Ennui Blog

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There was an article in the New York Times recently about the cable companies. According to a study that was done, cable prices have risen 77 percent since 1996. That’s insane to me.

Most cable packages are high priced and include more channels than a person can ever watch, and the channels usually have nothing even on them. The concept that people should pay for television, then be bombarded with advertisements has always flummoxed me.

If you’re paying more than $100 a month for TV, why should you endure commercials? Thanks to the wonders of Tivo and other similar DVR’s, commercials can easily be zapped out of your life.

The cable companies take over wherever they go. Most communities only have access to one cable company thanks to monopolistic powers granted to them by local authorities. Sure, satelltie TV can compete on price, but it’s been my experience that the prices are just about the same, the selection is the same and you have the unreliability of a satellite signal.

One of the best cable products that has been developed is cable internet access. Anyone who has ever had it, can atest to how great it is. Light years ahead of DSL. I live in the Chicagoland area and it has pretty much been taken over by Comcast. You can’t walk two steps without running into a Comcast ad.

What amazes me is that they feel the need to even advertise. They are the only option (RCN is small potatoes compared to Comcast and is not available everywhere) and they can undercut any competition, while raising prices further down the line. Not a week goes by that I don’t get a gigantic cardboard mailer in the mail advertising Comcast’s latest gimick. You could tile the floor with them. Most people just throw them on the ground. It’s insane. If Comcast didn’t spend so much trying to advertise, they could probably lower their prices.

The big cable companies are also strangling free speech. Being owned by the big media conglomerates keeps out alternative new media that the market is thirsty for. There’s a huge demand for the BBC 24 hour news network on American Cable, yet no cable service will carry it because it would step on the toes of their cronies in big media, who wouldn’t like the competition that commerical free, unbiased news would bring.

I’ll be moving soon and leaving the cocoon of the free WiFi provided by my apratment building. I’ll have no choice but to go with Comcast. I do it with a heavy heart. But hey, at least I’ll have Comcast OnDemand, which is actually a decent product.

I dream of the day that you only have to buy the channels that you actually want and enjoy cable without having to fork out a car payment a month just to watch TV and use the internet.

Oh well. Feed the beast.

It’s that time of year again. There’s a major Apple based conference coming up with a scheduled keynote by our God, Steve Jobs, and the geek media is frothing at the mouth of the possibilities it could hold.

In the past, Apple was pretty reliable about announcing new and awesome products at it’s major events. Lately, however, the groundbreaking product announcements haven’t really been happening like they used to. The last major, earth shattering product announcement was the iPhone and that was nearly 18 months ago.

So, with that fact in mind, perhaps that’s why the rumor sites are going crazy with speculation. It’s been so long since a major product announcement, there’s gotta be something up their sleeve. What’s Steve Jobs been up to?

We’re all hoping that it will be more than another version of the iPhone. That in itself would not be a major, groundbreaking announcement. Woohoo a 3G iPhone. Ok great, but it’s still the iPhone (I won’t be buying one).

There’s rumors circulating of an Apple Tablet PC based on the iPhone OS. This would be pretty cool, but honestly the idea of it doesn’t really impress me that much. It’s not something I would stand in line overnight for. Granted, Steve hasn’t demonstrated it yet.

This begs the question. Apple has conquered most avenues of revenue. They’re the standard for music players, standard for high end computers, standard for high end laptops, they’ve tackled TV, online music and movie sales, the list goes on and on. What could they possibly do next? Can Apple out Apple itself? Should we even expect it to at this point?

I hope this isn’t the beginning of a decline. Really, we should be content with every product Apple has given us. Why do we always need something MORE? Always need something better?

I’m not going to get very excited about WWDC. Of course, I’ll monitor the live feeds on the major Mac new sites, but I don’t expect anything earth shattering to come out of WWDC. I expect a new 3G iPhone, maybe a Mac tablet and maybe a preview of the next version of OS X.

We shall see. If anything, Steve Jobs is great a surprising us all.

Payday advance places get a pretty bad rap in the media these days. People accuse them of being loan sharks that latch onto the poor and vulnerable and never let go. And in some cases that’s entirely the case.

We mustn’t forget that people know what they’re signing up for. If you have half a brain, you can successfully use a Payday advance without facing the stiff penalties that seem to trap other people.

The purpose of a Payday loan is to provide money sooner than when you expect to get it. This can be caused by many factors. A major one is Rent being due between pay periods. You can go down to the Payday Loan place, write them a post dated check (plus their fee), they give you the money and cash the check on the agreed upon date. It’s simple, you got the money in anticipation of your payday, so the check should have no problem clearing.

This is where most people fail. They fall into the ‘ethereal money’ trap. Money becomes an abstract concept where they lose it’s true value and seem to think they now have a lot of money because they have a Payday loan. They forget that they got it for a purpose. They spend the loan then spend their paycheck, check bounces, fees build up. Some people get Payday loan after Payday loan and get in over their heads.

But I digress. People can use them responsibility. I have a friend who was way behind on his rent and some other bills because his wife has some medical problems and was out of work for a couple months. They got in over their heads. Slowly though, they are working their heads back above water. But they needed cash, quickly so they didn’t get evicted.

So, he did some research and got a short term loan. They loaned him the money he needed, they take a chunk of his paycheck for 8 pay periods. His pay is always the same, so he knew he could swing it. The interest rate isn’t even worth mentioning, a loan shark would be cheaper. However, if he simply pays it off completely when he gets ahead, he won’t have to pay any interest.

By no means did he just come into ‘free money.’ Managed properly, the loan will help them get back on their feet and start to get somewhere with their lives.

All it takes is drive. You have to not want to be controlled by banks and lenders. You have to want control over your life and have the intelligence to understand how to have control over your own life. Payday advances and short term loans can work and be useful tools, as long as you understand what you’re getting into.

The problem is that most people don’t. God help them.

Last year, Mac geeks around the world heralded the coming of the Jesus Phone. It was the great phone, music player, PIM, web browser and automatic ass wiper to ever be invented. We gobbled it up like crack addicts who screw to earn the next hit. Disclaimer, Yes, I have an iPhone, yes I love it. However…

iPhone lovers have been nagged by the possibility that their great phone would COULD HAVE been better. Everytime it takes 5 minutes for Digg to load on Edge, you have to wonder, there has to be a better way and surely, Steve Jobs is thinking of it. Well, the savior everyone is anticipating is a 3G Enabled iPhone.

They possibility of it’s release next month is being treated as the Second Coming of the Jesus Phone.

What the hell is 3G and why is it going to be better? Is it actually better?

I remember in the early naughties, 3G was touted at the future of cell phones. I salivated at Japanese phones and European phones that supposedly had this ‘broadband’ capability. Steaming video would be possible they said! Well, typical of American cell carriers, they couldn’t get their crap together. So, they came up with 2.5G, which became known as Edge. It gave moderately fast data speeds, if by fast you mean compariable to logging onto Prodigy at 2400 BPS. 

Over the past couple years, the cell carriers, flying jumping on the bandwagon, decided to roll out 3G networks. Coverage is spotty. Most major cities are covered but the coverage is no where near as great as Edge. The point I’d like to make is that 3G is old. There is already a 4G elsewhere in the world.It promises faster speeds than Edge, and it may deliver that but there are disadvantes as well, such as:

• Spotty Coverage
• Bandwidth and Latency are different concepts - just because the speed is fast doesn’t mean packets of data will actually move faster
• High Bandwidth = greater data errors
• Phone software doesn’t run as fast as a ‘fast connection’ does
• 3G drains batteries

Despite all these disadvantages, iPhone lovers have been clamoring for an iPhone based on outdated 3G technology. And frankly, Digg loading in 2 minutes rather than five would be great. Battery technology hasn’t changed much in the last year since the first iPhone came out, so I doubt they’ve really fixed the battery drain issue, so likely we’ll have a bigger and heavier battery in the new 3G iPhone.

I’ve been pretty happy with my iPhone over the past year. Yeah, it’d be great to have stuff load faster. But it’s not a reason to plink down another $500 for another one. Apple would have to enable it to make me breakfast, then I’d consider.

The iPhone second coming will undoubtedly come soon and it will convert the holdouts who’ve been waiting for 3G. Will current iPhone users switch in droves? I don’t think so. Besides, the minute it comes out, they’ll be demanding 4G from Steve Jobs.

One thing is for sure, we Apple nuts are never truly satisfied.

I’m playing the waiting game right now. I feel like I’m out on the prowl to get laid. I’m waiting for Googlebot to visit all my sites. I’ve done everything on my end, combed my hair, put on some nice smelling cologne and ate a breathment. Now she just needs to come to me. I’ve done everything she asked me to do in order for her to come by.

I hope it’s soon. I need the love of Google in order for all my little projects to be a success.

Googlebot is a harsh mistress, she controls the destinies of billions of web pages. Will she deem my content worthy? Will she award me page ranking?

Waiting… Waiting… Google please come soon. I don’t know how long I can stand to sit on this existential bench waiting for you.