Catapulting the Propaganda on cable teevee, and Why Cable Internet Is Evil

As all five of my readers know, I absolutely HATE television. I do not, and will not own a TV set. While my new roomie, bless his lupine soul, has satellite TV at our place and I had Comcast cable TV at my last place, I refuse to buy a set.

Speaking of cable internet versus DSL: AT&T Yahoo! consumer aDSL beats the holy snot out of Comcast cable for internet access. While cable IS faster and a bit simpler to set up (your computer is configured by default for cable over ethernet, DSL configuration is a bit harder), aDSL is a LOT more reliable. Back when I lived near CSUS, with both my first set o' roommates and my own place, the DSL went down a total of twice, and a power-cycle of the CPE and router fixed the issues. World of Warcraft latency was usually under 25 milliseconds -- not too bad at all. When I lived with Evil Otto, thanks to the wonders of cable "bandwidth sharing" the connect speed would drop to the point where WoW latency exceeded 1500 milliseconds; web pages and email took forever and a day to download (so I knew the game issues were not Blizzard's servers).

Not to mention what Comcast is doing to Bittorrent users . . . never has a problem with Bittorrent when connected to SBC / AT&T Yahoo! consumer aDSL. Of course, if Comcast hoses Bittorrent, it will also hose World of Warcraft updates because these updates are distributed using the Bittorrent protocol.

Moral of the story: do not get cable internet. Ever.

Back to the evil that is cable teevee. Even though I don't own a set, many public places where I spend time have sets tuned to Fox News, CNN or ESPN. It is very easy for me to ignore Faux News and Conservative News Network because of the sheer idiocy the hosts. For some reason ESPN is harder to ignore but the sheer inanity of big-time sports -- not to mention how addicted certain parents of mine are to teevee sports -- makes me more sensitive to it.

Anyway, I saw an ad the last time I was exposed to the toxin that is ESPN that made me go "WTF?" The spot was a generic VISA card ad. What made me go "WTF" was not the usual conspicuous consumption / debt overload stuff that makes me want to puke. The ad is basically a parade of consumers buying stuff they don't need with their VISA cards . . . then one of the parade of customers offered Federal Reserve Notes -- cash -- instead of a VISA card to pay for his purchases. From the look on the clerk's face you'd think the customer offered to pay for his crap with a used condom. Two thoughts went through my head at this point" one was "Why is cash treated like a leprous dead badger with AIDS?" When last I looked at a dollar bill, it said "valid for all debts, public and private." Just what is the Wall Street / Madison Avenue politico-economic axis of evil REALLY trying to say? To me it sounds like "Cash (and by extension, the government that issues it) cannot be trusted but VISA (and by extension the private sector) can be."

Of course, from the standpoint of someone who has a massive distrust for the current regime of corporate overlords in DC, you have to wonder. Is government issue cash money on the way out the door? Perhaps it is. Thanks to the "War on Drugs," cash transactions of more than $10k must be reported to the IRS to ferret out money laundries. Then there is the terrorism angle . . . I'm sure that dealers in weapons, explosives and other things needed for terror operations do not take credit cards (then again, the 9/11 guys got the job done with box cutters . . . and Home Depot takes plastic . . .).

Anyway, there is a long history of private currencies in the US -- Hmmm...something to think about.