1. fired IT dept..replaced with subcontinent slaves.
2. Kids watch own streams, and are way better at pirating than dad...way better
3. I cut the cord BECAUSE of Disney. When ESPN made the cable companies add a non negotiable Sports Fee of $7 per month I decided that paying $84 per year to Disney for NO REASON (don't watch sports, ESPN, or subscribe to a sports package) was just stupid.
-snip-
No Regrets...at all.
You've just described why I pay the Apple Tax. The lack of tech support for family members alone is worth every cent. Every time I have to help out someone with a PC it takes hours to load updates, remove malware or PUPs, and restart...restart...crap clean...malware bytes...scan...restart...
I blame the idiots around the world attacking the system, but the overall experience sucks.
We have one windows machine, in full Quad Core glory with a huge graphics card for gaming. Bought it off the seconds rack at Microcenter, resolved the wifi problem that got it returned, and now get 60 fps at 1080 lines...which is sufficient. I don't have to maintain that one....
Car prices are dictated by marketing and "the monthly payment". The cost to make and deliver the car is a state secret that hasn't been WikiLeaked.....A base Jetta, for example, is 17k. The same car loaded is 35k. The difference in production costs is probably less than $2000.
Really ? Tesla. Puts car out there. Loses money on every sale. Company does not make money. Pushes technology in a way the big 3 never would, knowing how stupid some buyers are. Locks down car if you try to hack your own property. Stock swap to bail out companion company. I also haven't had huge issues purchasing a variety of cars at different price points from traditional dealers. I'm not jumping for the BS that tech companies make us deal with for a car...my computer is maybe 1K...a car is at least 20k.
Thank you. I've seen dozens of articles about spectrum auctions, swaps, etc.....but they somehow almost never actually say XXX Mhz. The FCC went to a lot of work to clear out the former UHF TV band and give it to data providers.
UHF TV, had it worked as intended, would have been dozens of OTA niche channels, like cable without the cable company.
600 mhz wont let you get away with a fractal antenna on a chip, though.
We had an EU friendly phone plan.
We drove to Andorra...great skiing, good food, nice hospitality.
There was a thief in the Mountains, who waylaid our travelers....Andorra Telecom. They sent a message saying that we'd used 50 euro in data (for some google maps...an hour's drive maybe). We turned off data. Then, they shut off our phone for a 250 euro data charge, which had magically run up in that 45 minutes before the 50 euro shutoff message.
Andorra Telecom put a black eye on an otherwise interesting place-they are a robber in the hills...so . F@!K Andorra Telecom.
Best Buy has a house brand "Toshiba". built cheap, forget anything you may have associated with Toshiba, like that laptop that lasted six years.....Tossed it out, replaced with a Samsung which at least had accurate skin tones.
Back in the day, someone described baby monitors as devices people use to bug their own homes. A geek with a scanner could hear everything.
Now, it is worse. It isn't an asocial geek with a Radio Shack box...but a multinational with limitless resources bugging your home.
What could go wrong ?
Actually, ESPN was what made me cut the cord. They'd already scrambed the signal...making me rent a box I didn't need prior, to pay for their DRM decisions...I can't believe piracy was a big deal in my area. Kudos for the way they implemented the FCC required clear channel carriage of OTA...by making the virtual channels incomprehensible. So, when the "free" boxes became $8 EACH per month, and then they added a $6 line item "sports fee", I realized that I was basically paying $75 per year for ESPN, a channel I never, ever watch. It was interesting, the long game. Digitize the whole thing, a good idea, but instead of clear QAM, which most TV sets could accept, scramble the whole thing. Get FCC waiver for two years of "free" boxes, then $8 per month in perpetuity. Three TV sets ? (suburban house), $24 x 12... $288.00 per year increase. Add the "sports fee" and $84.00 magically disappears. Oh, and they didn't raise "rates", officially.
The OTA antenna, installed (ok, DIY but cable, antenna and parts) worked out to $130...one time. Add Netflix and Amazon Prime....which you'd use anyway....
I now pay $135 per month for broadband, and three landlines-and that is half the price of FiOs, which also runs down the street, for the same service.
All you need for OTA is a $40 Mediasonic box and a hard drive. VCR functions with one time $120 max. Of course, Tivo and a big hard drive is pretty good too, at a higher price point.
I can't watch 'real time' TV either anymore, and that is all there was when I grew up.
The kids ? The only time they watch "TV" is when a group wants to watch something together, and then there's a cable from the computer to the 'big screen'
I was lucky to go to a reference theater in LA. Perfect sound, perfect picture. No sticky floors or icky seats. It can be a trip elsewhere if done right. Also, no ads before rolling the film.
My problem with going to the local multiplex is this...endless ads and previews. When you need to get there a full half hour before the movie you see is rolled, and are forced to sit through loud commercials and endless previews, but hey, I paid to sit here ! Worse, each ad requires full use of the sound system and as much razzle dazzle as possible.
Local movie theater ads...then the distributor's ads...then the mandatory ad reel from the studio...more movie theater ads...and then, maybe...the actual movie. Star Wars took over a half hour to get to the movie.
Imagine going out to a nice dinner, but the appetizers are all lemons, a bowl of sugar, an onion, and you are forced to eat each one before the main course comes out. Wrecks the palate before you begin.
I'd rather see a Blu Ray at home in most cases. It has to be something I really want to see to subject myself to the pack at the beginning of the film.
TV resists all attempts to fix it from the consumer perspective. Even Apple, with unlimited money was unable to tame it. The only workaround is if you get OTA, put up an antenna and wire and run it into a DVR, ranging from Tivo (expensive but easy) to Mediasonic boxes ($40 plus a HDD for $70-cheap but no real guide...it's a HDTV VCR)
When I got a $6 per month sports fee which the cable co refused to cut,, we were done.
This would be good if you can't get OTA.
I worked in Village Government for a while in NY. All bills must be published...read...debated...and voted on. You can't combine things in a bill and must vote on that one item.
None of this applies to the State Government, or the Feds. No last minute sausages, or tacking a kill Planned Parenthood rider to Veterans Benefits.
I iwish I lived in a world where the upper level governments had to follow the rules our little villages do.
Anyone recall being forced to synch your contacts to icloud only....or how the entire world was going to Thunderbolt.
I'm happy they see the wonder of the USB-c, but I think there could be another model cycle of standard ports. Losing the magsafe is moronic..it has saved me several times.
Last, I bought an iPhone 6 when the 7 came out.
Apple, you are supposed to give us more...for the price above Windows, I expect a stable OS, hardware that justifies the premium, mostly, and ease of use.
WTF ?
Marathon runners get heart attacks, and folks who eat healthy get cancers too. Illness isn't always "your fault". You could cross the street today, look both ways, in a crosswalk and green light, and get seriously messed up by an uninsured and stolen car. just sayin...
I love the "consumer" model of health care....guess what, you aren't. Medical stuff is the only thing you cannot price shop or even compare. Even if you could, the hospital will charge you differently for different insurers...and as I found out once....if you don't hit the deductable (five stitches from a minor accident) you don't even get your insurance company rates (all that money and I'm not even in the Buyer's Club ?)
When you get really sick, every single thing you use is billed. Bed. Docs...Drugs...machines (and when a relative had a breast biop done, they charged for each use of the machine, not just "turn on and use". No normal person can keep track of this, and the hospitals know it. Insurers, who have an idea, will fight tooth and nail on costs and fees.
What we end up with now is two tiers. If you can get into or afford private insurance, not an ACA plan, you are working for Government or a very large company. If you don't, you are stuck with an ACA plan, which will NOT cover a majority of your doctors, or even possibly the hospital. Yes, folks who work for Govt. or big companies are still somewhat protected from the health insurance nightmare.
So, yes, it is very conceivable that this person is getting nailed by "out of network" charges. When you are laying in a hospital bed, you don't ask the attending if they take Aetna or Blue Cross, and send them hither if they say no.
For years, US insurers have benefited by their claims practices, fobbing off the poor and old on the Government, and skimming the cream of "healthy" risk pools. The ACA stopped the worst practices, but also forced anyone who could to leave the exchange plans. I got an ACA plan once. Every single provider..my kids pediatrician....wife's ob/gyn....my GP...the allergiest "oh we're sorry we don't accept any insurance from the exchange". You are all the access of a Medicaid patient but you pay full price for the lack of services....and I used to pay 1/3 the price for the same docs to smile at me and take a $20 copay...so an ACA plan is a non-starter in the NYC area and I'd seriously consider paying the tax penalty if I was unable to get coverage elsewhere.
The insurance industry has managed to propagandize the low information bits of our population to not want "socialist" medicine. I've been exposed to the Canada and German systems...while not perfect, they are a hell of a lot more fair and reasonable than the mosh that we have here in the US...the only folks who are "OK" are the Big Company and Government policy people. All the rest are one illness away from a trip to Bankruptcy Court.
Thank the Bush Administration for not allowing negotiation of drug prices, and the Obama Administration for the ACA and tax penalty. The lack of a 'government option' was clearly designed to make sure there wasn't competition or any reliable measure of the private industry practices.
At a very minimum, there should be published price schedules at hospitals, a right to sue health insurers for poor claims practices or denial of vital services, and one single payer pool, not the cherry picking of the healthy. After all, if you limit coverage to folks who can work a 40 hour week, you've just cut off most of your expensive patients...and insurance companies have gotten away with this far too long.
I have a Caddy with the Windows CE computer. It works decently, except that it isn't really integrated into the car electronics. It turns on and off separately, and none of the data can transfer to the dashboard gage cluster or the dot matrix readout in the center. I get a distinct impression that the GM engineers and the Windows folks had clearly drawn lines-there is a computer in the dash but it isn't really integrated into the GM electrics... On the other hand the touch screen works well and the system is stable. I'm grateful, it could have CUE...which is a botch....so in this case, MS actually did better.
When I cut the cord I heard from lots of neighbors who were tired of the $200 plus per month. When I told them an antenna on the house was a one time expense of maybe $150 all in, they all sort of said... what ? Put up an antenna ? How do I do that ? Run a wire ? and all still pay the $, because the fear of change. I've even demonstrated to a few my homebrew bow tie antenna, which works better than it looks.
I'm 40 miles from my transmitters, and today the signal strengths are between 98% and 84%.
We are odd in that we have cable and FiOs on my block, making this the one of few places with any competition. I use cable broadband as it is way cheaper than FiOs....FiOs has a huge tax tier that does not apply to cable, and at least in this area, Optimum has always given good response, where fighting with Verizon starts at face palm and goes downhill. I did get a $10 increase in my naked broadband, but with netflix/hulu/skitchy sites overseas, no worries. A lifetime Tivo, bought during cable era does great OTA only duty...and an older Mac Mini streams beautifully, with no issues in 1080p.
All in, I'm still way cheaper than six months of my neighbor's CATV subscription, and I don't have to suffer the SA 8300 box
There is an inertia
As someone paying for a kid in school, here are the numbers.....
30k-State School
40k State School for out of staters
60k Name Private University.
I went to Name Private University AND professional school for less than my kid is going to State School for out of staters...and she gets credit, literally and figuratively, for an academic scholarship getting 10k off the tuition price.
A 4 year degree is a stamp of 'middle class' , although certainly not a guarantee.
Schools know this, and the question they are asking is "How much would you pay to make sure YOUR kid stays in the top 10% ?"
It is for this reason I will have bought a Ferrari, for cash, for the cost of college, but it is worth it so MY kid gets out with degree and no student loan ball and chain. (and make no mistake, student loan debt is debt bondage)
The educational system has gotten seriously phucked in the last 30 years....
Is that sarc/ ?
Google "repacking". The FCC is selling off the higher UHF channels to the wireless carriers.
There will be loss of HD TV coverage, but hey, Verizon can charge you $30 for 2gb of spotify, so there's that.
Slashdot Mirror
1. fired IT dept..replaced with subcontinent slaves. 2. Kids watch own streams, and are way better at pirating than dad...way better 3. I cut the cord BECAUSE of Disney. When ESPN made the cable companies add a non negotiable Sports Fee of $7 per month I decided that paying $84 per year to Disney for NO REASON (don't watch sports, ESPN, or subscribe to a sports package) was just stupid. -snip- No Regrets...at all.
You've just described why I pay the Apple Tax. The lack of tech support for family members alone is worth every cent. Every time I have to help out someone with a PC it takes hours to load updates, remove malware or PUPs, and restart...restart...crap clean...malware bytes...scan...restart... I blame the idiots around the world attacking the system, but the overall experience sucks. We have one windows machine, in full Quad Core glory with a huge graphics card for gaming. Bought it off the seconds rack at Microcenter, resolved the wifi problem that got it returned, and now get 60 fps at 1080 lines...which is sufficient. I don't have to maintain that one....
Wall Street wives use iPhones.
Car prices are dictated by marketing and "the monthly payment". The cost to make and deliver the car is a state secret that hasn't been WikiLeaked.....A base Jetta, for example, is 17k. The same car loaded is 35k. The difference in production costs is probably less than $2000.
Really ? Tesla. Puts car out there. Loses money on every sale. Company does not make money. Pushes technology in a way the big 3 never would, knowing how stupid some buyers are. Locks down car if you try to hack your own property. Stock swap to bail out companion company. I also haven't had huge issues purchasing a variety of cars at different price points from traditional dealers. I'm not jumping for the BS that tech companies make us deal with for a car...my computer is maybe 1K...a car is at least 20k.
Thank you. I've seen dozens of articles about spectrum auctions, swaps, etc.....but they somehow almost never actually say XXX Mhz. The FCC went to a lot of work to clear out the former UHF TV band and give it to data providers. UHF TV, had it worked as intended, would have been dozens of OTA niche channels, like cable without the cable company. 600 mhz wont let you get away with a fractal antenna on a chip, though.
We had an EU friendly phone plan. We drove to Andorra...great skiing, good food, nice hospitality. There was a thief in the Mountains, who waylaid our travelers....Andorra Telecom. They sent a message saying that we'd used 50 euro in data (for some google maps...an hour's drive maybe). We turned off data. Then, they shut off our phone for a 250 euro data charge, which had magically run up in that 45 minutes before the 50 euro shutoff message. Andorra Telecom put a black eye on an otherwise interesting place-they are a robber in the hills...so . F@!K Andorra Telecom.
smart enough to follow this and stupid enough to do it. small percentage
Best Buy has a house brand "Toshiba". built cheap, forget anything you may have associated with Toshiba, like that laptop that lasted six years.....Tossed it out, replaced with a Samsung which at least had accurate skin tones.
Back in the day, someone described baby monitors as devices people use to bug their own homes. A geek with a scanner could hear everything. Now, it is worse. It isn't an asocial geek with a Radio Shack box...but a multinational with limitless resources bugging your home. What could go wrong ?
OK, what frequencies are being discussed...and in what areas...
Actually, ESPN was what made me cut the cord. They'd already scrambed the signal...making me rent a box I didn't need prior, to pay for their DRM decisions...I can't believe piracy was a big deal in my area. Kudos for the way they implemented the FCC required clear channel carriage of OTA...by making the virtual channels incomprehensible. So, when the "free" boxes became $8 EACH per month, and then they added a $6 line item "sports fee", I realized that I was basically paying $75 per year for ESPN, a channel I never, ever watch. It was interesting, the long game. Digitize the whole thing, a good idea, but instead of clear QAM, which most TV sets could accept, scramble the whole thing. Get FCC waiver for two years of "free" boxes, then $8 per month in perpetuity. Three TV sets ? (suburban house), $24 x 12... $288.00 per year increase. Add the "sports fee" and $84.00 magically disappears. Oh, and they didn't raise "rates", officially. The OTA antenna, installed (ok, DIY but cable, antenna and parts) worked out to $130...one time. Add Netflix and Amazon Prime....which you'd use anyway.... I now pay $135 per month for broadband, and three landlines-and that is half the price of FiOs, which also runs down the street, for the same service.
All you need for OTA is a $40 Mediasonic box and a hard drive. VCR functions with one time $120 max. Of course, Tivo and a big hard drive is pretty good too, at a higher price point. I can't watch 'real time' TV either anymore, and that is all there was when I grew up. The kids ? The only time they watch "TV" is when a group wants to watch something together, and then there's a cable from the computer to the 'big screen'
I was lucky to go to a reference theater in LA. Perfect sound, perfect picture. No sticky floors or icky seats. It can be a trip elsewhere if done right. Also, no ads before rolling the film. My problem with going to the local multiplex is this...endless ads and previews. When you need to get there a full half hour before the movie you see is rolled, and are forced to sit through loud commercials and endless previews, but hey, I paid to sit here ! Worse, each ad requires full use of the sound system and as much razzle dazzle as possible. Local movie theater ads...then the distributor's ads...then the mandatory ad reel from the studio...more movie theater ads...and then, maybe...the actual movie. Star Wars took over a half hour to get to the movie. Imagine going out to a nice dinner, but the appetizers are all lemons, a bowl of sugar, an onion, and you are forced to eat each one before the main course comes out. Wrecks the palate before you begin. I'd rather see a Blu Ray at home in most cases. It has to be something I really want to see to subject myself to the pack at the beginning of the film.
TV resists all attempts to fix it from the consumer perspective. Even Apple, with unlimited money was unable to tame it. The only workaround is if you get OTA, put up an antenna and wire and run it into a DVR, ranging from Tivo (expensive but easy) to Mediasonic boxes ($40 plus a HDD for $70-cheap but no real guide...it's a HDTV VCR) When I got a $6 per month sports fee which the cable co refused to cut,, we were done. This would be good if you can't get OTA.
I worked in Village Government for a while in NY. All bills must be published...read...debated...and voted on. You can't combine things in a bill and must vote on that one item. None of this applies to the State Government, or the Feds. No last minute sausages, or tacking a kill Planned Parenthood rider to Veterans Benefits. I iwish I lived in a world where the upper level governments had to follow the rules our little villages do.
Anyone recall being forced to synch your contacts to icloud only....or how the entire world was going to Thunderbolt. I'm happy they see the wonder of the USB-c, but I think there could be another model cycle of standard ports. Losing the magsafe is moronic..it has saved me several times. Last, I bought an iPhone 6 when the 7 came out. Apple, you are supposed to give us more...for the price above Windows, I expect a stable OS, hardware that justifies the premium, mostly, and ease of use. WTF ?
do you actually live in the US ? this is a shit country to be poor in.
Marathon runners get heart attacks, and folks who eat healthy get cancers too. Illness isn't always "your fault". You could cross the street today, look both ways, in a crosswalk and green light, and get seriously messed up by an uninsured and stolen car. just sayin...
I love the "consumer" model of health care....guess what, you aren't. Medical stuff is the only thing you cannot price shop or even compare. Even if you could, the hospital will charge you differently for different insurers...and as I found out once....if you don't hit the deductable (five stitches from a minor accident) you don't even get your insurance company rates (all that money and I'm not even in the Buyer's Club ?) When you get really sick, every single thing you use is billed. Bed. Docs...Drugs...machines (and when a relative had a breast biop done, they charged for each use of the machine, not just "turn on and use". No normal person can keep track of this, and the hospitals know it. Insurers, who have an idea, will fight tooth and nail on costs and fees. What we end up with now is two tiers. If you can get into or afford private insurance, not an ACA plan, you are working for Government or a very large company. If you don't, you are stuck with an ACA plan, which will NOT cover a majority of your doctors, or even possibly the hospital. Yes, folks who work for Govt. or big companies are still somewhat protected from the health insurance nightmare. So, yes, it is very conceivable that this person is getting nailed by "out of network" charges. When you are laying in a hospital bed, you don't ask the attending if they take Aetna or Blue Cross, and send them hither if they say no. For years, US insurers have benefited by their claims practices, fobbing off the poor and old on the Government, and skimming the cream of "healthy" risk pools. The ACA stopped the worst practices, but also forced anyone who could to leave the exchange plans. I got an ACA plan once. Every single provider..my kids pediatrician....wife's ob/gyn....my GP...the allergiest "oh we're sorry we don't accept any insurance from the exchange". You are all the access of a Medicaid patient but you pay full price for the lack of services....and I used to pay 1/3 the price for the same docs to smile at me and take a $20 copay...so an ACA plan is a non-starter in the NYC area and I'd seriously consider paying the tax penalty if I was unable to get coverage elsewhere. The insurance industry has managed to propagandize the low information bits of our population to not want "socialist" medicine. I've been exposed to the Canada and German systems...while not perfect, they are a hell of a lot more fair and reasonable than the mosh that we have here in the US...the only folks who are "OK" are the Big Company and Government policy people. All the rest are one illness away from a trip to Bankruptcy Court. Thank the Bush Administration for not allowing negotiation of drug prices, and the Obama Administration for the ACA and tax penalty. The lack of a 'government option' was clearly designed to make sure there wasn't competition or any reliable measure of the private industry practices. At a very minimum, there should be published price schedules at hospitals, a right to sue health insurers for poor claims practices or denial of vital services, and one single payer pool, not the cherry picking of the healthy. After all, if you limit coverage to folks who can work a 40 hour week, you've just cut off most of your expensive patients...and insurance companies have gotten away with this far too long.
I have a Caddy with the Windows CE computer. It works decently, except that it isn't really integrated into the car electronics. It turns on and off separately, and none of the data can transfer to the dashboard gage cluster or the dot matrix readout in the center. I get a distinct impression that the GM engineers and the Windows folks had clearly drawn lines-there is a computer in the dash but it isn't really integrated into the GM electrics... On the other hand the touch screen works well and the system is stable. I'm grateful, it could have CUE...which is a botch....so in this case, MS actually did better.
When I cut the cord I heard from lots of neighbors who were tired of the $200 plus per month. When I told them an antenna on the house was a one time expense of maybe $150 all in, they all sort of said ... what ? Put up an antenna ? How do I do that ? Run a wire ? and all still pay the $, because the fear of change. I've even demonstrated to a few my homebrew bow tie antenna, which works better than it looks.
I'm 40 miles from my transmitters, and today the signal strengths are between 98% and 84%.
We are odd in that we have cable and FiOs on my block, making this the one of few places with any competition. I use cable broadband as it is way cheaper than FiOs....FiOs has a huge tax tier that does not apply to cable, and at least in this area, Optimum has always given good response, where fighting with Verizon starts at face palm and goes downhill. I did get a $10 increase in my naked broadband, but with netflix/hulu/skitchy sites overseas, no worries. A lifetime Tivo, bought during cable era does great OTA only duty...and an older Mac Mini streams beautifully, with no issues in 1080p.
All in, I'm still way cheaper than six months of my neighbor's CATV subscription, and I don't have to suffer the SA 8300 box
There is an inertia
I still suffer from a verizon email address from three ISP's ago. I now host my own....email is too important to trust gmail OR Yahoo OR anyone else.
As someone paying for a kid in school, here are the numbers..... 30k-State School 40k State School for out of staters 60k Name Private University. I went to Name Private University AND professional school for less than my kid is going to State School for out of staters...and she gets credit, literally and figuratively, for an academic scholarship getting 10k off the tuition price. A 4 year degree is a stamp of 'middle class' , although certainly not a guarantee. Schools know this, and the question they are asking is "How much would you pay to make sure YOUR kid stays in the top 10% ?" It is for this reason I will have bought a Ferrari, for cash, for the cost of college, but it is worth it so MY kid gets out with degree and no student loan ball and chain. (and make no mistake, student loan debt is debt bondage) The educational system has gotten seriously phucked in the last 30 years....
Is that sarc/ ? Google "repacking". The FCC is selling off the higher UHF channels to the wireless carriers. There will be loss of HD TV coverage, but hey, Verizon can charge you $30 for 2gb of spotify, so there's that.