Media

Sat - February 18, 2006

Verizon, AT&T, SBC, & Google – Let’s End the “Free Lunch” For Everyone!

Verizon, AT&T, SBC, & Google – Let’s End the “Free Lunch” For Everyone!

Verizon and SBC/Southwest Bell/Pac Bell/Pacific Telesis/AT&T or whatever they’re called this year has called for an end to “free lunches” on the internet – running out of revenue options (guess that customer service and adding new features, that wasn’t on the table?) and that companies like Google are taking advantage of a “free lunch” on their bandwidth.

So, I guess it’s a two-way street Verizon?

Speaking of streets, how much are you paying to drive on our streets?

Or those “free” right of way poles you string your wires on.

Free lunch ends when yours does, buddy. It’s my street and my property. I don’t have any of your “services” so come and take down your wire running in front on my house since it’s an eyesore and besides, no free lunch for anyone, right?

I have Comcast phone & cable broadband and they have their own wires so feel free to set up a 4-hour window with me to come and take down your wires getting a “free lunch” on my visibility and property.

And while I haven’t polled all my neighbors, if we decide to switch over to all non Bell companies, don’t bother driving on our streets after we make the switch – after all, you wouldn’t want anyone getting a free lunch.

And if we take a step back, when you were a monopoly utility, didn’t WE pay for that wiring and presumably you take tax deductions on that expenditure – you are going to give all that back? (along with that other free lunch – the “regulatory fees” you charge us but aren’t actually regulatory since you pocket them?)

And really, doesn’t the internet belong to WE THE PEOPLE – remember, no free lunches – we’ll get back to you on what the back monthly royalty fees you owe us, WE THE PEOPLE.

I almost forgot, even though I’m not a customer anymore and NEVER EVER intend to spend another dime with you, you keep sending me mail at a DISCOUNTED LOWER BUSINESS RATE than the $.39 I have to pay for each letter. Let’s end that free lunch also.

Be careful of the Pandora box you open.

Posted at 09:37 AM Read More

Fri - December 2, 2005

Cable/Broadband a la Carte - Just Censorship Disguised

Like the FREE IPOD deals, they sound good on the surface but ultimately, you'll pay more than you would with your time and money.

Cable ala carte may have worked 20 years but not now. If you look at the Top 50 cable networks ratings, about 48 of them are owned wholly or partially by Viacom, NBCU, Disney, Fox, Warner, Comcast or Hearst.

What does that mean? ESPN ala carte? $24.99 a month. Why not? There's no rule that says pricing now (about $2 a channel) gets converted to ala carte pricing - just like at a restaurant - you get 30% of the meal for 80% of the cost. But they'll be deals. If you agree to take ALL the other ESPN channels, the bundle deal is $17.99. But wait it gets better - if you take Disney & ABC - that's only another $7.99 a month or you can buy each channel separately for $9.99 a month.

So, two scenarios. We will probably pay $10 more a month to end up with slightly fewer channels or you will pay about $100 to get about 10 cable channels.

This is EXACTLY what happened the last time government decided to mess with the industry - we ended up with cable re-regulation and what happened - monthly rates dropped a little but if you wanted a cable guide - $10. If the service call was your fault - $35. Wiring insurance? $5 a month, etc, etc ... so ultimately we ended up paying essentially the same but anything non TV reception related, we were suddenly paying about 300% more.

I am not defending the cable companies but merely stating what is going to happen in the REAL WORLD. You will not be able to cherry pick 10 channels for $2 a month. You will still get the home shopping channels (As a special thank you, QVC & HSN Free FOREVER!) or the non-English channels that are MUST CARRY local channels.

What will happen is if you want ESPN, MTV, VH1, Comedy Central, E!, Bravo, A&E, etc ... you will pay around $10 to get each channel or you can pay about $15 to get their 10 "sister" channels. We will be right back where we started but the cable companies will make even more money. Want to make a change - that's $10 EVERY TIME. To prevent you dropping out after football season, ESPN will sell you a year starting in August for a set fee or it's $49.99 a month if you sign up in September through December.

Part of the reason the censorsorship groups want this is that they cannot control their own kids and want us to do so and they just think they should speak for us. Just because they don't want to watch certain channels, they want no one else to ... never mind that some people don't want religious channels or preachers who advocate assasinations - that's the braod spectrum of America but of course, anything they don't want - they don't want for the rest of us.

America is the ONLY country where there are 300+ channels. Let's not go and ruin that just because some people don't know how to appreciate other channels. There is literally something intersting, educational, and fun on EVERY channel. You should start watching the other channels and exploring instead of tightly just doing one channel over & over. When you get a newspaper or magazine, you will get articles or sections you do not read - should be getting your money back for those pages you don't read also?

Ala Carte will not work on many levels from the reality of the details (you will pay more for less - mark my words) to it's just a ploy by censorship mavens to the Bell companies trying to mess with cable companies to messing with the only system and country with 300+ channels.

Do NOT let the FCC make your decisions for you.

Posted at 12:00 PM Read More

Tue - March 23, 2004

MS DRM in a Brick Form - Who Exactly Ordered That?

Suddenly the new Microsoft Portable Media Center Player is an ‘ipod killer.’ And the Segway is the death of walking.

The logic of a portable Mp3 player (ipod or otherwise) is evident. People like to listen to music while doing other things in their daily lives EVERYDAY. Mp3's are simply an extension of the trend started with car radios-boomboxes-walkman’s-portable CD players-Mp3 players are simply the technological advancement of that.

Moreover - music is for the most part – short and does not require 90-100% of your attention. Listening to music allows you to interact in other ways (walking around, reading, driving, even working in many cases, etc ...) and holds up well repetitive-wise.

Video is pretty much NONE of those things especially when the screen is tiny. You need to devote 100% of your attention to get any benefit.

So how often in EVERYDAY circumstances do you say - damn, I could be watching some TV now and pretty much STOP whatever else I’m doing?
Sound like something you can do while driving or working?

And really, how often can you watch that episode of SEINFELD in a row? There are some songs that hold up with 3-4 listens one right the other - any TV show or movie?

That leads to the logistics of it. To rip an CD album to Mp3 takes maybe a couple minutes and to load to an ipod a few seconds or maybe 20 minutes to load thousands of tracks.

How long is it going to take to convert my video to WMA with DRM? Hours? Even if by some miracle, they can encode in real time, that’s 25 minutes for every sitcom (minus commercials). Of course, movies are probably what people want to load most – well, you can’t rip DVD’s – not legally and what you do rip and encode into the player can NOT be removed or played elsewhere.

So, who is really going to take the time to convert 170 hours of TV/movies to WMP DRM that can’t be played anywhere else?

(And that's presuming you don't want to swap anything out).

Will MS sell some of the devices? Sure. Take the number of people who have bought Tablet PC’s and divide by 75%. Real journalists should look to see what numbers MS said would sell by now and what numbers were actually sold. So much for MS vaulted marketing. Sure, it’s the worldwide economy slump – that’s why people aren’t buying tablet Pc’s – it must be true – it’s in a Microsoft press release.

Does the media or analyst just print the PR Word document as their feature story because they’re unwilling to understand the situation or simply because it’s all just too much technology for them to understand?

Is this a mass-market product? No. Do the vast majority of portable Mp3 player users want a much heavier device at a much greater cost just because it has it a color screen? Why switch?

Do portable DVD users want a heavier device that cannot play ANY DVD’s?

Do parents who have car DVD players want to switch to something that requires to illegally encode DVD’s or should they save the $700 and just buy a bigger DVD holder? (not to mention the time spent encoding).

Do savvy/hacker/cracker users who are illegally encoding DVD’s to DiVX or QT and watching them on laptops or their portable Archos want to switch to a device that requires everything have MS’s DRM before you can transfer it over and never be able to transfer it back off? Yeah, right.

So, what does that leave MS? A couple thousand people who want a portable device who are willing to put up with the weight – maybe all their flights are 15 hours long and they have time to watch ten or 15 movies and don’t want to bother to carry around DVD’s ... or maybe night watchmen who can afford $700 for a TV-like device ... but that’s it.

But why did MS even built such a thing?

A) When in doubt – add features. They could not come out with an Mp3 player without looking like they were so-3 generations ago so what better than just to throw in every feature under the moon. It’s just brochureware – it’s an ipod killer because it can video, music, photos – all in color! The same brochureware is how they won the battle of Lotus123 versus Excel so old habits die-hard. When in doubt, just add more checkmarks to the brochure grid.
B) Because the goal of MS is now to figure how to sell you everything that gets them a constant revenue stream (you just have to read the memo from Bill Gates to Warren Buffet) ... and because they have $60 billion in the bank, they can wait almost anyone out. If they can get a device out there that is WMP and convince movie studios and record labels that they have consumers, then the studios will have to release movies in WMP only. All they want is $1 from everyone on the planet on a monthly basis (for now) – eventually, $1 every other week ...

And because MS has to play nice, they can’t release a machine without DRM – and that’s the final straw that kills that kills this camel (literally in a committee-design-joke and metaphorical sense).

It’s a brick with a lock.

Who ordered that?

Posted at 12:04 AM Read More