You will not get even ONE channel for $5. It won't happen.
So long as Comcast has a monopoly on the connection and all content over it, yes. And that's what we were talking abut changing. When a monopoly does *anything* it's bad for the consumers, bundling, unbundling, whatever. But when we force unbundling of the content from the connection, then we could see results.
Based on what others are saying here, I live in a place with a voluntary HOA, that's more like a friendly neighborhood watch. They have no legal right or claim as to anything I do with my property, but do ask for money, but don't mind when I don't pay.
I had no deed restrictions. So the house was never in the HOA, from what people are telling me, and that the HOA must have only existed for those houses that joined the airstrip, though I get HOA notices from the HOA that I'm not a member of.
I bought a house that was in an HOA, but an owner (previous to the people I bought the house from) didn't get the HOA documents signed at closing. I'm exempt. I'm not a member, and there's nothing they can do about it. You can sign everything but the HOA documents, and leave. What happens next is not well defined. Can the HOA place a lein against your house to require you to sign the documents? Can they sue the previous owners? I'm sure they'll threaten lots, but I've never seen a case where an HOA went after anyone for not signing into the HOA properly. I'm honestly curious what would happen. I know, for my house, the sale went through, and no action was taken.
Home ownership baffles me. Besides the fact that you own nothing, it's far more expensive than renting and much riskier.
You own your house more than you own your TV. And it's more expensive and riskier, despite appreciating better than inflation for every time period greater than the average home ownership since records began. My house bought 3 years ago appreciated more in that time than the average person makes in 10 years. The "risk" is in *not* buying.
I'd agree with you if it was REQUIRED that prospective byers be notified of more than just the annual cost of the HOA's dues by the seller.
It has been where I've signed in. I've never been part of an HOA, but the condo rules for the two condos I've had both had the full covenants available at closing. If they aren't there, walk away.
So stop shopping for new builds in rich white neighborhoods. You do know why HOAs started? It was't about unifying the look, but as a way of giving homeowners a way of driving out the uppity minorities that tried to buy in the "wrong" neighborhood. They belong on the other side of the tracks.
I've read the rules that state "nothing visible, unless otherwise allowed". and yes, that includes boats, cars and the like. You have to park your boat in the back where nobody can see it, or you are in violation of the HOA rules. Overnight guests must park in your garage or on the street, as they aren't allowed in the driveway overnight. I've seen them down to rules on drawing blinds.
If you don't get the bylaws before you buy, and sign them before you buy, then you aren't bound by them. Lots of the HOAs are "illegal" in that sense, and would lose nearly every suit brought against them.
Actually very few areas in the US have HOAs. It's just that they are the more rich, white areas, which are more desirable. I've never lived in a place with an HOA, and only a handful of people I know live in such areas. They are often more expensive, as you are paying for the "privileged" of having someone boss you around. There must be lots of people into that. Though my current house is in an HOA area, but the HOA wasn't strong enough, so I bought the house from people who didn't sign the HOA paperwork (no idea how many owners before them didn't), so I own a non HOA house in an HOA neighborhood. Or maybe only the homes that have a plot at the local airstrip have to join the HOA.
Depends on your definition of "mutate". A Zebra cannot mutate to a horse. For one, if it did, it would be a horse, not a zebra, for another, the change would be so large that it's impractical (to the point of being impossible) to make such a mutation.
Reading some of the comments, I think that they are doing it to "control bandwidth" in that they have proxy or compression happening on the plane. And the traffic must be unencrypted for that to work. And the CTO is an idiot for not knowing what it's doing and why, making his company look bad.
It's also common in schools where content must be filtered. Additionally, once you decrypt at an intermediate security device, you can proxy on that as well, and compress, and do other things that someone operating over an expensive link might want. It's nearly impossible to compress and proxy encrypted data.
There is nothing wrong with streaming, but is there something wrong with bandwidth rationing to ensure that all the customers on your plane have the same same share of a a limited resource?
In practice (under a system like Gogo is using), the guy FTPing a 1GB video from home will see better performance than someone watching the same thing on Youtube. You are defending that practice, while saying equality is good. I can't figure out what you actually mean.
I haven't flown with them in years. I moved out of Texas in 2001, and haven't been going anywhere Southwest could take me since. $5 a beer is still better than most. Cash only, or credit only? I've found that most airlines do one or the other, not both. It's pretty amusing to hear all the grumbles from passengers when that's announced.
What should be required is that the cable operators provide "all" channels to every location and "unlock" only those paid for. The service for "all" (but locked) should be no more than $10 per month. The cost per channel is then agreed between user and channel. Let the channels compete for eyes. Putting a monopoly cable company in the way who can charge for channels unrelated to cost, will result in the situation you describe.
But he's right. No one wants their taxes raised. Everyone wants everyone else's taxes raised. His point is people will say lots of things because of their ideology when being polled. But when the tax man comes around, the tax hike aint fair! And when they need to get on a plane, they're getting on bundle or not.
I was always the exception. I want my tax rate raised. It's too low. For what I make, I should be paying 15% more. I make about $100k and pay about $10k in federal income tax (about $20k all direct taxes). It's insane, and it's too low. But taxes fall as income rises. The greater your disposable income, the more you can afford to "hide" income (in legal ways, of course).
What happens with these polls and stories is that there are a large number of flaws in human reasoning. Humans aren't rational. A person would rather lose $5 and have his neighbor lose $5 than see his neighbor get $20 while he gets $0. It's that flaw that people are exploiting. If I just pay more tax voluntarily, even if 50% of us do, all we'll be doing is comparatively lowering the taxes on the non-payers. But if everyone were to be taxed the same, it's a better option. The polls take advantage of that, and ask the questions to get the irrational answer, then present the poll as if the question were asked rationally.
Have you ever noticed that *no* major poll releases the actual questions asked and the order? Because the people managing the poll aren't there to get information, but to manipulate. Yes, as a research exercise (back in college), we decided the answer we wanted and crafted polls to get that answer, even doing it twice with opposite desired answers. Never failed to get the desired result. Unless a poll publishes their questions (including order, as that matters greatly), then assume it biased and worthless, unless proven otherwise
Whoever makes a TV replacement for streaming will be the next billionaire.
Take a box. You don't "program" it. It plays random things from your area/subscription. A fast-forward is recorded as a "don't like". It learns what you like. Eventually, when you get home, you'll get one episode of Big Bang Theory to calm down to.. One episode of The Simpsons as bankground noise while you make dinner. Breaking Bad/Game of Thrones for some dinner watching, and a recent movie after if you don't wander off.
People don't like streaming because it forces a choice. What will I go out of my way to pick this time. Netflix fixed that with recommendations. Just add them all to your queue as they come up. Move one to the top, if it excites you, otherwise ignore it (aside from playing the "recommendation" game, and it'll take care of itself.
Yeah, but my nearest airport doesn't have Ryan Air, or Sprint. I've flown the "original" discount airline, Southwest Airlines, and it was perfectly fine. They don't unbundle, they cut it down. No alcohol, no matter what you are willing to pay. No meals. No in-flight entertainment. The "unbundled" airlines that are evil are the ful-service airlines with food, alcohol, in-flight entertainment where you are paying for it, whether you use it or not, then paying massive extra profit (to the airline) if you actually want to use it. The model of high incremental cost for a zero incremental cost item is evil, and unrelated to "unbundling".
Look at Phone service in the US for a good case. When unbundling was mandated in 1996, prices went wild (variable, not just up) and settled where it's cheaper now than it was before. Airlines are a poor case because the barriers to entry are one of the highest of any industry that exists. The discount airlines give more services for less money than you can get on the unbundled ones. Another problem with the airline unbundling is that it's a single-source unbundle. Unbundling works best with multi-vendors. Pick your meal from one company and your in-flight entertainment from another, and the price for all of it would be cheaper. Get locked in to a single monopoly player and pick your options, and you are screwed no matter what you do. You can't get it unless you get it from them, no matter what the price.
You must go to a different airport than I do. "Normal" means unusable. "Oh, you want to be able to take your legs with you on your flight? Then you need our 'premium economy' ticket." Paying per-bag and no meal is fine. That can be shared, understood, and compensated for.
So long as TSA stops taking food that's a "gel" , otherise all you can have is dry cereal. Most sandwiches are technically prohibited, as the cheese and other ingredients will usually trigger one or more of the "prohibited" definitions. I know a person who lost a small jar of peanut butter, and was told that if it were spread on a sandwich, it is a baned item still. The only food explicitly allowed through security is food for infants.
Most of the problems for people in-flight are knock-on effects from TSA.
The people seeing the most savings are the people who watch 1-5 channels. There's no plan I've seen where those people would be hurt by unbundling. Even at $10 per channel (for a "basic" channel) they'd be better off unbundling.
Though in practice, if unbundling did happen, it would be along side bundles. the "Sports" bundle and "discovery/history" bundles would still exist. Because there is value in them. But the practice of bundling Disney Kids with ESPN7 is an absurd bundle, and one that I'd be required to get, were I to have cable here.
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You will not get even ONE channel for $5. It won't happen.
So long as Comcast has a monopoly on the connection and all content over it, yes. And that's what we were talking abut changing. When a monopoly does *anything* it's bad for the consumers, bundling, unbundling, whatever. But when we force unbundling of the content from the connection, then we could see results.
Based on what others are saying here, I live in a place with a voluntary HOA, that's more like a friendly neighborhood watch. They have no legal right or claim as to anything I do with my property, but do ask for money, but don't mind when I don't pay.
I had no deed restrictions. So the house was never in the HOA, from what people are telling me, and that the HOA must have only existed for those houses that joined the airstrip, though I get HOA notices from the HOA that I'm not a member of.
I bought a house that was in an HOA, but an owner (previous to the people I bought the house from) didn't get the HOA documents signed at closing. I'm exempt. I'm not a member, and there's nothing they can do about it. You can sign everything but the HOA documents, and leave. What happens next is not well defined. Can the HOA place a lein against your house to require you to sign the documents? Can they sue the previous owners? I'm sure they'll threaten lots, but I've never seen a case where an HOA went after anyone for not signing into the HOA properly. I'm honestly curious what would happen. I know, for my house, the sale went through, and no action was taken.
Home ownership baffles me. Besides the fact that you own nothing, it's far more expensive than renting and much riskier.
You own your house more than you own your TV. And it's more expensive and riskier, despite appreciating better than inflation for every time period greater than the average home ownership since records began. My house bought 3 years ago appreciated more in that time than the average person makes in 10 years. The "risk" is in *not* buying.
I'd agree with you if it was REQUIRED that prospective byers be notified of more than just the annual cost of the HOA's dues by the seller.
It has been where I've signed in. I've never been part of an HOA, but the condo rules for the two condos I've had both had the full covenants available at closing. If they aren't there, walk away.
So stop shopping for new builds in rich white neighborhoods. You do know why HOAs started? It was't about unifying the look, but as a way of giving homeowners a way of driving out the uppity minorities that tried to buy in the "wrong" neighborhood. They belong on the other side of the tracks.
I've read the rules that state "nothing visible, unless otherwise allowed". and yes, that includes boats, cars and the like. You have to park your boat in the back where nobody can see it, or you are in violation of the HOA rules. Overnight guests must park in your garage or on the street, as they aren't allowed in the driveway overnight. I've seen them down to rules on drawing blinds.
If you don't get the bylaws before you buy, and sign them before you buy, then you aren't bound by them. Lots of the HOAs are "illegal" in that sense, and would lose nearly every suit brought against them.
Actually very few areas in the US have HOAs. It's just that they are the more rich, white areas, which are more desirable. I've never lived in a place with an HOA, and only a handful of people I know live in such areas. They are often more expensive, as you are paying for the "privileged" of having someone boss you around. There must be lots of people into that. Though my current house is in an HOA area, but the HOA wasn't strong enough, so I bought the house from people who didn't sign the HOA paperwork (no idea how many owners before them didn't), so I own a non HOA house in an HOA neighborhood. Or maybe only the homes that have a plot at the local airstrip have to join the HOA.
Most people from our parents/grandparents generations couldn't fix cars either. But the old guys left who tell stories remember it like they all did.
What people fix changes. Whether they can doesn't. "Get off my lawn" documented nearly every generation since 2000+ years ago.
The bundling of the ISP with IPTV removes the choice. It's no lot unbundled. They just changed the bundles.
Some games ran in Windows (solitaire style). Some worked exiting Windows. Others required rebooting, as Windows "exited" was not always clean enough.
Depends on your definition of "mutate". A Zebra cannot mutate to a horse. For one, if it did, it would be a horse, not a zebra, for another, the change would be so large that it's impractical (to the point of being impossible) to make such a mutation.
Reading some of the comments, I think that they are doing it to "control bandwidth" in that they have proxy or compression happening on the plane. And the traffic must be unencrypted for that to work. And the CTO is an idiot for not knowing what it's doing and why, making his company look bad.
It's also common in schools where content must be filtered. Additionally, once you decrypt at an intermediate security device, you can proxy on that as well, and compress, and do other things that someone operating over an expensive link might want. It's nearly impossible to compress and proxy encrypted data.
There is nothing wrong with streaming, but is there something wrong with bandwidth rationing to ensure that all the customers on your plane have the same same share of a a limited resource?
In practice (under a system like Gogo is using), the guy FTPing a 1GB video from home will see better performance than someone watching the same thing on Youtube. You are defending that practice, while saying equality is good. I can't figure out what you actually mean.
I haven't flown with them in years. I moved out of Texas in 2001, and haven't been going anywhere Southwest could take me since. $5 a beer is still better than most. Cash only, or credit only? I've found that most airlines do one or the other, not both. It's pretty amusing to hear all the grumbles from passengers when that's announced.
What should be required is that the cable operators provide "all" channels to every location and "unlock" only those paid for. The service for "all" (but locked) should be no more than $10 per month. The cost per channel is then agreed between user and channel. Let the channels compete for eyes. Putting a monopoly cable company in the way who can charge for channels unrelated to cost, will result in the situation you describe.
But he's right. No one wants their taxes raised. Everyone wants everyone else's taxes raised. His point is people will say lots of things because of their ideology when being polled. But when the tax man comes around, the tax hike aint fair! And when they need to get on a plane, they're getting on bundle or not.
I was always the exception. I want my tax rate raised. It's too low. For what I make, I should be paying 15% more. I make about $100k and pay about $10k in federal income tax (about $20k all direct taxes). It's insane, and it's too low. But taxes fall as income rises. The greater your disposable income, the more you can afford to "hide" income (in legal ways, of course).
What happens with these polls and stories is that there are a large number of flaws in human reasoning. Humans aren't rational. A person would rather lose $5 and have his neighbor lose $5 than see his neighbor get $20 while he gets $0. It's that flaw that people are exploiting. If I just pay more tax voluntarily, even if 50% of us do, all we'll be doing is comparatively lowering the taxes on the non-payers. But if everyone were to be taxed the same, it's a better option. The polls take advantage of that, and ask the questions to get the irrational answer, then present the poll as if the question were asked rationally.
Have you ever noticed that *no* major poll releases the actual questions asked and the order? Because the people managing the poll aren't there to get information, but to manipulate. Yes, as a research exercise (back in college), we decided the answer we wanted and crafted polls to get that answer, even doing it twice with opposite desired answers. Never failed to get the desired result. Unless a poll publishes their questions (including order, as that matters greatly), then assume it biased and worthless, unless proven otherwise
Whoever makes a TV replacement for streaming will be the next billionaire.
Take a box. You don't "program" it. It plays random things from your area/subscription. A fast-forward is recorded as a "don't like". It learns what you like. Eventually, when you get home, you'll get one episode of Big Bang Theory to calm down to.. One episode of The Simpsons as bankground noise while you make dinner. Breaking Bad/Game of Thrones for some dinner watching, and a recent movie after if you don't wander off.
People don't like streaming because it forces a choice. What will I go out of my way to pick this time. Netflix fixed that with recommendations. Just add them all to your queue as they come up. Move one to the top, if it excites you, otherwise ignore it (aside from playing the "recommendation" game, and it'll take care of itself.
How do you watch live sports?
You realize you are posting to Slashdot, right?
Yeah, but my nearest airport doesn't have Ryan Air, or Sprint. I've flown the "original" discount airline, Southwest Airlines, and it was perfectly fine. They don't unbundle, they cut it down. No alcohol, no matter what you are willing to pay. No meals. No in-flight entertainment. The "unbundled" airlines that are evil are the ful-service airlines with food, alcohol, in-flight entertainment where you are paying for it, whether you use it or not, then paying massive extra profit (to the airline) if you actually want to use it. The model of high incremental cost for a zero incremental cost item is evil, and unrelated to "unbundling".
Look at Phone service in the US for a good case. When unbundling was mandated in 1996, prices went wild (variable, not just up) and settled where it's cheaper now than it was before. Airlines are a poor case because the barriers to entry are one of the highest of any industry that exists. The discount airlines give more services for less money than you can get on the unbundled ones. Another problem with the airline unbundling is that it's a single-source unbundle. Unbundling works best with multi-vendors. Pick your meal from one company and your in-flight entertainment from another, and the price for all of it would be cheaper. Get locked in to a single monopoly player and pick your options, and you are screwed no matter what you do. You can't get it unless you get it from them, no matter what the price.
You must go to a different airport than I do. "Normal" means unusable. "Oh, you want to be able to take your legs with you on your flight? Then you need our 'premium economy' ticket." Paying per-bag and no meal is fine. That can be shared, understood, and compensated for.
So long as TSA stops taking food that's a "gel" , otherise all you can have is dry cereal. Most sandwiches are technically prohibited, as the cheese and other ingredients will usually trigger one or more of the "prohibited" definitions. I know a person who lost a small jar of peanut butter, and was told that if it were spread on a sandwich, it is a baned item still. The only food explicitly allowed through security is food for infants.
Most of the problems for people in-flight are knock-on effects from TSA.
The people seeing the most savings are the people who watch 1-5 channels. There's no plan I've seen where those people would be hurt by unbundling. Even at $10 per channel (for a "basic" channel) they'd be better off unbundling.
Though in practice, if unbundling did happen, it would be along side bundles. the "Sports" bundle and "discovery/history" bundles would still exist. Because there is value in them. But the practice of bundling Disney Kids with ESPN7 is an absurd bundle, and one that I'd be required to get, were I to have cable here.