You MUST Buy This. Oh, And We Just Raised the Price.
ESPN has benefited from a number of factors:
- Great brand, has market power, IS beloved by its fans - Disney offers a "take ESPN for ALL your subs, or leave it" deal to cablecos - Cablecos afraid of losing subs for lack of sports accept the bad deal - Thus ESPN gets forced into every cable subscriber's plan. - ESPN then ratchets up the price, year after year.
The long-term effect of this has been that cable companies PAY about $30/mo per subscriber for the content channels, or an average of 14 cents per channel. But how much of that $30 does the cable co pay for ESPN? A whopping $6/mo!! For me, I've watched about 0 minutes of ESPN in my 20 years of cable subscription, which means over $1,000. So excuse me while I politely think "Fuck those guys!" Also unpleasant is the fact that I'm giving $1/mo to Fox News.
BTW, if you want to follow the money, there are two places your $6/mo goes: to wildly overpaid athletes and to fat cat team owners. So F those guys, too. The reason I can get angry is because these transactions have NOT taken place in a free market. The athletes have a union and agents, sports teams have market control and are exempt from anti-trust laws, the cable cos have franchise monopolies and regulatory capture, the networks have price control...Geez, the entire supply chain is a litany of market failures. The only group with no union, no organization, and no seat at any of the tables is the group footing the bill, aka YOU. Don't tell me the reason the guy who throws the ball slightly better gets paid $40 million is because "the market has said that's his value" - the market is not a fair one.
But ESPN and cablecos have been oblivious to the following for years:
- Despite it's great brand, many people don't give a fig for ESPN - These people resent having to buy it. - Most people are unaware of how much they are paying ESPN. If they knew, they'd get even angrier. - With the Internet, the market will seek to find a way to sell me the content I want, and less of the content I don't. - Customers will eventually be shown the actual price of ESPN, and they will compare it to other things like Netflix...and unless they are a die-hard sports fan, they will not be impressed with the relative value.
So now, ESPN is not just suffering under the weight of cable cutting, but even more ironic, I would argue that they, singularly, are the biggest driving force behind it.
The shuttle was not really a re-usable space vessel, because the boosters (what really provides the motion) were discarded in stages. What SpaceX and Blue Origin are working on are vessels where 100% of the vessel is re-usable, and only fuel is expended. Very different.
Also, Blue Origin and SpaceX are doing VERY different kinds of trips into space:
- Blue Origin is basically a bottle rocket: it goes straight up, enters the edge of "space", then falls back down.
- SpaceX does the same as Blue Origin, but then ALSO accelerates the craft horizontally to a speed of 8 Km/s or about 18,000 miles per hour. That's 18,000 miles per hour FASTER than Blue Origin - not an insignificant difference when it comes to how much energy is needed. The energy is a factor of about 30x.
Blue Origin, in it's current model, does not and cannot launch anything into an orbit. It's more like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kK62tfoCmuQ Which is cool for a brief space travel with a short period of weightlessness. At the top of the flight, the force of gravity is still about the same as on earth's surface, and speed is 0. Free fall down occurs.
In contrast, in a Low Earth Orbit from SpaceX vessels, the force of gravity remains about the same as on earth, but the free fall is never-ending because the 8km/s lateral speed means that the upward component of your lateral motion exactly offsets the downward motion of your free fall. aka orbit.
So, while Blue Origin may someday also do LEO flights, for now they are dealing with a challenge that is 30x less energy intensive, as compared to SpaceX.
And, yeah, I'm a total Musk fanboy. 100%. I've never fanboyed anyone in five decades, and I've chosen him to start. Totes better than Bieber.
On domestic mass shootings: "It's too soon to politicize this. This isn't the right time to have knee-jerk reactions. We should be praying for the victims and their families."
On terrorist attacks: "The time to act is now. Snowden this, surveillance that, lock-down, yada yada, fear, loud noises, Patriot Act, tough talk."
...although, to be fair, plenty of dems are caught up in that second one. But the GOP cognitive dissonance is strong between the above two events.
Where the pythons make fun of the childish way a man uses official paperwork and the Municipal bureaucracy for purposes clearly misunderstood and misaligned.
Basically it goes: - I want a license for my pet fish. - You can't have one, there are no licenses for fish. - Well, I bleeding well have one for my pet cat, Eric. - There are no cat licenses. - I bleeding got one, look! What's that then? - This is a dog license with the word 'dog' crossed out and 'cat' written in in crayon! - The man didn't have the right form. - How much did you pay for this? - Sixty quid, and eight for the fruit-bat.
"reinforce the silly idea that copyright law is a battle between "Silicon Valley" vs. "Hollywood""
But Mike, it IS. Well, let me dissect that.
1) It totally IS a battle, because the two sides feel differently about it, and have opposing views about what will be good for their businesses and the nation.
2) It should not be a battle, because the Hollywood side is (and has repeatedly been) dead wrong about what is good for themselves, and the nation. In fact, the opinions of the IP reduction side ARE in fact better for everyone, Hollywood included, and especially artists.
To be fair, the xxIAs are doing their best to force platforms like YouTube into being gatekeepers.
They want them to have bots and AI that automatically filters out content that may be infringing with a takedown first, notify second approach. They want YouTube to ban users with takedowns.
If the platforms mentioned are becoming gatekeepers, it is mostly from legal pressure from the existing legacy gatekeepers.
"it told him he could have all the documents... for the price of a late model SUV."
Tim, please re-frame this comparison in terms of "servings of Starbucks Coffee", which is now accepted as the gold standard of comparisons for expenditures. Look how well this reads:
"he could have the documents...for the simple expense of just 10,000 cups of coffee."
Yeah. Kinda arbitrary. But I put it there because of the "pushed other vendors forward in a way that benefits google."
Think about it. They've been doing that Self-driving car research for a long time. Any cars you can buy yet? No, so kinda a failed biz. OTOH, Tesla, Cadillac, Audi, Volvo have all done a lot of work to keep up with what Google has evangelized.
But to Google's benefit, Android Auto is successful. And that product basks in the halo effect of the self drive cars. Tesla has outsourced basemap data to Google, as well as voice recog. Google seems better positioned to sell their expertise than to sell a car, for now.
BTW, I rode in a Google Self-drive Lexus, and it was a let-down. I saw their 2012 video in which a blind man goes shopping in a car around town on urban streets. Their fleet of Lexii are nothing like that video. When I rode, in 2014, the car was ONLY capable of freeway driving, and ONLY could keep its lane. No lane changes, no collision avoidance to left/right. Only stop and go within a lane. Now, that's pretty cool, but a hell of a letdown after the blind guy video.
I have an auto pilot Tesla, and that's more impressive because it does basically the same thing as the Google Lexus, adds lane changing, AND it is commercially available. Tesla did not over-promise and under-deliver.
Google is now working on urban driving, which is far more complicated. I hope they do great things.
Hey, I didn't say "Don't use the Interwebs". I just corrected the analogy above.
AricTheRed used the ridiculous tactic of assuming you used your full capacity non-stop to illustrate how fast you hit your cap. That is unrealistic use, and any capacity planner in the world (telecom, roads, restaurants, schools, etc) knows that usage is not binary - full or nil.
The old, and quite stupid, trope of "If that's the cap, and my network speed is X, I would use it all in T!" Why is it stupid? Well, you've just given the ISPs a disincentive to offering you better speeds. Think about it, the faster the X speed they offer you, the more pissed off you get about how short T is.
So, I expressed his model not in terms of TIME in which the cap would be hit, but in terms of quantity of movies, at which point it looks a lot better.
You are free, of course, to do backups, uploads, or Spotify instead of the movies. You are not the first to point out that the Internet has more than one use.
"Claiming that most people don't actually use what they payed for does not make it ok to punish those that do."
The people of your town do not use the roads in town to your fullest right to use them. If you all did, you would "punish" yourselves for that rate of use, and hopefully realize that network planning is NEVER based on everybody using their full capacity at all times.
What I'm writing isn't popular. I know that. So you don't want to agree. But it's right.
"Stop pretending that these caps don't affect real people"
Can't see where I did that. Caps suck. I sure don't want one. But I see the economic realities that cause them. They are twofold: 1) not enough competition, so your ISP will take what they can 2) real requirements for CapEx to upgrade networks as users consume more data.
Not so. We don't have to wait years to prove that Hal Singer's predictions were BS. Here's why:
1) The doom-and-gloom predictions were that there would be an immediate and dramatic drop in investment. In fact, the lobbyists were saying, prior to Title II, that the mere threat of possible Title II was already stifling CapEx. Thus, it is already proven wrong.
2) Sure, we may have to wait 5 years or so to see the longer-term, and full effects of Title II. There may be some unintended negative consequences. But that's a more nuanced debate than the lobbyists ever made.
"These kinds of investments are planned years in advance"
BTW, Telco/MSO investments are NOT planned years in advance. They are very fluid year-by-year, based on new technologies, what competitors are offering, what happens to demand, the economy, price of K, the outcome of spectrum auctions, and yes, regulations.
"We need to be willing to spend a few dollars on a quality app, rather than for a few extra lives or other in-game purchases."
Now, unlike him, I know that the market does what the market wants to do, and you can't hold your breath until it changes for you. However, I also hate the fact that people are unwilling to pay a couple of bucks for a good game.
The reason is that because of the market's desire for free, devs went to the free to play, with in-game upsell model, or in-game ads.
The net result is a dearth of simple, good quality, pay-once gaming, and an explosion of nagging, prompting, interrupting, Notification-generating apps. By forcing the devs to be beggars, they have become excellent beggars.
Before in-app purchases were enabled in apps, and before in-app advertising, the number of biz model choices for developers was pretty small: charge for your app or don't. The need to eat meant that the majority DID charge for their app, it was a couple of bucks and you had the app until you upgraded your device or more. The apps that trickled to the top of the ratings were the good apps - not necessarily the cheap apps. The result was that, for a few wonderful years 2008-2010, you could buy an highly-rated app, it would be good, and it would not nag the shit outta you for another 99 cents for "dragon food" or whatevs.
The golden age of apps IS behind us. It was short. Because people hate to pay, the apps have responded by treating them like the cheapskates they are, and trying to trick or bait-and-switch them instead of selling quality for a price.
I feel the same way about economy airline travel. Why is the service so shitty, the food so bad, the seats so small, the entertainment so lame, the nickel-and-diming so prevalent? Because the mass market asked for it to be that way by shopping only on listed price of ticked. You want it cheap? They cut costs, then try to make extra money off you any legal way they can.
On the post: ESPN Ignored Cord Cutting Threat, Paid For It With Huge Viewership Losses
Re: I Blame PASSIVE-AGRESSIVE PIRACY
"There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about."
On the post: ESPN Ignored Cord Cutting Threat, Paid For It With Huge Viewership Losses
You MUST Buy This. Oh, And We Just Raised the Price.
- Great brand, has market power, IS beloved by its fans
- Disney offers a "take ESPN for ALL your subs, or leave it" deal to cablecos
- Cablecos afraid of losing subs for lack of sports accept the bad deal
- Thus ESPN gets forced into every cable subscriber's plan.
- ESPN then ratchets up the price, year after year.
The long-term effect of this has been that cable companies PAY about $30/mo per subscriber for the content channels, or an average of 14 cents per channel. But how much of that $30 does the cable co pay for ESPN? A whopping $6/mo!! For me, I've watched about 0 minutes of ESPN in my 20 years of cable subscription, which means over $1,000. So excuse me while I politely think "Fuck those guys!" Also unpleasant is the fact that I'm giving $1/mo to Fox News.
See the cost of content in your cable bill:
http://blogs.wsj.com/numbers/how-much-cable-subscribers-pay-per-channel-1626/
BTW, if you want to follow the money, there are two places your $6/mo goes: to wildly overpaid athletes and to fat cat team owners. So F those guys, too. The reason I can get angry is because these transactions have NOT taken place in a free market. The athletes have a union and agents, sports teams have market control and are exempt from anti-trust laws, the cable cos have franchise monopolies and regulatory capture, the networks have price control...Geez, the entire supply chain is a litany of market failures. The only group with no union, no organization, and no seat at any of the tables is the group footing the bill, aka YOU. Don't tell me the reason the guy who throws the ball slightly better gets paid $40 million is because "the market has said that's his value" - the market is not a fair one.
But ESPN and cablecos have been oblivious to the following for years:
- Despite it's great brand, many people don't give a fig for ESPN
- These people resent having to buy it.
- Most people are unaware of how much they are paying ESPN. If they knew, they'd get even angrier.
- With the Internet, the market will seek to find a way to sell me the content I want, and less of the content I don't.
- Customers will eventually be shown the actual price of ESPN, and they will compare it to other things like Netflix...and unless they are a die-hard sports fan, they will not be impressed with the relative value.
So now, ESPN is not just suffering under the weight of cable cutting, but even more ironic, I would argue that they, singularly, are the biggest driving force behind it.
On the post: French Government Using State Of Emergency As An Excuse To Round Up Climate Change Activists
E to the F
And as Meatloaf said, two outta three ain't bad.
On the post: DailyDirt: Who Wants To Go To Space?
The Space Race
Also, Blue Origin and SpaceX are doing VERY different kinds of trips into space:
- Blue Origin is basically a bottle rocket: it goes straight up, enters the edge of "space", then falls back down.
- SpaceX does the same as Blue Origin, but then ALSO accelerates the craft horizontally to a speed of 8 Km/s or about 18,000 miles per hour. That's 18,000 miles per hour FASTER than Blue Origin - not an insignificant difference when it comes to how much energy is needed. The energy is a factor of about 30x.
Blue Origin, in it's current model, does not and cannot launch anything into an orbit. It's more like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kK62tfoCmuQ
Which is cool for a brief space travel with a short period of weightlessness. At the top of the flight, the force of gravity is still about the same as on earth's surface, and speed is 0. Free fall down occurs.
In contrast, in a Low Earth Orbit from SpaceX vessels, the force of gravity remains about the same as on earth, but the free fall is never-ending because the 8km/s lateral speed means that the upward component of your lateral motion exactly offsets the downward motion of your free fall. aka orbit.
So, while Blue Origin may someday also do LEO flights, for now they are dealing with a challenge that is 30x less energy intensive, as compared to SpaceX.
And, yeah, I'm a total Musk fanboy. 100%. I've never fanboyed anyone in five decades, and I've chosen him to start. Totes better than Bieber.
On the post: The Paris Attacks And The Encryption/Surveillance Bogeyman: The Story So Far
The GOP Platform
"It's too soon to politicize this. This isn't the right time to have knee-jerk reactions. We should be praying for the victims and their families."
On terrorist attacks:
"The time to act is now. Snowden this, surveillance that, lock-down, yada yada, fear, loud noises, Patriot Act, tough talk."
...although, to be fair, plenty of dems are caught up in that second one. But the GOP cognitive dissonance is strong between the above two events.
On the post: After Endless Demonization Of Encryption, Police Find Paris Attackers Coordinated Via Unencrypted SMS
Haystack Problem
Solution: More haystack.
It's like f'n cowbell for Christopher Walken.
On the post: We Have The 'Criminal Charges' Patrick Zarrelli Claims He Filed Against Our Writer, And They're Not What He Thinks
Childish As The Butt of A Monty Python Skit
http://www.montypython.net/scripts/fishlic.php
Where the pythons make fun of the childish way a man uses official paperwork and the Municipal bureaucracy for purposes clearly misunderstood and misaligned.
Basically it goes:
- I want a license for my pet fish.
- You can't have one, there are no licenses for fish.
- Well, I bleeding well have one for my pet cat, Eric.
- There are no cat licenses.
- I bleeding got one, look! What's that then?
- This is a dog license with the word 'dog' crossed out and 'cat' written in in crayon!
- The man didn't have the right form.
- How much did you pay for this?
- Sixty quid, and eight for the fruit-bat.
On the post: House Judiciary Committee Hears Concerns From Silicon Valley About Copyright Law
It IS a Battle of SV vs. Hollywood (Sadly)
But Mike, it IS. Well, let me dissect that.
1) It totally IS a battle, because the two sides feel differently about it, and have opposing views about what will be good for their businesses and the nation.
2) It should not be a battle, because the Hollywood side is (and has repeatedly been) dead wrong about what is good for themselves, and the nation. In fact, the opinions of the IP reduction side ARE in fact better for everyone, Hollywood included, and especially artists.
On the post: House Judiciary Committee Hears Concerns From Silicon Valley About Copyright Law
Re: Re: Re: Re:
They want them to have bots and AI that automatically filters out content that may be infringing with a takedown first, notify second approach. They want YouTube to ban users with takedowns.
If the platforms mentioned are becoming gatekeepers, it is mostly from legal pressure from the existing legacy gatekeepers.
On the post: DOJ Has Blocked Everyone In The Executive Branch From Reading The Senate's Torture Report
Re: This report needs to be Snowden'd
Yes, I just turned the man's name into a verb.
-- And with the shrewd use of the apostrophe d
-- thou hast done so with Shakespearean glee.
On the post: University Of Kentucky Battles Kentucky Mist Moonshine Maker Over Hats And T-Shirts
Re: Re: Grammatical Question
I accept that language changes over time, and IMHO, the changes most worthy of migrating to Merriam-Webster are those of comedic value.
I shall begin to employ "asshat-ish" asap. I was looking for a replacement for "douchebaggy" anyways.
On the post: NYPD Wants $42,000 To Turn Over Documents Related To Discharges Of Officers' Firearms
Coffee, Man, Coffee
Tim, please re-frame this comparison in terms of "servings of Starbucks Coffee", which is now accepted as the gold standard of comparisons for expenditures. Look how well this reads:
"he could have the documents...for the simple expense of just 10,000 cups of coffee."
Oh! Now I get it, that's an egregious fee!
On the post: University Of Kentucky Battles Kentucky Mist Moonshine Maker Over Hats And T-Shirts
Grammatical Question
I am a huge fan of your use of the compound term "asshat-ish", even though I'm not sure if that's the correct use of the dash.
On the post: Will Molecular Biology's Most Important Discovery In Years Be Ruined By Patents?
Re: A problem that shouldn't exist
"No one person or group did everything involved, start to finish, without outside influence" EVER.
On the post: Law Professor Pens Ridiculous, Nearly Fact-Free, Misleading Attack On The Most Important Law On The Internet
Re: ughh
On the post: With Another Major Expansion, Google Fiber's Looking Less Like An Adorable Experiment And More Like A Disruptive Broadband Revolution
Re: Re: The "Nexus" Strategy
The main thrust being that they are happy just to push the market forward. If it makes money, they can double down. IF it doesn't...meh.
On the post: With Another Major Expansion, Google Fiber's Looking Less Like An Adorable Experiment And More Like A Disruptive Broadband Revolution
Re: Re: The "Nexus" Strategy
Think about it. They've been doing that Self-driving car research for a long time. Any cars you can buy yet? No, so kinda a failed biz. OTOH, Tesla, Cadillac, Audi, Volvo have all done a lot of work to keep up with what Google has evangelized.
But to Google's benefit, Android Auto is successful. And that product basks in the halo effect of the self drive cars. Tesla has outsourced basemap data to Google, as well as voice recog. Google seems better positioned to sell their expertise than to sell a car, for now.
BTW, I rode in a Google Self-drive Lexus, and it was a let-down. I saw their 2012 video in which a blind man goes shopping in a car around town on urban streets. Their fleet of Lexii are nothing like that video. When I rode, in 2014, the car was ONLY capable of freeway driving, and ONLY could keep its lane. No lane changes, no collision avoidance to left/right. Only stop and go within a lane. Now, that's pretty cool, but a hell of a letdown after the blind guy video.
I have an auto pilot Tesla, and that's more impressive because it does basically the same thing as the Google Lexus, adds lane changing, AND it is commercially available. Tesla did not over-promise and under-deliver.
Google is now working on urban driving, which is far more complicated. I hope they do great things.
On the post: With 12% Of Comcast Customers Now Broadband Capped, Comcast Declares It's Simply Spreading 'Fairness'
Re: Re: Re: I'm (not very) shocked!
AricTheRed used the ridiculous tactic of assuming you used your full capacity non-stop to illustrate how fast you hit your cap. That is unrealistic use, and any capacity planner in the world (telecom, roads, restaurants, schools, etc) knows that usage is not binary - full or nil.
The old, and quite stupid, trope of "If that's the cap, and my network speed is X, I would use it all in T!" Why is it stupid? Well, you've just given the ISPs a disincentive to offering you better speeds. Think about it, the faster the X speed they offer you, the more pissed off you get about how short T is.
So, I expressed his model not in terms of TIME in which the cap would be hit, but in terms of quantity of movies, at which point it looks a lot better.
You are free, of course, to do backups, uploads, or Spotify instead of the movies. You are not the first to point out that the Internet has more than one use.
"Claiming that most people don't actually use what they payed for does not make it ok to punish those that do."
The people of your town do not use the roads in town to your fullest right to use them. If you all did, you would "punish" yourselves for that rate of use, and hopefully realize that network planning is NEVER based on everybody using their full capacity at all times.
What I'm writing isn't popular. I know that. So you don't want to agree. But it's right.
"Stop pretending that these caps don't affect real people"
Can't see where I did that. Caps suck. I sure don't want one. But I see the economic realities that cause them. They are twofold:
1) not enough competition, so your ISP will take what they can
2) real requirements for CapEx to upgrade networks as users consume more data.
On the post: Sorry Net Neutrality Chicken Littles, Title II & Net Neutrality Still Haven't Hurt Broadband Investment In The Slightest
Re:
1) The doom-and-gloom predictions were that there would be an immediate and dramatic drop in investment. In fact, the lobbyists were saying, prior to Title II, that the mere threat of possible Title II was already stifling CapEx. Thus, it is already proven wrong.
2) Sure, we may have to wait 5 years or so to see the longer-term, and full effects of Title II. There may be some unintended negative consequences. But that's a more nuanced debate than the lobbyists ever made.
"These kinds of investments are planned years in advance"
BTW, Telco/MSO investments are NOT planned years in advance. They are very fluid year-by-year, based on new technologies, what competitors are offering, what happens to demand, the economy, price of K, the outcome of spectrum auctions, and yes, regulations.
On the post: CEO Of Mobile Company Blames Everyone For Wanting Coffee Rather Than His Game
Agree With Him On This One Point
Now, unlike him, I know that the market does what the market wants to do, and you can't hold your breath until it changes for you. However, I also hate the fact that people are unwilling to pay a couple of bucks for a good game.
The reason is that because of the market's desire for free, devs went to the free to play, with in-game upsell model, or in-game ads.
The net result is a dearth of simple, good quality, pay-once gaming, and an explosion of nagging, prompting, interrupting, Notification-generating apps. By forcing the devs to be beggars, they have become excellent beggars.
Before in-app purchases were enabled in apps, and before in-app advertising, the number of biz model choices for developers was pretty small: charge for your app or don't. The need to eat meant that the majority DID charge for their app, it was a couple of bucks and you had the app until you upgraded your device or more. The apps that trickled to the top of the ratings were the good apps - not necessarily the cheap apps. The result was that, for a few wonderful years 2008-2010, you could buy an highly-rated app, it would be good, and it would not nag the shit outta you for another 99 cents for "dragon food" or whatevs.
The golden age of apps IS behind us. It was short. Because people hate to pay, the apps have responded by treating them like the cheapskates they are, and trying to trick or bait-and-switch them instead of selling quality for a price.
I feel the same way about economy airline travel. Why is the service so shitty, the food so bad, the seats so small, the entertainment so lame, the nickel-and-diming so prevalent? Because the mass market asked for it to be that way by shopping only on listed price of ticked. You want it cheap? They cut costs, then try to make extra money off you any legal way they can.
Get off my lawn.
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