth and the copper and tons of other freebies) for $29.95. Microsoft is like a babe in the woods to these guys - the Telco management have been acting anti-competitively for oh, about 50 years now. The point is no one has the money to fight these people in court. The government has to break up these monopolies and bring the "free" back into "free market".