FCC Opens Investigation Into Pricing at Cable Companies — Including BendBroadband

This was in the Bulletin’s business section, but I couldn’t find it on their web site (I think it was a wire story — don’t have the paper in front of me), so you’re getting the CBSNews link:

The Federal Communications Commission has opened an investigation into the pricing policies of major cable operators and Verizon Communications Inc.

The agency wants to ensure the companies’ customers are getting treated fairly, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin in an interview with The Associated Press.

“I’m certainly concerned with the increasing cable prices that consumers are facing,” Martin said. “They are getting less and being charged the same or more.”

The FCC wrote on Oct. 30 to cable operators including Comcast Corp., Time Warner Cable Inc., Cox Communications Inc., Charter Communications Inc., Cablevision Systems Corp., Bright House Networks, Suddenlink Communications, Bend Cable Communications, GCI Company, Harron Entertainment and RCN Corp.

Naturally, it’s a pretty one-sided story as there’s not a single comment from the cable operators in the story, just quotes from Martin of the FCC and from the Consumer’s Union. The FCC also is basically looking at the cable companies that cover the bulk majority of the US, so it’s not like they’re picking on individual companies here.

So I’d like to hear what the cable operators have to say. I know BendBroadband (aka Bend Cable) folks read this site: Care to comment?

On a related note, AT&T is going to start capping bandwidth, much like BBB already does.

November 5, 2008

Post Election Wrap Up

You can read the local results here, but basically, quite are few groups aren’t getting any money from bond measures. La Pine supported their own with the Park and Rec and RFPD bonds, but Bend, Redmond and County voters all turned down any bill that would even remotely cost them money. The Bend Area Transit and COCC bonds failed, the transient room tax failed, Mike Daly got the axe, many of the Sizemore measures failed (can’t remember exactly which ones were his), Smith/Merkely is still too close to call (Jack thinks Merkely’s going to pull it out), and we don’t have a white guy for President for the first time ever. I don’t pay attention to politics a ton, so feel free to share opinions/reactions below.

November 5, 2008

The Snow Is Falling

There is a good chunk of snow on the highway and around my office. I’ll be getting my snow tires on my car tomorrow so I can hopefully have a bit of help when the out-of-town crazy drivers try to run me off the road in their four-wheel-drive.

In the meanwhile, here’s a fun and simple little winter-themed game. I got 53970 after a few attempts — how’d you do?

November 4, 2008

What Happens If There’s A 269-269 Tie?

If the electoral college were to tie, things start to get confusing.

Electoral-Vote.com has things as a pretty good landslide for Obama today, anything can, and usually does happen. Like four years ago, Kerry looked like he might win the day before the election, so take it all with a grain of salt.

Just get out and vote. Ballot drop sites are here. And laugh at this little image that Yoleen sent my direction:

November 4, 2008

Why the Electoral College Is Flawed

This is sad to me…

In the unlikely event that all 213 million eligible voters cast ballots, either John McCain or Barack Obama could win enough states to capture the White House with only 47.8 million strategically located votes. The presidency could be won with just 22 percent of the electorate’s support, only 16 percent of the entire population’s.

Just tell me when it’s all over.

November 3, 2008

How Strong Is Your Password?

I like to use strong passwords for obvious reasons, and according to this site, using a brute force attack (as a dictionary attack would be useless), the password I use to edit this site would take 6,758,137,437,016,672,809,517,056 hours or 281,589,059,875,694,666,842,112 days to crack. My root server password? Quite a bit longer.

November 3, 2008

How I Plan To Vote Next Time

I’ve already turned in my ballot (or at least filled it out — will drop it off tomorrow), but I’m thinking I’m going to change my voting thought process during the next election. Next time around, I’m going to keep a tally on which ballot measures or political offices put the most crap in my inbox, my mailbox, or on my doorstep, and the group or candidate that badgers me the least will get my vote. I came home on Saturday after being gone most of the day to find my mailbox filled and door hangers all over my porch and front yard. I can only imagine the countless trees that were killed during this election cycle trying to convince me that a certain measure or candidate is good or evil.

I don’t know about you, but whatever the outcome, I’ll just be happy when this election is over.

November 2, 2008

More Time Killers

Since co-workers are getting annoyed that they have nothing to do and that I’m not posting enough games, here are a few more (feel free to share more in the comments):

  • Splitter, a fun, but frustrating little physics puzzle game (there’s a walk-through here, should you need it).
  • Shift 3, a sequel to a platformer I posted a while back (thanks Peter for the link).
  • rLax, a fast-paced click-fest.
  • The Eyeballing Game — how close can you get to making true shapes?
  • Commando, for you folks who feel like spending your morning defending the Allies from the scourge of Europe.
  • Boombot 2, because dropping bombs to shoot a little robot around the screen is fun (walkthru).

November 2, 2008

Happy Halloween

Everybody who has read this site for long knows how much I love Halloween </sarcasm>. Just the same, thanks to Cheryl, here’s something entertaining for you.

Edit: Fixed the 2nd link — wouldn’t want anybody to miss out on my labels.

October 30, 2008

Time Killer For The Day

The physics-based Assembler will kill off your day if you’re not careful. I got to level 17 before I had to quit.

October 30, 2008