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Many years ago the house I was living in had cable (foxtel, Australia) connected, but the residents who had paid for it had moved out and were no longer paying

Many years ago the house I was living in had cable (foxtel, Australia) connected, but the residents who had paid for it had moved out and were no longer paying for it, therefore it sat as an unused plug in the wall for a good couple of years. I got one of those old "TV cards", so you could hook up an antenna and have TV on your computer (yeah, this was before "internet" was better than TV for moving picture entertainment) and had heard about software that could decode foxtel signal. After a lot of futzing about, and failed attempts, it started working well enough to be watchable - although most of the content was shit, it was foxtel after all. My point being - the signal is sent through the cable either way. Whether there's a device at the end of it or not. Equipment, hardware, personnel, power was provided by me to get it working. The previous residents paid for the connection of the cable itself. The data is all sent down the pipe whether or not someone was watching it at the far end, just due to the nature of cable at the time. I get your electricity analogy though, but I really don't know if it applies to the data being sent down the cable. I doubt it cost "faceless them" any extra as my understanding was that the cable was a shared signal by the street (or some other small-ish communal size). Once I got it working, I mostly lost interest :)

b112 3y ago
A good story, the only interest was in the hack. A lot of older sci-fi books, eg Heinlein, had hacker types discovering some highly profitable thing, but being uninterested except it was fun to figure out. This was often to the mystification of "normal" people, who would plead for them to work the idea into profit. Often they were tricked into making the process profitable, by being told how impossible it was. I responded in more ontopic detail in another comment.
- seabass-labrax 3y ago
  Would you please inform me, if you can, as to which books are you thinking of? I have read a few Heinlein novels but would like to know if I'm missing a classic in your eyes.
  - b112 3y ago
    I can't think of specific ones, I think I've read everything he wrote. But I just recall small exchanges, im many of his works, where Long or another character, would notice some scientist archetype come up with an idea, yet not care one wit about exploiting it. It was all about the puzzle of discovery, and Long/etc was often amused.

b112 3y ago

A good story, the only interest was in the hack. A lot of older sci-fi books, eg Heinlein, had hacker types discovering some highly profitable thing, but being uninterested except it was fun to figure out. This was often to the mystification of "normal" people, who would plead for them to work the idea into profit. Often they were tricked into making the process profitable, by being told how impossible it was. I responded in more ontopic detail in another comment.

seabass-labrax 3y ago
Would you please inform me, if you can, as to which books are you thinking of? I have read a few Heinlein novels but would like to know if I'm missing a classic in your eyes.
- b112 3y ago
  I can't think of specific ones, I think I've read everything he wrote. But I just recall small exchanges, im many of his works, where Long or another character, would notice some scientist archetype come up with an idea, yet not care one wit about exploiting it. It was all about the puzzle of discovery, and Long/etc was often amused.