RickMcCharles.com

In Las Vegas:

… (Dish Network) bundled with our phone and internet has been costing us around $170 per month, for terribly slow internet. Of those 300 channels, we use perhaps a maximum of 15 of them. …

Yeesh. Why hasn’t traditional TV improved options for consumers?

She dropped Dish and got this digital video player, instead, the ROKU.

Channels available via the internet include Hulu Plus (U.S. only), Netflix (U.S. and Canada only), Disney.com, TWiT.tv and dozens more.

Dana:

… made the leap and bought a ROKU. It’s brilliant.

… In addition, switching to a better internet provider will allow for high speed everything. So it’s official – done with traditional cable/satellite TV.

Tweet the Streets – Quit TV! You can Too!

Tweet the Streets, by the way, is news from the people, for the people. Bloggers working together to create something like an online news magazine. Dana has volunteered to write for them, when inspiration strikes.

Will Roberts is one of the founders, a friend of Dana’s.

related – TechCrunch – The Four Big Steps To Cutting The Cord

The most popular Geekcast is TWIT, This Week in Technology.

I’ve actually become less attached to that show, preferring MacBreak Weekly and This Week in Google as audiocasts from the same network.

But the most recent episode of TWIT was excellent: There’s An App in my Lap

Leo Laporte, Om Malik, Robert Scoble, and John C. Dvorak

The first 3 are respected tech gurus. Dvorak’s there as a comic, contrary counterpoint. Here’s their advice:

• iPhone 4S is a winner — first as a replacement for you point-and-shoot camera. Still a great phone for regular folks. Tech geeks will be happier with the high end Androids. Look for the Nexus Prime with Ice Cream Sandwich to be launched next week.

• iPhone 4S Siri voice controller is “the future”, but works inconsistently so far

• Kindle Fire (coming Nov. 15th) likely to be a loser, a poor competitor to the iPad. Instead get a $79 Kindle e-reader, the low end. A perfect Christmas present.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

It costs $109 if you want NO ADS on that same cheap device. … I’m not sure how well it works around the world. Check first before you buy one if you’re not living in the States.

• huge fight looming between Facebook & Google. Many already spend most of their time in Facebook … when they can SEARCH and WATCH TV / Movies in Facebook, they’ll never need to leave.

• the future of watching what you want, when you want, online is still up in the air. Another looming battle.

• Microsoft bought Skype. The gurus have no confidence that’s going to work. Competitors could beat Skype.

I filled a Propane tank at a Petrocan in North Vancouver. Check out the technology used to weigh my tank.

Do you trust your valuables to those hotel safes?

Best watch this video.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

(via Gadling)

Although Verizon paid less in income taxes than its average customer paid in phone bills, the company broke no laws. America’s corporations spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year on lobbying, and they get a good return on their investments. They get tax loopholes — and plenty of them. Last year, Verizon shelled out $16.8 million to lobby federal lawmakers and another $18.7 million on contributions into the campaign accounts of their favorite federal politicians.

Obviously Verizon needs to charge customers MORE … so they can pay some corporate tax.

Read more on Consumerist.

I know that the USA cannot tax itself to fiscal balance. But it’s stupid to perpetuate a system where “25 out of the country’s 100 highest-paid chief executives actually earned more in 2010 than their companies paid out in corporate income taxes”.

Corporations and rich individuals should actually pay more tax.

“60 Minutes” … weighed in with a thoughtful segment on the mortgage mess involving faulty or fraudulent mortgage paperwork. (Deal Journal readers previously have dubbed this the “Fauxclosure Crisis.”)

The news magazine program went in search of “Linda Green,” a woman in rural Georgia whose signature was on thousands on mortgage documents as a vice president of more than 20 banks — at the same time. Linda Green told “60 Minutes” she had never been a bank vice president, but was dubbed one by an alleged mortgage sweatshop because her name was short and easy to spell.

Click HERE to watch the “60 Minutes” segment. …

WSJ

Everybody loves a good pie in the face.

I’m not sure even Gandhi could suppress a giggle.

Jonnie Marbles: Why I foam-pied Rupert Murdoch:

… It’s not difficult to find reasons to dislike Rupert Murdoch. His reach is one of the most insidious and toxic forces in global politics today. The phone-hacking scandal, despicable though it is, barely scratches the surface of the damage done by News International. It is a media empire built on deceit and bile, that trades vitriol for debate and thinks nothing of greasing the wheels of power until they turn in its favour. What’s more, no matter what the grievances he wreaks on those he has never met, his power and money keep him forever safely out of their reach. …

read more – Guardian

I love symbolic actions, even mildly violent ones.

The average person doesn’t know Rupert Murdoch, Chairman and CEO of News Corporation, the world’s second-largest media conglomerate.

His biographer, Michael Wolff, knows Murdoch – Ad Week – How Bad Is News Corp.?

… He is ranked 13th most powerful person in the world in the 2010 Forbes’ The World’s Most Powerful People list. With a personal net worth of US$7.6 billion, he was ranked 117th wealthiest person in the world in March 2011. …

My most trusted source on media, On The Media, thinks he and his son will be going down for the phone hacking scandal.

Not for the scummy and illegal practices, but for the cover-up.

Glad to hear it. His Fox News is the source of more bias, misinformation and downright lies than any other major media.

He bought the Wall Street Journal in 2007, once a bastion of news excellence. They’ve been slammed for jumping on the anti-Muslim bandwagon as quickly as tabloids.

In reaction to the massacre in Norway by Anders Behring Breivik, a Christian extremist:

… Many news organizations leapt to the conclusion that the bombing and shootings were the work of a jihadist terrorist group. The Wall Street Journal laid the blame in that direction in an editorial and then scrubbed away the evidence after it turned out to be incorrect. Rupert Murdoch’s The Sun went with the headline, “Al Qaeda Massacre: Norway’s 9/11.” …

The WSJ tried to cover-up the error rather than make a correction, standard practice.

If you like bashing Murdoch and Fox as I do, read on – Guardian – Even Rupert Murdoch is afraid of Roger Ailes, the paranoid boss of Fox News.


… apparently Murdoch has nothing to do with Fox News, so long as it keeps bringing in massive profits.

_____

On the bright side, the much maligned NY Times paywall seems to be working. About 250,000 subscribers are paying up to $500/yr. It may yet be a business model that can keep newspapers printed on dead trees.

Now The Onion is testing a paywall. Hmmm …

Traveling much, I come across hundreds of different toilets and showers every year.

Why are they so crappy?

Showers are one of the few things essential to my life. Why are HOT and COLD reversed so often? (When the hot water tap works, the flow and temperature is often unreliable.)

Is this 1911 … or 2011?

Couldn’t somebody get rich inventing a voice controlled, temperature-accurate shower?

In 1959, Heinlein published Starship Troopers. Military life was rough … but at least they had individually programmed shower routines.

I have seen a few good showers. The best of the best (surprisingly) were in campgrounds.

Due to remote location, campgrounds often must hack their plumbing, inventing unique solutions. Once in a while, that solution turns out better than the cheapest, minimum-code-allowable versions we get in cities.

This toilet in a Swiss campground worked perfectly.

A commercial product, it’s as steep and deep as any I’ve ever seen. No splashback. No need to brush.

It had an old style individual water tank mounted high.

Gravity does all the work, a simple mechanism. The force of water falling from just a few feet was tremendously effective in flushing.

I’m no plumber. (My IQ is higher than the maximum allowed.) But I’ve been studying plumbing since visiting Gandhi’s toilet research centre in the 1990s.

Why is toilet technology evolving so slowly?

Any tips for booking a flight with Air Canada AEROPLAN points ?? …

I tried booking a trip to Asia online via the link above.

First attempt was 75,000 points AND $778.68 CAD taxes. … I’m guessing that’s normal for Aeroplan.

But what’s the advantage of using my points again? … I might find a NEW return flight for $778.68.

Once I use these points, I’ll completely abandon frequent flyer programs. I don’t use any one airline enough to make it worthwhile.

In expensive Canada, about $0.07 / GB.

What does your ISP or Phone company charge YOU / GB?

In Canada, folks are charged as much as $10 per gigabyte. (Companies try to convince that there is a shortage of electrons traveling over wires or fibre. That’s a lie.)

Once the wires are in place, the cost for extra electrons is almost zero.

related – CNet – Are you overpaying for smartphone data?