I have to be the one person in the US who does not hate their ISP.
I don't hate Cox. I despise them, but I don't hate them. They have been marginally better at doing their job than others I've had the privilege of dealing with. They keep their network up (usually, though far less than 99% of the time, and they have no system in place to notify users if the network outage they are experiencing is known about or not, so I am forced to call them to find out whether they are aware their network is down or not,) and they don't complain about my usage that much (I am a "power user" but still usually am well below their caps even as a Netflix/Steam/GoG/Linux Updates user.) Their caps are livable, even-though unnecessary and potentially illegal, and up until recently (unless you live in Cleveland,) they were "soft-caps" in which you were warned if you went over them, but weren't charged for the difference or weren't throttled. And for the most part, they've actually maintained their network and upgraded with the times instead of being overly greedy and pocketing your monthly fee while letting their network decay.
My problem with Cox is that they are capricious and tend to be greedy and anti-consumer in their attitudes (just enough to keep you around and not turn you away, but not enough to make you happy about having them as your only option for cable internet.) They don't go out of their way to get me to like them, because they don't have to...they are the only game in town and I should like the service they are providing.
But it is stories like this that make me feel just a tiny bit better about my ISP.
While I don't know Cox's IP management strategy, I would be surprised if it was static.
Home users are not static. Business users pay three times as much for slower bandwidth and the same restrictions as home users, but get a static IP address. Home users get DHCP, but the IPs, once issued, stay pretty static until they are offline for a period of time, in which they get assigned a new dynamic address. I've figured that the timeout for the reassignment appears to be about 30 minutes or so. I've had power outages or network outages that have lasted less than 30 minutes where I am reissued the same IP address, but anything longer than 30 minutes usually (though not always) results in a new IP address. Change your MAC address on your device, and you will be issued a new IP address (if it even works, sometimes I have to call them and have them reprovision the line if the MAC address of my router changes, but usually I just get a new IP address.)
The only possible thing RightsCorp can be doing is counting up infringements per IP - which, given the accuracy of the detection method (appalling) and the movement of IP's among Cox' customers, can't tell you much... and that is before considering who in a household (or elsewhere) might be the infringer - that they cannot know.
Cox does appear to be logging their assignments (as any DHCP server should do,) though their clocks must be accurate in order to determine who has any IP address at any time. However, I did hear from a friend that they received an infringement notice for an IP address that they had, but had been reassigned to someone else, but they called Cox Technical Support and complained that nobody was home during the time of the infringement and the only computer attached directly to the cable modem was off, so they couldn't be the infringers, and they heard no further from Cox on the issue. So it is likely that they might not be all that careful in making sure their logs have the proper timestamps and may be a little iffy on the windows.
Be nice to the estate, they don't have much longer to live...
I think what we are seeing is the metaphorical end-times for the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Estate that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle experienced himself in 1929-1930. The point at which a human realizes their days are very short and the number of days left is in the hundreds, if not tens, and they are fighting against hope to stay alive/relevant.
Of course, if it were up to me...we'd never get to this point because the copyright would have expired long before Sir Doyle did.
Great, now Roger Waters is going to come in here and complain about Techdirt being a gallery of rogues, stealing his precious (work) without even so much as an attribution. Those hobbits, always stealing the precious.
It is only intrusive to those types of people when they do not like what is being said, otherwise none of the overly offensive crap people say on a daily basis is of no concern to them.
I agree, but I'd say it further in that it is only intrusive to those types of people when they cannot control the person who says something they do not like being said.
People say things I don't like all the time. I don't care. It might get me upset, it might bother me, but I am not the type of person that likes to control the thoughts and actions of others, and really it isn't the end of the world. Sticks and stones, and all that. There are many things I can control, but someone's ideas and thoughts, I cannot control and don't want to either. The best I can do is explain my position, hope for the best, and then walk away. And even then, it usually isn't worth my time or effort to even say anything.
But there is a large section of the community that isn't happy when they aren't in control of other's thoughts and ideas (or even actions.) To them, this is entirely intrusive and they do everything to "make the person listen," "make the person change their mind," or even "make the person mute if they can't say the things I want to hear."
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: SOP for Apple
Ah, that makes more sense and I can see why that would leave a bad taste in your mouth.
Don't get me wrong...Apple makes great hardware (expensive, but great,) and I have no problem buying Apples, so long as you go in with the realization that the computer you just spent a lot of money on will likely not be supported in the future (the distance to that point in the future is variable, and depends on the whims of the company, not you.)
And their stuff runs Debian quite well (and actually, my PowerPC MacMini runs faster with Debian than it ran with MacOSX, which I use as a Kiosk machine.) The added advantage of running Debian on a Mac is that you can run MacOS X virtual machines (legally) without much difficulty, though hackintoshes make it pretty simple too (though less legally.)
"And I do have personal experience with them EOL'ing my Mac Mini I purchased in 2005 for ~$700 in Feb of 2006. "
Weird, my mid-2010 model Mac Mini was perfectly compatible with Yosemite, which I downloaded from Apple on launch day with no issues. It just doesn't have a few of the extra features like Handoff and AirDrop.
As stated above, Apple switched from PowerPC in their 2005 model of Mac Mini to Intel in February 2006. In 2005, the OS was MacOSX 10.4. Apple decided to discontinue PowerPC in 10.5. You could buy a copy of Leopard and install it over Tiger, but that was it. Someone figured out how to install 10.6 on top of PowerPC, but it wasn't officially sanctioned.
Any version of Intel MacMini should run Yosimite.
I couldn't see buying an Intel version of MacMini after they got me to sump the money on a PowerPC version and then EOL'd it 9 months after selling it.
Re: From the "so, how would I do that?" department...
... er, yes: because if I need to order Broadband, chances are that I can't get online to access the online signup.
Much as I'd like to agree, internet is available on your phone (in most cases,) at work, or down at the internet cafe or local library by now. Getting access to the web isn't as difficult as it used to be.
A more pertinent question is: "would you order broadband from a company whose tech support requires you to be online to access it?"
I had that argument with my ISP once. They used to have a good website to go to in order to see upcoming scheduled outages, as well as unscheduled outages, so if my home network couldn't get out, I could go and check on my phone if they knew about it before calling (you know, troubleshooting 101.)
They took it down, because if you didn't have access to the internet, it wasn't all that useful. When I called to let them know their internet was down, and then had to run back and forth between half a dozen techs before someone who knew it was down would tell me so, and I asked them where they moved the website, and they told me it was pointless to have the website up when the internet was down, I asked them if they sold smartphones (yes, they are a reseller of Verizon phones,) and if the internet on their smartphones was the same internet that they use for their home use, and they said no, whether it dawned on them that I could use their smartphone to check to see whether their home internet was down for my area.
Sadly, my ASP is far more intelligent and responsive. I wish they could do home internet, because they seem to handle my servers far better than my ISP does.
How long the phone lasts is a separate question from whether new software will run on it. I would think one problem with the longevity of an iPhone would be the difficulty of replacing the battery. Some newer Android phones have the same issue.
I absolutely agree. But my original gripe was on how quickly Apple tends to EOL the devices. Maybe the iPhone was a bad example, though as I stated, I know people with a working iPhone 4 that complain, quite loudly, about not being able to run the latest version of ios. And I do have personal experience with them EOL'ing my Mac Mini I purchased in 2005 for ~$700 in Feb of 2006.
I tend to be more of a fanboy of Apple than the alternative, especially when it comes to my 2011 MacBook Pro, but that device isn't in a walled garden though, and runs Debian Linux perfectly fine. But I am tired of spending good money on a device with a life expectancy of less than 5 years (which is also why I avoid ASUS Transformers like the plague, since with their encrypted bootsector and every single one I've owned dying within 2 years of buying it, I cannot justify the expense.)
It's true that you can't run the latest on the oldest hardware, but in cell phone terms 5 years is elderly, and 7.1.2 is not even a year old.
I guess it depends on who purchased the phone. I guess for those of us that purchase their own phone for $500-1000, we want it to last for a while (at least 5 years.) But if you had your phone subsidized, replacing it every two years is no big deal. Speaking of which, probably should start looking for a new phone since my phone is that old.
Gopher didn't exist until 1991. It was actually invented after Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the world wide web, and was direct competition to the world wide web.
Many BBSs were on the internet before 1991, including my own BBS. They used UUCP or other protocols to get there. Sure, they weren't the same, but they existed before the web, in the time period of the 80s.
I'm not a iPhone person, but isn't the latest OS available to devices that are several years old? I know for certain they offer OS upgrades for free to older devices (just don't know exactly how old). They don't put out a new OS and tell everyone they have to buy a new phone to get it.
The iPhone 4 can only run ios 7.1.2. Here is the list of maximum OS versions for phones:
If you have a iPhone 4s or later, you can run the latest operating system. Now the iPhone 4 is 5 years old, so yes, maybe most folks have already bought a new phone, but my Samsung Galaxy S2 runs Cyanogenmod 11.0 (albiet a little slowly) without complaint. I know of a few people out there that still have iPhone 4s that can't upgrade.
It would be trivial to prove prior art for Sleeping Beauty too, but that doesn't stop Disney from locking up folk tales collected by the brothers Grimm.
Trademarks vs Copyright. Actually, I'd love to see Virgin claim copyright in this case, because they'd be laughed out of court. Unfortunately there isn't much of a court involved in these trademark application disputes. But I hope the government examiners and judges get a kick out of it.
A common word used for millennia, then some shithead with a lawyer steps in and claims ownership, stealing our cultural heritage. This is a shameful abuse.
That is primarily why I have a problem with companies being allowed to trademark common words, phrases, or colors. That used to be a no-no, but apparently the times have changed. Remember when Microsoft lost the trademark dispute to Lindows because the name Windows was too generic? I would figure that the name Virgin would be too generic too. If you make a symbol and use that symbol for your trademark, even if it has words in it, and then someone tries using your symbol to sell their goods, you have a good case. Otherwise it shouldn't be trademarkable.
They've always been a nasty company to their customers.
They started the product upgrade staircase. If you want to run the latest software, you had to buy the latest hardware. And hardware was really expensive compared to the alternative, even back in the Apple IIe/IIc era. If you want to know why you have to upgrade to the latest iPhone to run the latest software every year, you need only look back to the Apple IIe/IIc/IIgs/Mac/Mac Pro/Mac II days. My Mac Mini G4 was supported for a whopping 9 months before they discontinued the PowerPC line and switched to Intel (it now runs powerpc Debian.) After that point, I couldn't update the OS.
They offer business customers a lease program for their hardware, which refreshes every few years, but users don't get that. Don't get me wrong, I love Apple Hardware, but I tend to install something a little more open on the hardware whenever I can (I can still run Mac OS X in a virtual machine if I need targets,) but the company has always been about the mighty dollar over customer's wants and needs.
Apple's greatest trick was convincing people they needed to spend far more than necessary on hardware available from their competitors for far cheaper, and I believe that they've gotten lazy in their later years of just outlawing or destroying their competitors instead of putting all the work into getting their customers to shell out more money to replace their existing models with newer ones.
In the early 80s you had mostly text-based websites.
In the early 80s websites didn't exist. Sir Tim Berners-Lee didn't invent the world-wide web until March of 1989, and websites weren't really around until November.
In the early 80s, we called the text based "websites" Bulletin Boards or BBS.
JustShutUpAndObey didn't define what "sea" this stretches to. It could stretch from the sea just west of Spain and the sea just East of Japan. I kinda wish it would stretch from the bottom of the Marianas Trench to the "sea" outside of the orbit of Pluto, or maybe anywhere except the set of null (so maybe not in a black hole,) but I can dream.
Re: Re: That infographic is incorrect, even discounting piracy...
And Hulu (Plus?) has everything else (ABC, NBC, Fox, CW) the next day for free or at most $8.
Along with commericals and a rapidly deflating list of "supported" set-top boxes. Want to use HuluPlus with your year and a half old LG Blu-Ray player, sorry, we don't support that stuff any more, upgrade to a modern player. Want to use a year old Vizio smart TV, sorry, that piece of junk is so ancient you need to upgrade in order to watch our service. Oh, and that week old Samsung won't work either. (Of course, with plex and a set-top box running linux, this isn't as much of an issue any more.)
Amazon Prime and Netflix surprisingly work on every device I own, and don't have commercials, so I gave up on HuluPlus and haven't looked back. If it doesn't exist on Netflix or Amazon Prime, it will probably exist somewhere else on the internets (or it doesn't exist.)
"Nothing will repeal a bad law like enforcing it" While usage caps are not a law, the sentiment is similar.
Unfortunately, as with most current laws, it is unevenly enforced, which is always the problem with the statement.
In a perfect society, all laws are evenly enforced (or not) and thus the Mayor, the police, the Senator, and the President all feel the pain of bad laws along with the 'little people' they serve. Unfortunately, most laws are written with exemptions and exceptions, meaning that the only people who feel the effects of a bad law are the once most sensitive to the effects of the bad law (the poor, the marginalized, etc.) Since those people don't have much say in the matter, enforcing the law does little to repeal it (although, with John Oliver and Jon Stewart, it certainly gives them good material for their shows.)
Certainly, the FCC taking a hard line stance of enforcing caps on everyone or no one would be ideal, but given the current stupidity from the ISPs, suing the FCC even when the FCC gave them all the exceptions they need and they've already admitted that the rules won't matter much, I suspect this would just result in more lawsuits and more of the same.
On the post: Cox Claims Rightscorp's 'Extortionate' Lawsuit Really A Backdoor Way To Get Subscribers' Info
Re: Re: Re: (ltlw0lf @1259)
Stay tuned. They're coming.
On the post: Cox Claims Rightscorp's 'Extortionate' Lawsuit Really A Backdoor Way To Get Subscribers' Info
Re:
I don't hate Cox. I despise them, but I don't hate them. They have been marginally better at doing their job than others I've had the privilege of dealing with. They keep their network up (usually, though far less than 99% of the time, and they have no system in place to notify users if the network outage they are experiencing is known about or not, so I am forced to call them to find out whether they are aware their network is down or not,) and they don't complain about my usage that much (I am a "power user" but still usually am well below their caps even as a Netflix/Steam/GoG/Linux Updates user.) Their caps are livable, even-though unnecessary and potentially illegal, and up until recently (unless you live in Cleveland,) they were "soft-caps" in which you were warned if you went over them, but weren't charged for the difference or weren't throttled. And for the most part, they've actually maintained their network and upgraded with the times instead of being overly greedy and pocketing your monthly fee while letting their network decay.
My problem with Cox is that they are capricious and tend to be greedy and anti-consumer in their attitudes (just enough to keep you around and not turn you away, but not enough to make you happy about having them as your only option for cable internet.) They don't go out of their way to get me to like them, because they don't have to...they are the only game in town and I should like the service they are providing.
But it is stories like this that make me feel just a tiny bit better about my ISP.
On the post: Cox Claims Rightscorp's 'Extortionate' Lawsuit Really A Backdoor Way To Get Subscribers' Info
Re:
Home users are not static. Business users pay three times as much for slower bandwidth and the same restrictions as home users, but get a static IP address. Home users get DHCP, but the IPs, once issued, stay pretty static until they are offline for a period of time, in which they get assigned a new dynamic address. I've figured that the timeout for the reassignment appears to be about 30 minutes or so. I've had power outages or network outages that have lasted less than 30 minutes where I am reissued the same IP address, but anything longer than 30 minutes usually (though not always) results in a new IP address. Change your MAC address on your device, and you will be issued a new IP address (if it even works, sometimes I have to call them and have them reprovision the line if the MAC address of my router changes, but usually I just get a new IP address.)
The only possible thing RightsCorp can be doing is counting up infringements per IP - which, given the accuracy of the detection method (appalling) and the movement of IP's among Cox' customers, can't tell you much... and that is before considering who in a household (or elsewhere) might be the infringer - that they cannot know.
Cox does appear to be logging their assignments (as any DHCP server should do,) though their clocks must be accurate in order to determine who has any IP address at any time. However, I did hear from a friend that they received an infringement notice for an IP address that they had, but had been reassigned to someone else, but they called Cox Technical Support and complained that nobody was home during the time of the infringement and the only computer attached directly to the cable modem was off, so they couldn't be the infringers, and they heard no further from Cox on the issue. So it is likely that they might not be all that careful in making sure their logs have the proper timestamps and may be a little iffy on the windows.
On the post: Sherlock Holmes And The Case Of The Never Ending Copyright Dispute
Be nice to the estate, they don't have much longer to live...
Of course, if it were up to me...we'd never get to this point because the copyright would have expired long before Sir Doyle did.
On the post: Flight Attendants Lost Their Tantrum Suit To Keep Bitching About Our Electronic Devices On Flights
Re: Re: Flight Attendant is your Mom
Great, now Roger Waters is going to come in here and complain about Techdirt being a gallery of rogues, stealing his precious (work) without even so much as an attribution. Those hobbits, always stealing the precious.
On the post: FBI Spent Years 'Researching' The Lyrics To 'Louie, Louie' Before Realizing The Copyright Office Must Have Them
Re: Re: Re:
I agree, but I'd say it further in that it is only intrusive to those types of people when they cannot control the person who says something they do not like being said.
People say things I don't like all the time. I don't care. It might get me upset, it might bother me, but I am not the type of person that likes to control the thoughts and actions of others, and really it isn't the end of the world. Sticks and stones, and all that. There are many things I can control, but someone's ideas and thoughts, I cannot control and don't want to either. The best I can do is explain my position, hope for the best, and then walk away. And even then, it usually isn't worth my time or effort to even say anything.
But there is a large section of the community that isn't happy when they aren't in control of other's thoughts and ideas (or even actions.) To them, this is entirely intrusive and they do everything to "make the person listen," "make the person change their mind," or even "make the person mute if they can't say the things I want to hear."
For those, I can only :-(.
On the post: Apple Trying To Kill Off Spotify's Free Tier; DOJ Now Investigating For Antitrust
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: SOP for Apple
Don't get me wrong...Apple makes great hardware (expensive, but great,) and I have no problem buying Apples, so long as you go in with the realization that the computer you just spent a lot of money on will likely not be supported in the future (the distance to that point in the future is variable, and depends on the whims of the company, not you.)
And their stuff runs Debian quite well (and actually, my PowerPC MacMini runs faster with Debian than it ran with MacOSX, which I use as a Kiosk machine.) The added advantage of running Debian on a Mac is that you can run MacOS X virtual machines (legally) without much difficulty, though hackintoshes make it pretty simple too (though less legally.)
On the post: Apple Trying To Kill Off Spotify's Free Tier; DOJ Now Investigating For Antitrust
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: SOP for Apple
Weird, my mid-2010 model Mac Mini was perfectly compatible with Yosemite, which I downloaded from Apple on launch day with no issues. It just doesn't have a few of the extra features like Handoff and AirDrop.
As stated above, Apple switched from PowerPC in their 2005 model of Mac Mini to Intel in February 2006. In 2005, the OS was MacOSX 10.4. Apple decided to discontinue PowerPC in 10.5. You could buy a copy of Leopard and install it over Tiger, but that was it. Someone figured out how to install 10.6 on top of PowerPC, but it wasn't officially sanctioned.
Any version of Intel MacMini should run Yosimite.
I couldn't see buying an Intel version of MacMini after they got me to sump the money on a PowerPC version and then EOL'd it 9 months after selling it.
On the post: Would You Order Broadband From A Company That Can't Even Figure Out How To Let You Sign Up Online?
Re: From the "so, how would I do that?" department...
Much as I'd like to agree, internet is available on your phone (in most cases,) at work, or down at the internet cafe or local library by now. Getting access to the web isn't as difficult as it used to be.
A more pertinent question is: "would you order broadband from a company whose tech support requires you to be online to access it?"
I had that argument with my ISP once. They used to have a good website to go to in order to see upcoming scheduled outages, as well as unscheduled outages, so if my home network couldn't get out, I could go and check on my phone if they knew about it before calling (you know, troubleshooting 101.)
They took it down, because if you didn't have access to the internet, it wasn't all that useful. When I called to let them know their internet was down, and then had to run back and forth between half a dozen techs before someone who knew it was down would tell me so, and I asked them where they moved the website, and they told me it was pointless to have the website up when the internet was down, I asked them if they sold smartphones (yes, they are a reseller of Verizon phones,) and if the internet on their smartphones was the same internet that they use for their home use, and they said no, whether it dawned on them that I could use their smartphone to check to see whether their home internet was down for my area.
Sadly, my ASP is far more intelligent and responsive. I wish they could do home internet, because they seem to handle my servers far better than my ISP does.
On the post: Apple Trying To Kill Off Spotify's Free Tier; DOJ Now Investigating For Antitrust
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: SOP for Apple
I absolutely agree. But my original gripe was on how quickly Apple tends to EOL the devices. Maybe the iPhone was a bad example, though as I stated, I know people with a working iPhone 4 that complain, quite loudly, about not being able to run the latest version of ios. And I do have personal experience with them EOL'ing my Mac Mini I purchased in 2005 for ~$700 in Feb of 2006.
I tend to be more of a fanboy of Apple than the alternative, especially when it comes to my 2011 MacBook Pro, but that device isn't in a walled garden though, and runs Debian Linux perfectly fine. But I am tired of spending good money on a device with a life expectancy of less than 5 years (which is also why I avoid ASUS Transformers like the plague, since with their encrypted bootsector and every single one I've owned dying within 2 years of buying it, I cannot justify the expense.)
On the post: Apple Trying To Kill Off Spotify's Free Tier; DOJ Now Investigating For Antitrust
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: SOP for Apple
I guess it depends on who purchased the phone. I guess for those of us that purchase their own phone for $500-1000, we want it to last for a while (at least 5 years.) But if you had your phone subsidized, replacing it every two years is no big deal. Speaking of which, probably should start looking for a new phone since my phone is that old.
On the post: That 20 Mbps Broadband Line We Promised? It's Actually 300 Kbps. Enjoy!
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Gopher didn't exist until 1991. It was actually invented after Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the world wide web, and was direct competition to the world wide web.
Many BBSs were on the internet before 1991, including my own BBS. They used UUCP or other protocols to get there. Sure, they weren't the same, but they existed before the web, in the time period of the 80s.
On the post: Apple Trying To Kill Off Spotify's Free Tier; DOJ Now Investigating For Antitrust
Re: Re: Re: Re: SOP for Apple
Ah, I meant iPhone 4. Not iPhone 4s, hard to write the plural of iPhone 4 without using an "s" and confusing it with the 4s.
On the post: Apple Trying To Kill Off Spotify's Free Tier; DOJ Now Investigating For Antitrust
Re: Re: Re: SOP for Apple
The iPhone 4 can only run ios 7.1.2. Here is the list of maximum OS versions for phones:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_iOS_devices
If you have a iPhone 4s or later, you can run the latest operating system. Now the iPhone 4 is 5 years old, so yes, maybe most folks have already bought a new phone, but my Samsung Galaxy S2 runs Cyanogenmod 11.0 (albiet a little slowly) without complaint. I know of a few people out there that still have iPhone 4s that can't upgrade.
On the post: The Virgin Group Disputes Trademark Application Of Tiny Olive Oil Company Vasse Virgin Because Of Course They Did
Re: Re: Re:
Trademarks vs Copyright. Actually, I'd love to see Virgin claim copyright in this case, because they'd be laughed out of court. Unfortunately there isn't much of a court involved in these trademark application disputes. But I hope the government examiners and judges get a kick out of it.
A common word used for millennia, then some shithead with a lawyer steps in and claims ownership, stealing our cultural heritage. This is a shameful abuse.
That is primarily why I have a problem with companies being allowed to trademark common words, phrases, or colors. That used to be a no-no, but apparently the times have changed. Remember when Microsoft lost the trademark dispute to Lindows because the name Windows was too generic? I would figure that the name Virgin would be too generic too. If you make a symbol and use that symbol for your trademark, even if it has words in it, and then someone tries using your symbol to sell their goods, you have a good case. Otherwise it shouldn't be trademarkable.
On the post: Apple Trying To Kill Off Spotify's Free Tier; DOJ Now Investigating For Antitrust
Re: SOP for Apple
They've always been a nasty company to their customers.
They started the product upgrade staircase. If you want to run the latest software, you had to buy the latest hardware. And hardware was really expensive compared to the alternative, even back in the Apple IIe/IIc era. If you want to know why you have to upgrade to the latest iPhone to run the latest software every year, you need only look back to the Apple IIe/IIc/IIgs/Mac/Mac Pro/Mac II days. My Mac Mini G4 was supported for a whopping 9 months before they discontinued the PowerPC line and switched to Intel (it now runs powerpc Debian.) After that point, I couldn't update the OS.
They offer business customers a lease program for their hardware, which refreshes every few years, but users don't get that. Don't get me wrong, I love Apple Hardware, but I tend to install something a little more open on the hardware whenever I can (I can still run Mac OS X in a virtual machine if I need targets,) but the company has always been about the mighty dollar over customer's wants and needs.
Apple's greatest trick was convincing people they needed to spend far more than necessary on hardware available from their competitors for far cheaper, and I believe that they've gotten lazy in their later years of just outlawing or destroying their competitors instead of putting all the work into getting their customers to shell out more money to replace their existing models with newer ones.
On the post: That 20 Mbps Broadband Line We Promised? It's Actually 300 Kbps. Enjoy!
Re: Re: Re:
In the early 80s websites didn't exist. Sir Tim Berners-Lee didn't invent the world-wide web until March of 1989, and websites weren't really around until November.
In the early 80s, we called the text based "websites" Bulletin Boards or BBS.
On the post: Student Sues College After Campus Cops Demand He Get A Free Speech 'Permit' Before Handing Out Fliers
Re: Re: Re: Free Speech Zone
JustShutUpAndObey didn't define what "sea" this stretches to. It could stretch from the sea just west of Spain and the sea just East of Japan. I kinda wish it would stretch from the bottom of the Marianas Trench to the "sea" outside of the orbit of Pluto, or maybe anywhere except the set of null (so maybe not in a black hole,) but I can dream.
On the post: When Analyzing Cord Cutting Options, Most TV Analysts Continue To Pretend Piracy Simply Doesn't Exist
Re: Re: That infographic is incorrect, even discounting piracy...
Along with commericals and a rapidly deflating list of "supported" set-top boxes. Want to use HuluPlus with your year and a half old LG Blu-Ray player, sorry, we don't support that stuff any more, upgrade to a modern player. Want to use a year old Vizio smart TV, sorry, that piece of junk is so ancient you need to upgrade in order to watch our service. Oh, and that week old Samsung won't work either. (Of course, with plex and a set-top box running linux, this isn't as much of an issue any more.)
Amazon Prime and Netflix surprisingly work on every device I own, and don't have commercials, so I gave up on HuluPlus and haven't looked back. If it doesn't exist on Netflix or Amazon Prime, it will probably exist somewhere else on the internets (or it doesn't exist.)
On the post: Showtime, HBO Working With ISPs To Make Their Streaming Services Cap Exempt
Re: Re: Re:
Unfortunately, as with most current laws, it is unevenly enforced, which is always the problem with the statement.
In a perfect society, all laws are evenly enforced (or not) and thus the Mayor, the police, the Senator, and the President all feel the pain of bad laws along with the 'little people' they serve. Unfortunately, most laws are written with exemptions and exceptions, meaning that the only people who feel the effects of a bad law are the once most sensitive to the effects of the bad law (the poor, the marginalized, etc.) Since those people don't have much say in the matter, enforcing the law does little to repeal it (although, with John Oliver and Jon Stewart, it certainly gives them good material for their shows.)
Certainly, the FCC taking a hard line stance of enforcing caps on everyone or no one would be ideal, but given the current stupidity from the ISPs, suing the FCC even when the FCC gave them all the exceptions they need and they've already admitted that the rules won't matter much, I suspect this would just result in more lawsuits and more of the same.
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