ala carte pricing the Time Warner Cable way

Excerpt: Time-Warner CEO Richard Parsons has been quoted as saying a la carte cable pricing [...] is a bad idea for consumers. Yet, oddly, when Time-Warner Cable of NYC has a tiff with CableVision they can magically pull stations on/off the air. Now, I know that that's comparing apples and oranges, they just yanked the feed for all subscribers at the head end. However, last year when...

Posted: August 02, 2004

Cable TV: Programming that continues to diminish in value

Excerpt: I am writing a separate post about ala carte Cable TV pricing which was kicked off by this message from Time Warner Cable of New York City: To our customers: Cablevision has forced the removal of MSG, Fox Sports New York, and the Metro channels from your channel lineup. Cablevision has refused to sign an extension allowing us to continue carrying these channels while we work...

Posted: August 02, 2004

Hedging real-world money online

Excerpt: I found Gaming Open Market via buy sell buy sell from Ben Hammersley's Dangerous Precedent and am now wondering how long it will be before you see an EverQuest hedge fund. See, when you play online games you can earn various rewards, usually denominated in some sort of virtual currency. In the game world you can trade currency for items and vice versa. Someone, somewhere got...

Posted: July 02, 2004

Early Termination

Excerpt: So, last night I was reviewing various bills which have come in for my mother's estate since January and came across the Verizon Wireless bill. My brother had cancelled the service last month telling VZ that she'd passed away. As a result of cancelling the service before the end of the contract period, Verizon Wireless assessed a $175 early termination fee, less a refund of the...

Posted: February 12, 2004