Interesting that Comcast imposes data caps and charges a pile of money for internet access, complaining that they need to do this to help manage their network infrastructure instead of investing back into infrastructure to accommodate their paying customers. Instead, they take money gained from their customers and use it to buy other companies. This is why it's so frustrating to see the FCC not push harder on these companies to prevent/remove data caps and increase bandwidth for customers, especially since the companies are doing all they can to punish customers for cord cutting. As a cable company, should they not focus on providing the best service available for their customers? I would be all in favor of Comcast's efforts to become a content creator if they were't using their position against their customers who don't want their content via a cable subscription.
I ama cord cutting household. We have three young kids who love watching videos on YouTube. We stream our videos from providers such as Apple, HBO, PBS, etc. We aren't abusing anything, this is typical use. "Clinging" to the idea of unlimited data comes from companies selling unlimited data in the first place. If it's not unlimited, don't call it unlimited. Call it limited (which it is). They don't call it limited because in marketing, referring to it as limited data is not sexy at all.
The real question is why someone could ever pay a flat fee for an infinite resource. It was obvious that could never last.
The people that scream the loudest about it, are of course the ones abusing the system and hastening its demise...
So if it was clear that it would never last, why then did companies offer it in the first place without clearly stating that this is temporary and will go away in the near future.. We all know why..
As for abusing the system.. Again, this is BS.. My wife's AT&T unlimited data plan which was grandfathered was hobbled because she used 3 or 4 GB one month. This is hardly us abusing the system the most.. We left for T-Mobile and have been significantly happier with their offerings. Fortunately we had a choice since cellular carriers are not as bad a monopoly as high speed internet providers for homes. If there was a similar provider in areas which Comcast covers and if that provider offered similar services for less, you would see people leaving in droves. Comcast knows that no such competition exists (thanks to their bought politicians) and so they can continue to screw over people and treat them like crap with little concern of losing customers.
Hell, the reason that so many people are cutting the cord is that they want to get away from what Comcast and others force upon them with tiered pricing etc.
I would imagine that he meant that larger companies use virtual tape libraries (comprised of hard drives) or use backup systems which write to an array of hard drives instead of tape. These are great for fast backups and restoration of data. Pushing offsite via replication provides the offsite backups.
As Playboy removes nudity from its magazines, subscriptions to National Geographic suddenly skyrockets! Or for those who can't afford National Geographic, there's always the Sears catalogue.:P Recall Moe on the Simpsons?
My wife and I were on the AT&T unlimited data plan which got grandfathered once they dropped that plan. AT&T was very interested in pushing people off of that plan which they achieved by throttling people who used too much data. My wife received notice that her data was going to be throttled for the remainder of the billing period for going over around 3 GB. This happened right around when T-Mobile started their "un-carrier" plan which included unlimited data, voice and text. We left AT&T shortly after and never looked back. Thanks to AT&T's shortsighted push to get people off of their unlimited plan, we found T-Mobile which has kept improving what it offers customers (we recently visited Canada and, thanks to their new plan which was added for a few dollars, we were able to use 4G/LTE data, make and receive unlimited calls and use text without worrying about data caps and ridiculous international overage charges). Verizon is doing ht same thing here. Is it really worth losing customers just to drop this unlimited plan? They lose out on added lines (we added another family member to our plan plus a couple of iPads which get data through T-Mobile now).
As long as AT&T and Verizon continue to treat their customers with contempt, people will continue to leave for greener pastures.
The App developers may have good intentions around this and never contemplate using their pipeline from enduser's devices. The issue then becomes how solid they are in terms of security as this opens them up as a big target for others to compromise the user's traffic and device. This becomes a very weak point in the security walls and efforts which Apple has been building and would most certainly become a focus of parties interested in compromising iOS devices. We can't put that level of trust into just anyone who puts an ad blocker up on the App store and even if it were a well reputed company, we have seen how some companies who have this level of access to computers (anti-virus programs which install root certs) fail to be bullet proof.
IOS App store is a curated environment and everyone knows this and counts upon it to keep their devices as safe as possible. Apple identified this content blocker as a problem because of how it is structured and pulled it.This is a good thing. It's no different than Apple force disabling Adobe Flash on OS X when vulnerabilities are discovered in it (for example).
If I had purchased this blocker, I would be demanding my money back. I bought Purify and have been happy with it. Hopefully they remain true to blocking all ads and trackers. Yes it cost more but I see that as an investment in a better browsing experience on mobile.
Web sites can offer two tiers of service. 1) Paid access. Pay a nominal fee to support the website operator. This means you are free of ads AND tracking. (most people are creeped out by tracking). 2) Selective Ad supported access. Select from a list of ad categories (more granularity, the better) and be allowed access to the site. The site serves up only those ads which you are interested. Once again though, tracking needs to be addressed here in some manner. Ad companies need to know the number of impressions but there should be a policy of not tracking users across other sites. Also, the amount off ads is limited so that access to the site is speedy.
If this kind of approach were implemented, I think more people would be less hung up over ads. I personally never watch ads or intentionally click ads so it's wasted money from advertisers but it helps pay the bills.
Microsoft has been pushing out downloads to users so that number will include these pre-staged downloads for later installation. My comment was aimed at the fact that Microsoft is essentially opting in everyone to Windows 10 and pushing the files onto their devices. They do this (in part) to be able to showcase the large download numbers and tell the world that the uptake on Windows 10 is exceptional. The fact that they are reporting number of downloads and not total installed base further solidifies this position. These upgrades should be opt-in and not automatically downloaded to every computer which has automatic updates enabled as those were for security and stability updates, not full operating system updates).
As for my opinion of Windows, I do use Windows 7 (disliked Windows 8) and I support a work environment which has Windows 7, 8.1 and 10 computers (along with various versions of Server). I did not say that Windows 10 sucks, I said that Microsoft really needs this to be a success and will use every tool at its disposal to do so and that starts with marketing (via boosting the number of downloads which implies actual installs). I do not like this approach but understand why they are doing this and for some people, it will help them to upgrade as they probably want to do. I am not storage or bandwidth constrained so it doesn't impact me as it may others. It's just this philosophy of shoveling it onto every device possible is pretty disingenuous when they market those figures as an early sign of success.
Obviously the intent here is to inflate their numbers and make the deployment look better than it really is. While I have no doubt that many are taking advantage of the free upgrade option (which apparently expires in a year or so), not all who download are going to install (shoveling the upgrade onto systems) or stick with it.
When a company pulls this kind of trick, they are dead to me. I don't understand why companies think that they will get away with such actions. It may slip through once but it only takes one time getting caught and then people will start looking back at past hardware releases to see if they did the same thing before. The damage to a company's reputation can be devastating, all to earn some extra profit.. Such a shame.
Yep.. T-Mobile is awesome in the USA. The tethering works great. No ridiculous prices to add SMS. Free international roaming (slower speeds but I'll take it! Also can buy data at a faster speed). I was on AT&T's plan for years. I had a grandfathered unlimited data pan with them. Once they sent me a notice for exceeding normal use (wasn't that much to be honest, I think the phone hit 3 Gigs of data due to our son watching some Netflix videos) and slowed my connection down (actually it was my wife's phone) we decided to leave AT&T for T-Mobile and are so glad we did. I tell everyone I know that they should leave AT&T and use T-Mobile..
I have never understood the mentality of throwing out these portables for students to use as a classroom. I see many schools here in South Florida using these portables as a permanent solution to inadequate classrooms. Before anyone says "but the school system can't afford to build new ones" keep in mind that in Florida, the lottery proceedings which the state takes in are supposed to go towards the school system. If the government would properly fund school sour of the normal budget and then allocate lottery revenue AFTER instead of including it as a part of meeting the budget (thus allocating the other funds elsewhere). If the school system actually got the lottery revenue after the base budgets were met, the school system would be a lot better off and these portables would not be a permanent structure.
I absolutely loved playing multi-player Descent. The death match sessions were fast and furious. It's funny because several days ago, I had wondered if people still host servers to play Descent and Starsiege: Tribes (another great game). So many great games just don't get played any more I guess. Threewave CTF Quake was another amazing game which I spent so many hours playing.. (oh, so many hours)...
Watching TV, ipads, whatever has zero to do with Autism. If you really do think that you really need to read up on it and perhaps speak with parents of a child with Autism. My daughter was not stuck in front of a TV or screen much at all and I have seen many kids who were. There's a marked difference between a kid with no social skills / experiences and a kid with Autism. Kids with no social skill still are curious about people around them, want to communicate with others, can smile for pictures, etc. A child with Autism wants none of those things. Your theory is laughable and that you'd sit there spouting on like this is pathetic. Go back to speaking of things which you have knowledge of and avoid commenting on things for which you know nothing.
As a parent of a 4 year old with Autism, I can safely say that you have no clue what you are talking about which is fine (hell I knew very little about it before having my daughter diagnosed at the age of 2). I do take issue when you make such idiotic comments as Autism is the new ADD. There's a difference between "throwing a huge tantrum" because a child had a toy, tablet whatever taken away and not having your child want to look at you, smile for pictures and be oblivious to everyone around him or her. I'd be very surprised honestly, if any parent ever jumped to the conclusion that their child must have Autism because they are misbehaving or are "nerdy".
"Increased screening sensitivity"? What does that mean? Do you even know what you are talking about? Have you ever attended sessions with doctors and specialists with a child to see how they determine if a child shows signs of Autism? No? Well, have you even read up on it? No? Perhaps you should before you continue to show your ignorance and insensitivity to others even more than you already have.
Trust me on this. Autism is not ever diagnosed because a kid has tantrums or is nerdy etc. The professionals know what they are doing. My daughter most definitely has Autism (on the lower end of the spectrum) and should lead a normal life provided she receives therapy and treatment as she grows up.
I think Drone / UAV can be interchanged.. I think the big differentiator should be the autonomous flying capabilities. Otherwise, I think of the stuff that individuals fly around as RC Aircraft even with a camera onboard which provides the person flying it with the ability to see from the aircraft in real time. Drones, as the term is popularly used these days, tend to refer to a military use UAV which packs weapons or sensors used for military reconnaissance.
Unmanned Areal Vehicle: A powered, aerial vehicle that does not carry a human operator, uses aerodynamic forces to provide vehicle lift, can fly autonomously or be piloted remotely, can be expendable or recoverable, and can carry a lethal or nonlethal payload. Ballistic or semiballistic vehicles, cruise missiles, and artillery projectiles are not considered unmanned aerial vehicles. Also called UAV.
It's apparent that the whole patent system is in dire need of an overhaul. The question is who will finally step up in the government to fix this mess.. It's something I hear of almost daily (patent trolls killing off innovation and screwing people out of money).
The double-click ads never land on my systems. I use a hosts file to block their stuff along with other ads. I did some searching around and found a few places which provide hots files which you can use on your computers. Here's a great site which maintains a hosts file which you can use in your computers.. http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm
It's one thing if the employer is offering these as an alternative to a pay check for people that can't get a bank account somewhere. It's an entirely different issue when they are defaulting to these or forcing them on people. Pay employees the traditional way, via check but offer alternatives if needed. The alternatives though should not be saddled with these fees. I received a similar thing as a rebate from Goodyear for some tires I bought. It was a prepaid Visa card. There were a lot of fees for not using it (they charge per month), using it to get cash, going over the limit of what is available on the card, etc. So, I just took it and bought an amazon gift certificate for the full value of the pre-paid card and applied it to my Amazon account. These stupid cards are ridiculous. I can't imagine having to get paid off of one of these.
Yes, this is what I was referring to. Line up deals with content sources on the internet (such as Amazon... and Netflix etc) and index all of their content in a search engine which would include cable provider content and Over The Air Content. Have this searchable, categorized, etc. and then if a person wants to watch a movie, they can see that it's coming up soon through their cable company (albeit with commercials (cough fast forward.. cough) OR that it's available unedited and commercial free through their subscription to Amazon or Netflix or (insert service name here) and the person can opt to "DVR" any one of those sources to watch later. They could even set preferential sources so that Amazon is first, OTA is second and Cable is third etc. which then could be presented to the user when they get the search results with default being their preferred stream method. There's a lot that can be done to vastly improve the end user experience. For some reason, nobody's stepping up to do it.. To put the effort into decluttering controllers, or optimizing UI or making these deals to get everything into one box.
Adding additional tuners is a good thing, Increased storage is a must as well (to accommodate all of those tuners) but what they really need to do is to show some innovative changes to move them ahead of the pack. Simplifying the cable card piece, streamlining their controller and interface and adding some cool new features would compel more people to ditch the archaic dinosaurs that cable companies currently shovel out their doors to customers. I'm not talking about adding voice control or arm gestures which everyone seems to think is the next big thing for using TV's either. We can all agree that the user interface is horrible. They seem to be cramming more buttons on the remote control (3/4 of which I seldom have ever used) and finding content you want has been a horrible experience. TiVo should look to integrate with other services too (via the internet) and pre cache content you'd like to watch, perhaps downloading during non-peak times to ease internet load. Get some truly-def content this way all lined up to watch later instead of dealing with reduced quality streams. This would require working out deals with the various providers but that's part of what they need to innovate. Say what you will about Steve jobs, he was able to push, pull and shove companies reluctantly along so that all pieces of his vision for a product were lined up.
I built a MAME cabinet from a pre-fab unit from Rec Room Masters https://www.recroommasters.com/ for my wife as a Christmas present. It was very easy to assemble (just bolts which are provided) To this shell, you add a controller (Tankstick) from X-Arcade http://www.xgaming.com/ . Lastly you add a monitor, computer, drive space for ROMS and speakers. I spent some extra for side arcade art and illuminated Marquee. As a front end for selecting games, I use Hyperspin http://hyperspin-fe.com/ . It's an amazing machine and is pretty affordable, especially if the Raspberry Pi can run the games.. My wife and I have spent countless hours on this. I also grabbed ROMS for almost every older home console ever made and play them on this as well..
I don't have the tools, space and skills required to build a cabinet from scratch. The hardest part is finding the ROMS which work with the MAME version that you use.
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Interesting that Comcast imposes data caps and charges a pile of money for internet access, complaining that they need to do this to help manage their network infrastructure instead of investing back into infrastructure to accommodate their paying customers. Instead, they take money gained from their customers and use it to buy other companies. This is why it's so frustrating to see the FCC not push harder on these companies to prevent/remove data caps and increase bandwidth for customers, especially since the companies are doing all they can to punish customers for cord cutting. As a cable company, should they not focus on providing the best service available for their customers?
I would be all in favor of Comcast's efforts to become a content creator if they were't using their position against their customers who don't want their content via a cable subscription.
I ama cord cutting household. We have three young kids who love watching videos on YouTube. We stream our videos from providers such as Apple, HBO, PBS, etc. We aren't abusing anything, this is typical use. "Clinging" to the idea of unlimited data comes from companies selling unlimited data in the first place. If it's not unlimited, don't call it unlimited. Call it limited (which it is). They don't call it limited because in marketing, referring to it as limited data is not sexy at all.
The real question is why someone could ever pay a flat fee for an infinite resource. It was obvious that could never last.
The people that scream the loudest about it, are of course the ones abusing the system and hastening its demise...
So if it was clear that it would never last, why then did companies offer it in the first place without clearly stating that this is temporary and will go away in the near future.. We all know why..
As for abusing the system.. Again, this is BS.. My wife's AT&T unlimited data plan which was grandfathered was hobbled because she used 3 or 4 GB one month. This is hardly us abusing the system the most.. We left for T-Mobile and have been significantly happier with their offerings. Fortunately we had a choice since cellular carriers are not as bad a monopoly as high speed internet providers for homes. If there was a similar provider in areas which Comcast covers and if that provider offered similar services for less, you would see people leaving in droves. Comcast knows that no such competition exists (thanks to their bought politicians) and so they can continue to screw over people and treat them like crap with little concern of losing customers.
Hell, the reason that so many people are cutting the cord is that they want to get away from what Comcast and others force upon them with tiered pricing etc.
I would imagine that he meant that larger companies use virtual tape libraries (comprised of hard drives) or use backup systems which write to an array of hard drives instead of tape. These are great for fast backups and restoration of data. Pushing offsite via replication provides the offsite backups.
As Playboy removes nudity from its magazines, subscriptions to National Geographic suddenly skyrockets! Or for those who can't afford National Geographic, there's always the Sears catalogue. :P Recall Moe on the Simpsons?
My wife and I were on the AT&T unlimited data plan which got grandfathered once they dropped that plan. AT&T was very interested in pushing people off of that plan which they achieved by throttling people who used too much data. My wife received notice that her data was going to be throttled for the remainder of the billing period for going over around 3 GB. This happened right around when T-Mobile started their "un-carrier" plan which included unlimited data, voice and text. We left AT&T shortly after and never looked back. Thanks to AT&T's shortsighted push to get people off of their unlimited plan, we found T-Mobile which has kept improving what it offers customers (we recently visited Canada and, thanks to their new plan which was added for a few dollars, we were able to use 4G /LTE data, make and receive unlimited calls and use text without worrying about data caps and ridiculous international overage charges). Verizon is doing ht same thing here. Is it really worth losing customers just to drop this unlimited plan? They lose out on added lines (we added another family member to our plan plus a couple of iPads which get data through T-Mobile now).
As long as AT&T and Verizon continue to treat their customers with contempt, people will continue to leave for greener pastures.
The App developers may have good intentions around this and never contemplate using their pipeline from enduser's devices. The issue then becomes how solid they are in terms of security as this opens them up as a big target for others to compromise the user's traffic and device. This becomes a very weak point in the security walls and efforts which Apple has been building and would most certainly become a focus of parties interested in compromising iOS devices. We can't put that level of trust into just anyone who puts an ad blocker up on the App store and even if it were a well reputed company, we have seen how some companies who have this level of access to computers (anti-virus programs which install root certs) fail to be bullet proof.
IOS App store is a curated environment and everyone knows this and counts upon it to keep their devices as safe as possible. Apple identified this content blocker as a problem because of how it is structured and pulled it.This is a good thing. It's no different than Apple force disabling Adobe Flash on OS X when vulnerabilities are discovered in it (for example).
If I had purchased this blocker, I would be demanding my money back. I bought Purify and have been happy with it. Hopefully they remain true to blocking all ads and trackers. Yes it cost more but I see that as an investment in a better browsing experience on mobile.
Web sites can offer two tiers of service.
1) Paid access. Pay a nominal fee to support the website operator. This means you are free of ads AND tracking. (most people are creeped out by tracking).
2) Selective Ad supported access. Select from a list of ad categories (more granularity, the better) and be allowed access to the site. The site serves up only those ads which you are interested. Once again though, tracking needs to be addressed here in some manner. Ad companies need to know the number of impressions but there should be a policy of not tracking users across other sites. Also, the amount off ads is limited so that access to the site is speedy.
If this kind of approach were implemented, I think more people would be less hung up over ads. I personally never watch ads or intentionally click ads so it's wasted money from advertisers but it helps pay the bills.
Microsoft has been pushing out downloads to users so that number will include these pre-staged downloads for later installation. My comment was aimed at the fact that Microsoft is essentially opting in everyone to Windows 10 and pushing the files onto their devices. They do this (in part) to be able to showcase the large download numbers and tell the world that the uptake on Windows 10 is exceptional. The fact that they are reporting number of downloads and not total installed base further solidifies this position. These upgrades should be opt-in and not automatically downloaded to every computer which has automatic updates enabled as those were for security and stability updates, not full operating system updates).
As for my opinion of Windows, I do use Windows 7 (disliked Windows 8) and I support a work environment which has Windows 7, 8.1 and 10 computers (along with various versions of Server). I did not say that Windows 10 sucks, I said that Microsoft really needs this to be a success and will use every tool at its disposal to do so and that starts with marketing (via boosting the number of downloads which implies actual installs). I do not like this approach but understand why they are doing this and for some people, it will help them to upgrade as they probably want to do. I am not storage or bandwidth constrained so it doesn't impact me as it may others. It's just this philosophy of shoveling it onto every device possible is pretty disingenuous when they market those figures as an early sign of success.
Microsoft has to do this in order to boost figures which they spread around via marketing. Look how many times Windows 10 has been downloaded by users! Have a look at THIS headline as proof..
The Appeal of Free: 75 Million Users Download Windows 10 in First Month
Obviously the intent here is to inflate their numbers and make the deployment look better than it really is. While I have no doubt that many are taking advantage of the free upgrade option (which apparently expires in a year or so), not all who download are going to install (shoveling the upgrade onto systems) or stick with it.
When a company pulls this kind of trick, they are dead to me. I don't understand why companies think that they will get away with such actions. It may slip through once but it only takes one time getting caught and then people will start looking back at past hardware releases to see if they did the same thing before. The damage to a company's reputation can be devastating, all to earn some extra profit.. Such a shame.
Yep.. T-Mobile is awesome in the USA. The tethering works great. No ridiculous prices to add SMS. Free international roaming (slower speeds but I'll take it! Also can buy data at a faster speed). I was on AT&T's plan for years. I had a grandfathered unlimited data pan with them. Once they sent me a notice for exceeding normal use (wasn't that much to be honest, I think the phone hit 3 Gigs of data due to our son watching some Netflix videos) and slowed my connection down (actually it was my wife's phone) we decided to leave AT&T for T-Mobile and are so glad we did. I tell everyone I know that they should leave AT&T and use T-Mobile..
I have never understood the mentality of throwing out these portables for students to use as a classroom. I see many schools here in South Florida using these portables as a permanent solution to inadequate classrooms. Before anyone says "but the school system can't afford to build new ones" keep in mind that in Florida, the lottery proceedings which the state takes in are supposed to go towards the school system. If the government would properly fund school sour of the normal budget and then allocate lottery revenue AFTER instead of including it as a part of meeting the budget (thus allocating the other funds elsewhere). If the school system actually got the lottery revenue after the base budgets were met, the school system would be a lot better off and these portables would not be a permanent structure.
I absolutely loved playing multi-player Descent. The death match sessions were fast and furious. It's funny because several days ago, I had wondered if people still host servers to play Descent and Starsiege: Tribes (another great game). So many great games just don't get played any more I guess. Threewave CTF Quake was another amazing game which I spent so many hours playing.. (oh, so many hours)...
Watching TV, ipads, whatever has zero to do with Autism. If you really do think that you really need to read up on it and perhaps speak with parents of a child with Autism. My daughter was not stuck in front of a TV or screen much at all and I have seen many kids who were. There's a marked difference between a kid with no social skills / experiences and a kid with Autism. Kids with no social skill still are curious about people around them, want to communicate with others, can smile for pictures, etc. A child with Autism wants none of those things. Your theory is laughable and that you'd sit there spouting on like this is pathetic. Go back to speaking of things which you have knowledge of and avoid commenting on things for which you know nothing.
As a parent of a 4 year old with Autism, I can safely say that you have no clue what you are talking about which is fine (hell I knew very little about it before having my daughter diagnosed at the age of 2). I do take issue when you make such idiotic comments as Autism is the new ADD. There's a difference between "throwing a huge tantrum" because a child had a toy, tablet whatever taken away and not having your child want to look at you, smile for pictures and be oblivious to everyone around him or her. I'd be very surprised honestly, if any parent ever jumped to the conclusion that their child must have Autism because they are misbehaving or are "nerdy".
"Increased screening sensitivity"? What does that mean? Do you even know what you are talking about? Have you ever attended sessions with doctors and specialists with a child to see how they determine if a child shows signs of Autism? No? Well, have you even read up on it? No? Perhaps you should before you continue to show your ignorance and insensitivity to others even more than you already have.
Trust me on this. Autism is not ever diagnosed because a kid has tantrums or is nerdy etc. The professionals know what they are doing. My daughter most definitely has Autism (on the lower end of the spectrum) and should lead a normal life provided she receives therapy and treatment as she grows up.
We need to teach kids the basics so that when they are ready, they can build their very own human centipede without mistakes!
I think Drone / UAV can be interchanged.. I think the big differentiator should be the autonomous flying capabilities. Otherwise, I think of the stuff that individuals fly around as RC Aircraft even with a camera onboard which provides the person flying it with the ability to see from the aircraft in real time. Drones, as the term is popularly used these days, tend to refer to a military use UAV which packs weapons or sensors used for military reconnaissance.
Unmanned Areal Vehicle: A powered, aerial vehicle that does not carry a human operator, uses aerodynamic forces to provide vehicle lift, can fly autonomously or be piloted remotely, can be expendable or recoverable, and can carry a lethal or nonlethal payload. Ballistic or semiballistic vehicles, cruise missiles, and artillery projectiles are not considered unmanned aerial vehicles. Also called UAV.
It's apparent that the whole patent system is in dire need of an overhaul. The question is who will finally step up in the government to fix this mess.. It's something I hear of almost daily (patent trolls killing off innovation and screwing people out of money).
The double-click ads never land on my systems. I use a hosts file to block their stuff along with other ads. I did some searching around and found a few places which provide hots files which you can use on your computers. Here's a great site which maintains a hosts file which you can use in your computers.. http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm
Here's a link to a story of a McDonald's employee being forced to get paid off of one of these cards.
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/mcdonalds-worker-sues-franchise-paying-wages-debit-card/story?id=19420181#.UcKz7Otlt4F
It's one thing if the employer is offering these as an alternative to a pay check for people that can't get a bank account somewhere. It's an entirely different issue when they are defaulting to these or forcing them on people. Pay employees the traditional way, via check but offer alternatives if needed. The alternatives though should not be saddled with these fees. I received a similar thing as a rebate from Goodyear for some tires I bought. It was a prepaid Visa card. There were a lot of fees for not using it (they charge per month), using it to get cash, going over the limit of what is available on the card, etc. So, I just took it and bought an amazon gift certificate for the full value of the pre-paid card and applied it to my Amazon account. These stupid cards are ridiculous. I can't imagine having to get paid off of one of these.
Yes, this is what I was referring to. Line up deals with content sources on the internet (such as Amazon... and Netflix etc) and index all of their content in a search engine which would include cable provider content and Over The Air Content. Have this searchable, categorized, etc. and then if a person wants to watch a movie, they can see that it's coming up soon through their cable company (albeit with commercials (cough fast forward.. cough) OR that it's available unedited and commercial free through their subscription to Amazon or Netflix or (insert service name here) and the person can opt to "DVR" any one of those sources to watch later. They could even set preferential sources so that Amazon is first, OTA is second and Cable is third etc. which then could be presented to the user when they get the search results with default being their preferred stream method. There's a lot that can be done to vastly improve the end user experience. For some reason, nobody's stepping up to do it.. To put the effort into decluttering controllers, or optimizing UI or making these deals to get everything into one box.
Adding additional tuners is a good thing, Increased storage is a must as well (to accommodate all of those tuners) but what they really need to do is to show some innovative changes to move them ahead of the pack. Simplifying the cable card piece, streamlining their controller and interface and adding some cool new features would compel more people to ditch the archaic dinosaurs that cable companies currently shovel out their doors to customers. I'm not talking about adding voice control or arm gestures which everyone seems to think is the next big thing for using TV's either. We can all agree that the user interface is horrible. They seem to be cramming more buttons on the remote control (3/4 of which I seldom have ever used) and finding content you want has been a horrible experience.
TiVo should look to integrate with other services too (via the internet) and pre cache content you'd like to watch, perhaps downloading during non-peak times to ease internet load. Get some truly-def content this way all lined up to watch later instead of dealing with reduced quality streams. This would require working out deals with the various providers but that's part of what they need to innovate. Say what you will about Steve jobs, he was able to push, pull and shove companies reluctantly along so that all pieces of his vision for a product were lined up.
I built a MAME cabinet from a pre-fab unit from Rec Room Masters https://www.recroommasters.com/ for my wife as a Christmas present. It was very easy to assemble (just bolts which are provided) To this shell, you add a controller (Tankstick) from X-Arcade http://www.xgaming.com/ . Lastly you add a monitor, computer, drive space for ROMS and speakers. I spent some extra for side arcade art and illuminated Marquee. As a front end for selecting games, I use Hyperspin http://hyperspin-fe.com/ . It's an amazing machine and is pretty affordable, especially if the Raspberry Pi can run the games.. My wife and I have spent countless hours on this. I also grabbed ROMS for almost every older home console ever made and play them on this as well..
I don't have the tools, space and skills required to build a cabinet from scratch. The hardest part is finding the ROMS which work with the MAME version that you use.
I sense something.. a joke I have not heard since... a few days ago...