I'm not planning on changing my data plan.... I never reach 6GB/month, and my "cache" (20GB of roll-over data) is full if I ever encounter a month where I need more (I do sometimes travel and need more). Out of the four in my family plan, only my daughter (who, for some reason, never turns on wifi at home) routinely hits her cap and gets throttled. That's her own fault - she's got a wireless gateway right in her own bedroom, but doesn't take advantage of it. I'm not paying more because she can't be bothered to turn on wifi.
Yes... repeating myself here, but my company gave us an extra day of per diem when we had to work in Toronto - it was just free money for me, because I didn't have to do anything or pay any extra. My son recently went to Germany, and while there were per minute costs to call back to the U.S., his text and data plan didn't cost a dime and worked great. While I haven't travelled to Mexico, T-Mobile's plan is supposed to cover you for U.S., Canada and Mexico. It should also work in over 140 countries worldwide, although there will likely be some surcharges... in my son's case, $0.20/minute for phone in Germany, which I don't think is bad at all, considering people mostly text now, anyway.
That is largely why I switched from Virgin Mobile (which uses Sprint) to T-Mobile. Already I had to work a week in Canada - and didn't have to do anything, T-Mobile's partners took over when I was in Canada and I didn't have to pay a dime. My son visited Germany for a few weeks and, while there was some per minute costs, he didn't have to trade out any chips or do anything special - it just worked. It also costs the same for four people (since the rates go down for each additional person) and we get more data (6GB vs 2GB I had with V-Mobile). Of course, plans and data limits seem to change daily, so YMMV.
Agree completely - and I believe "newer" companies - companies like Facebook and Google, are quite substantially equal opportunity employers. If they haven't gotten "equal results," there's another reason for it. Again, it comes back to equal opportunity for kids to have access to STEM both in school and at home, and minority students don't seem to get that equal opportunity.... but that's not Facebook's fault.
That's the problem I have - you cannot legislate equality, and you can't make it magically happen by discriminating against the majority.
There is a problem of underprivileged kids not getting the resources and, more importantly, the encouragement from their parents and peers, to study and work hard in school, or to enter the STEM fields. I look back and realize that my generation was the first (child of the 60s) in which segregation was actually illegal - but that means the parents of my minority peers suffered systemic racism and being held back from succeeding, and few black kids in my area didn't live in the equivalent of "section 8" housing. Racism didn't disappear overnight just because of desegregation. In fact, desegregation probably made it worse for a while.
But the problem is that it takes time, and it has to happen at an earlier age. I think we're doing this, but things have to happen generationally. I think that, despite some racism, we have moved substantially in the last 50 years towards an environment of equal opportunity. There are still a lot of things holding it back, but it's not the fault of the companies - especially the tech companies, who are likely blindly hiring the most qualified applicants.
I also, sadly, feel that there is a culture of ignorance being perpetuated not just in minority communities, but still mainly in minority communities. A culture that believes that schooling and working hard is selling out your own culture; the "gangsta rap" community that treats women like objects and focusses on flash over substance. I also believe there are more divisive minority leaders that thrive on the division and make it difficult to progress faster; Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton to name two... they've collectively done more to hold back race relations than any white person in the last 40 years. The focus on race in every issue is not helping, it's dividing.
But what if the problem is those graduation rates don't reflect skill level? So sure, a degree in CS should mean there is a certain minimum level of skill, but surely you agree that not everybody in a graduation class is "equal" in skill level? So the raw stats of graduation vs employment rates don't tell a whole story. Moreover, you can't look at today's graduation rates when half the people looking for jobs graduated 5, 10, or even 20 years ago.. It's not graduation rates, but the pool of applicants.
But I agree with you - things are at least starting to balance out, but SJW's think you can pass legislation or punish a company into making things equal overnight. It has to start earlier, there needs to be more encouragement at earlier ages... and then things slowly start to adjust as those kids grow into technical careers, and encourage their own kids to follow suit, and, seriously, it takes decades. Things are actually getting better all the time, and I don't know how to answer the problem of historically occurring abuse of minorities can be fixed overnight... I don't think they can. The generation before mine was still living under segregation in this country; how can I expect their kids to match the skill levels of white kids in my generation when they had little or no opportunity?
But it takes time. The same thing is true of women. Right now they are graduation at higher levels than men, but that doesn't make the industry "equal" overnight.... but wait a generation for them to be the ones running the companies and dominating upper management.
We've come a long way from the 1950's - we're more inclusive, less racist, more open than we've ever been, and we're always trying to steer in the direction of being treated equally, and we're largely succeeding. But it just doesn't happen overnight. I know the current generation doesn't like to hear that, but it's just how it is. You can't pass a bill that mandates there be a proportionally equal number of qualified minorities for a job.
Frankly, while I think we've come a long way, I think all of these studies and surveys are absolutely trying to be divisive and push us in the wrong direction by spurring resentment from white people who are trying to be more inclusive and still getting hammered for not succeeding through no fault of their own. It seems to me there are a lot of divisive minority leaders and movements out there - Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, La Raza...
Investing == working for it. That's where your analysis goes wrong... nobody is "paying" for the increase in value of the stocks that I hold in my 401k, it's not a zero sum game.
401k != pension. 401k is yours, you invested (and maybe got matching), and it is what it is when you retire. Pensions are the pyramid schemes, not 401k.
He (or she) really sounds like someone who got a degree in something they didn't like because they thought they could make money, but found that without the passion for the field it was always a "chore" to do anything.
My job is not always wine and roses, and it's very difficult and taxing at times, but it's also very rewarding ultimately, and I do get the respect of my coworkers and management (and it's typically mutual). We make a great product, and I'm often excited to get busy on the next project.
Yes - it was cheaper for me to bundle the cheapest TV service with my internet to get the best price. I didn't really need TV Latino, but I didn't hook the box up anyway.... until I decided to cut satellite service out. Getting TV and internet from two different companies just to get the best each has to offer is expensive - and not worth it when you consider it's just TV (and not even premium movie channels).
I've had horrible experiences with Comcast in the long past, but over the last decade or so, their internet service has been top notch. I recently upgraded from 25Mbs to 75Mbs (and actually am getting 90Mbs). Even dealing with their internet departments on the phone has been pretty easy, and they upped their "caps" from 300GB to 1TB last month.
Verizon doesn't service my area, and AT&T base speeds are terrible, and while they've told me I can get fiber, it's brand new and untested in my area.... I have heard about any happy customers. But even then, they were a day late and a dollar short.
Comcast TV, on the other hand, I've never had more problems with a company than them. Absolutely horrible, horrible customer service, and I'm sorry, but a $20 credit on my bill doesn't make up for a missed appointment when I took the day off from work, but their internet service has been great (in my case).
And if you were a competitive rock climber, by the time you were done analyzing the wall, your competitor would be done climbing it. I do find jogging tedious, which is why I think about other things while doing it. I enjoy hiking because I like nature, but even then I'm typically thinking about other things. I do my best technical thinking doing mundane activities.... hiking, jogging, mowing the lawn, taking a shower... and have woken up in the middle of the night with "eureka!" moments. The reason I don't fail when I hit the gym is because not only do I get to think, but I feel better afterwards... and I often work better afterwards.
Conversely, as I mentioned in another post, I like hiking, jogging, and don't like mowing the lawn despite the fact I have to do it occasionally. None of these are really mentally taxing. Hiking is great if you can enjoy the scenery, but even then, like with those other activities, I'm often thinking about other things, and often do my best thinking while doing them. Just because someone is physically active doesn't mean they are a pro at some sport.
+1 for "thinking" being physically draining, though. I don't think enough people appreciate that. I get home from work and it's difficult to work out because I'm just tired. At the same time, if I work out in the morning, I do believe that I think much more clearly throughout the day.
It's true, but there's a lot of gray area in there. What if we're talking about programmers, and the person that took all day wrote much better, much more easily maintainable code that was easy to update and add new features to, and included unit testing in their work. The one that did it in two hours wrote spaghetti code that was difficult for anyone else to figure out and maintain, and didn't even bother with any but basic crappy testing?
And the boss asks why the latter is sitting around eating Cheetos and watching Netflix while the other is working, and so explains that he's just more efficient.
I say this as the latter because I work in a high pressure, live TV environment and far too often end up being the latter. But in the off seasons my code is substantially better - something I would actually share with other programmers without being embarrassed. When I write code during the slower times, it tends to last a long time; when I hack it together at the last second because some data provider changed data structure on my, it's mostly a one-off that gets rewritten cleanly later on.
Not saying programming is always like that, but I'd rather not encourage an ACM like programming contest environment in the work place where crap code gets rewarded just because it hasn't failed yet.
You know what? Jogging is boring. Mowing the lawn is boring. When I do these things, I'm thinking about other stuff. In fact, I often do my best thinking doing those things.
Agreed. Unless you're just sitting there watching TV or something, aren't you always thinking about something? It just turns out that I'm thinking about how I could improve my work.... is that any more taxing than thinking about a burrito or an upcoming movie I'm looking forward to, or planning out my weekend? In none of these cases is there steam coming off my forehead from thinking "too hard."
But this isn't like internet service, there's actual choice in car buying, and when they raise prices to cover the cost of their penalty, they will sell fewer vehicles.
Hulu has been around for several years, and is backed by most of the big content providers (Disney, Fox, Time Warner, to name a few). I don't see it so much as direct competition until Hulu starts offering a vastly larger number of movies to the catalog. Until then, Hulu is basically the Netflix of TV shows, Netflix is the Netflix of movies. The very small catalog of original shows notwithstanding. Yes, Netflix has a large catalog of OLDER TV shows (past seasons for what they do have), but that still doesn't compete with Hulu showing new/recently aired TV shows. For the time being, they complement each other.
They might have commercial free contracts with other vendors - typically pay services like Amazon (non-prime) and Apple. Although personally, the 30 second ads that run before/after hardly seem to make it worth paying extra for them, but it's probably just getting around wording in the contracts. I work in broadcast, and there are instances where we cannot give the same exact content we are showing on cable to streaming services, and it has to do with contracts we have with the cable companies. So, it really could be any number of things in various contracts. It sounds silly, but I will be willing to bet you'll see things change (for the better) as time goes on. Believe it or not, broadcasters know TV, as such, is a dying medium and we need to adapt to serving content the way the viewers want it, but you will see a lot of growing pains while existing contracts need time to die out, and you'll probably never get all you want from once service.
Except AMC isn't broadcast OTA. USA is not broadcast OTA. TNT is not broadcast OTA. FX, FXM, FXX are not broadcast OTA. If all the content I wanted was available OTA, then I'd agree with you.
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I'm not planning on changing my data plan.... I never reach 6GB/month, and my "cache" (20GB of roll-over data) is full if I ever encounter a month where I need more (I do sometimes travel and need more). Out of the four in my family plan, only my daughter (who, for some reason, never turns on wifi at home) routinely hits her cap and gets throttled. That's her own fault - she's got a wireless gateway right in her own bedroom, but doesn't take advantage of it. I'm not paying more because she can't be bothered to turn on wifi.
Yes... repeating myself here, but my company gave us an extra day of per diem when we had to work in Toronto - it was just free money for me, because I didn't have to do anything or pay any extra. My son recently went to Germany, and while there were per minute costs to call back to the U.S., his text and data plan didn't cost a dime and worked great. While I haven't travelled to Mexico, T-Mobile's plan is supposed to cover you for U.S., Canada and Mexico. It should also work in over 140 countries worldwide, although there will likely be some surcharges... in my son's case, $0.20/minute for phone in Germany, which I don't think is bad at all, considering people mostly text now, anyway.
That is largely why I switched from Virgin Mobile (which uses Sprint) to T-Mobile. Already I had to work a week in Canada - and didn't have to do anything, T-Mobile's partners took over when I was in Canada and I didn't have to pay a dime. My son visited Germany for a few weeks and, while there was some per minute costs, he didn't have to trade out any chips or do anything special - it just worked. It also costs the same for four people (since the rates go down for each additional person) and we get more data (6GB vs 2GB I had with V-Mobile). Of course, plans and data limits seem to change daily, so YMMV.
Agree completely - and I believe "newer" companies - companies like Facebook and Google, are quite substantially equal opportunity employers. If they haven't gotten "equal results," there's another reason for it. Again, it comes back to equal opportunity for kids to have access to STEM both in school and at home, and minority students don't seem to get that equal opportunity.... but that's not Facebook's fault.
That's the problem I have - you cannot legislate equality, and you can't make it magically happen by discriminating against the majority.
There is a problem of underprivileged kids not getting the resources and, more importantly, the encouragement from their parents and peers, to study and work hard in school, or to enter the STEM fields. I look back and realize that my generation was the first (child of the 60s) in which segregation was actually illegal - but that means the parents of my minority peers suffered systemic racism and being held back from succeeding, and few black kids in my area didn't live in the equivalent of "section 8" housing. Racism didn't disappear overnight just because of desegregation. In fact, desegregation probably made it worse for a while.
But the problem is that it takes time, and it has to happen at an earlier age. I think we're doing this, but things have to happen generationally. I think that, despite some racism, we have moved substantially in the last 50 years towards an environment of equal opportunity. There are still a lot of things holding it back, but it's not the fault of the companies - especially the tech companies, who are likely blindly hiring the most qualified applicants.
I also, sadly, feel that there is a culture of ignorance being perpetuated not just in minority communities, but still mainly in minority communities. A culture that believes that schooling and working hard is selling out your own culture; the "gangsta rap" community that treats women like objects and focusses on flash over substance. I also believe there are more divisive minority leaders that thrive on the division and make it difficult to progress faster; Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton to name two... they've collectively done more to hold back race relations than any white person in the last 40 years. The focus on race in every issue is not helping, it's dividing.
But what if the problem is those graduation rates don't reflect skill level? So sure, a degree in CS should mean there is a certain minimum level of skill, but surely you agree that not everybody in a graduation class is "equal" in skill level? So the raw stats of graduation vs employment rates don't tell a whole story. Moreover, you can't look at today's graduation rates when half the people looking for jobs graduated 5, 10, or even 20 years ago.. It's not graduation rates, but the pool of applicants.
But I agree with you - things are at least starting to balance out, but SJW's think you can pass legislation or punish a company into making things equal overnight. It has to start earlier, there needs to be more encouragement at earlier ages... and then things slowly start to adjust as those kids grow into technical careers, and encourage their own kids to follow suit, and, seriously, it takes decades. Things are actually getting better all the time, and I don't know how to answer the problem of historically occurring abuse of minorities can be fixed overnight... I don't think they can. The generation before mine was still living under segregation in this country; how can I expect their kids to match the skill levels of white kids in my generation when they had little or no opportunity?
But it takes time. The same thing is true of women. Right now they are graduation at higher levels than men, but that doesn't make the industry "equal" overnight.... but wait a generation for them to be the ones running the companies and dominating upper management.
We've come a long way from the 1950's - we're more inclusive, less racist, more open than we've ever been, and we're always trying to steer in the direction of being treated equally, and we're largely succeeding. But it just doesn't happen overnight. I know the current generation doesn't like to hear that, but it's just how it is. You can't pass a bill that mandates there be a proportionally equal number of qualified minorities for a job.
Frankly, while I think we've come a long way, I think all of these studies and surveys are absolutely trying to be divisive and push us in the wrong direction by spurring resentment from white people who are trying to be more inclusive and still getting hammered for not succeeding through no fault of their own. It seems to me there are a lot of divisive minority leaders and movements out there - Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, La Raza...
Investing == working for it. That's where your analysis goes wrong... nobody is "paying" for the increase in value of the stocks that I hold in my 401k, it's not a zero sum game.
If you say so. I've been at my current job for over 21 years, so.... still waiting.
401k != pension. 401k is yours, you invested (and maybe got matching), and it is what it is when you retire. Pensions are the pyramid schemes, not 401k.
He (or she) really sounds like someone who got a degree in something they didn't like because they thought they could make money, but found that without the passion for the field it was always a "chore" to do anything.
My job is not always wine and roses, and it's very difficult and taxing at times, but it's also very rewarding ultimately, and I do get the respect of my coworkers and management (and it's typically mutual). We make a great product, and I'm often excited to get busy on the next project.
Yes - it was cheaper for me to bundle the cheapest TV service with my internet to get the best price. I didn't really need TV Latino, but I didn't hook the box up anyway.... until I decided to cut satellite service out. Getting TV and internet from two different companies just to get the best each has to offer is expensive - and not worth it when you consider it's just TV (and not even premium movie channels).
I've had horrible experiences with Comcast in the long past, but over the last decade or so, their internet service has been top notch. I recently upgraded from 25Mbs to 75Mbs (and actually am getting 90Mbs). Even dealing with their internet departments on the phone has been pretty easy, and they upped their "caps" from 300GB to 1TB last month.
Verizon doesn't service my area, and AT&T base speeds are terrible, and while they've told me I can get fiber, it's brand new and untested in my area.... I have heard about any happy customers. But even then, they were a day late and a dollar short.
Comcast TV, on the other hand, I've never had more problems with a company than them. Absolutely horrible, horrible customer service, and I'm sorry, but a $20 credit on my bill doesn't make up for a missed appointment when I took the day off from work, but their internet service has been great (in my case).
And if you were a competitive rock climber, by the time you were done analyzing the wall, your competitor would be done climbing it. I do find jogging tedious, which is why I think about other things while doing it. I enjoy hiking because I like nature, but even then I'm typically thinking about other things. I do my best technical thinking doing mundane activities.... hiking, jogging, mowing the lawn, taking a shower... and have woken up in the middle of the night with "eureka!" moments. The reason I don't fail when I hit the gym is because not only do I get to think, but I feel better afterwards... and I often work better afterwards.
Conversely, as I mentioned in another post, I like hiking, jogging, and don't like mowing the lawn despite the fact I have to do it occasionally. None of these are really mentally taxing. Hiking is great if you can enjoy the scenery, but even then, like with those other activities, I'm often thinking about other things, and often do my best thinking while doing them. Just because someone is physically active doesn't mean they are a pro at some sport.
+1 for "thinking" being physically draining, though. I don't think enough people appreciate that. I get home from work and it's difficult to work out because I'm just tired. At the same time, if I work out in the morning, I do believe that I think much more clearly throughout the day.
It's true, but there's a lot of gray area in there. What if we're talking about programmers, and the person that took all day wrote much better, much more easily maintainable code that was easy to update and add new features to, and included unit testing in their work. The one that did it in two hours wrote spaghetti code that was difficult for anyone else to figure out and maintain, and didn't even bother with any but basic crappy testing?
And the boss asks why the latter is sitting around eating Cheetos and watching Netflix while the other is working, and so explains that he's just more efficient.
I say this as the latter because I work in a high pressure, live TV environment and far too often end up being the latter. But in the off seasons my code is substantially better - something I would actually share with other programmers without being embarrassed. When I write code during the slower times, it tends to last a long time; when I hack it together at the last second because some data provider changed data structure on my, it's mostly a one-off that gets rewritten cleanly later on.
Not saying programming is always like that, but I'd rather not encourage an ACM like programming contest environment in the work place where crap code gets rewarded just because it hasn't failed yet.
And you won't believe what happened next! Click to find out!
You know what? Jogging is boring. Mowing the lawn is boring. When I do these things, I'm thinking about other stuff. In fact, I often do my best thinking doing those things.
Agreed. Unless you're just sitting there watching TV or something, aren't you always thinking about something? It just turns out that I'm thinking about how I could improve my work.... is that any more taxing than thinking about a burrito or an upcoming movie I'm looking forward to, or planning out my weekend? In none of these cases is there steam coming off my forehead from thinking "too hard."
They make it quite clear there are four or five shows that have a 30 second leading commercial before you sign up, so don't get your panties in a wad.
But this isn't like internet service, there's actual choice in car buying, and when they raise prices to cover the cost of their penalty, they will sell fewer vehicles.
Hulu has been around for several years, and is backed by most of the big content providers (Disney, Fox, Time Warner, to name a few). I don't see it so much as direct competition until Hulu starts offering a vastly larger number of movies to the catalog. Until then, Hulu is basically the Netflix of TV shows, Netflix is the Netflix of movies. The very small catalog of original shows notwithstanding. Yes, Netflix has a large catalog of OLDER TV shows (past seasons for what they do have), but that still doesn't compete with Hulu showing new/recently aired TV shows. For the time being, they complement each other.
They might have commercial free contracts with other vendors - typically pay services like Amazon (non-prime) and Apple. Although personally, the 30 second ads that run before/after hardly seem to make it worth paying extra for them, but it's probably just getting around wording in the contracts. I work in broadcast, and there are instances where we cannot give the same exact content we are showing on cable to streaming services, and it has to do with contracts we have with the cable companies. So, it really could be any number of things in various contracts. It sounds silly, but I will be willing to bet you'll see things change (for the better) as time goes on. Believe it or not, broadcasters know TV, as such, is a dying medium and we need to adapt to serving content the way the viewers want it, but you will see a lot of growing pains while existing contracts need time to die out, and you'll probably never get all you want from once service.
$8 for streaming with commercials, $12 without. The question is who would pay $8 when $12 gets you no commercials.
Except AMC isn't broadcast OTA. USA is not broadcast OTA. TNT is not broadcast OTA. FX, FXM, FXX are not broadcast OTA. If all the content I wanted was available OTA, then I'd agree with you.
Time Warner just bought a 10% stake in Hulu; TW owns Turner owns CNN.