I got a Samsung Galaxy Tab A from Costco for $220...10" (9.7?) screen, decent processor...not totally vanilla Android but close. I've been very pleased with it.
I don't see why so few people seem to understand that Amazon's key feature is as a payment processing facilitator. People don't shop at Amazon because they have the best deals or have the best logistics or whatever. They shop at Amazon because they can generally find almost anything on there and have it on its way within seconds. People use Amazon because they don't have to think about it. They don't have to get out their credit card or even think about credit/debit cards. It's so damn simple I really don't see how anyone else is really going to compete. The absolute number one reason I don't go to Amazon competitors to buy things is having to deal with payment processing (from a customer standpoint). The only time I don't use Amazon is that rare occasion when Amazon (or one of their "partners") doesn't have what I want.
I had prime for a couple of years specifically for the video. I probably didn't get hooked on the shipping for a good two years after I first signed up. I don't have cable and I find Netflix gets stale if it's all one uses. There have been precious few competitors to Netflix and I'll be damned if I'm going to pay Hulu and watch their commercials. Network TV pretty much sucks anyway (imo) so I don't really see any use for Hulu.
I think it's more about the commoditization of employees than anything else. Big companies seem to have trended to thinking of and treating their employees as commodities. A piece of furniture that can be swapped in and out at will. I don't know that it's willful discrimination against older workers so much as willful disregard as to whether or not they're getting the best employees.
A company like Facebook probably doesn't really care that they get the absolute best employee for 90% of their open positions. They go with the group that's going to get them the largest number of acceptable hits so they don't need to work as hard to filter out candidates that they're not interested in.
This is all speculation on my part, I have nothing to cite in this regard. I think it's fairly obvious that if Facebook filters out over-40's for these 90% of jobs right up front they will have less work to do gleaning the wheat from the chaff.
For the remaining 10% of high-productivity/high-value workers they probably wouldn't use such pre-screening and do more targeted recruiting. Again, this is all a guess on my part, but it makes sense. Not saying it should be legal, but I can understand why they do it.
I think the link would be more useful if it weren't done in an explain-like-i'm-five manner. Some of it does seem to apply, especially if you look at the things on the list:
section 1028 (relating to fraud and related activity in connection with identification documents)
...and I could go on but meh. I believe that the link started out with "complicated conspiracy" law to describe what RICO is...isn't that exactly what I was accusing Comcast of?
I understand that RICO is an extremely difficult case to make, and it probably should be so, so that the law isn't used flippantly. But I also think we need much more powerful tools to control these corrupt monopolies that control large parts of this country's infrastructure, especially as they seem hell bent on controlling even more of it. IF Verizon is found to have controlled a massive identity theft racket to bombard the FCC with fake comments, it seems to me that RICO is the exact tool to use.
What's the possibility of using the RICO statutes against these companies? I'm thinking of Comcast in particular. Recently they made a "mistake" by adding services to my cable bill that I had not ordered. They very quickly erased the charges when I complained, but if their excuse for why they were there in the first place was valid, they should have fought to keep the money if they were in the right. I believe this was done to keep anyone from complaining too vociferously. I believe this behavior is consistent and intentional.
Their behavior and attitude towards employees (anecdotal, I'll admit) seems very much like that of Bank of America concerning their recent accounts fraud scandal. I believe that Comcast either intentionally puts these charges on customers bills hoping they will not notice, especially on autopayment enabled accounts, or they pressure their employees so greatly that the employees are doing this themselves, like Bank of American claimed their employees did.
I think this type of pressure put on employees is known to Comcast executives to cause fraudulent charges and is the desired result of said pressure. The executives can then claim they knew nothing of said behavior and deny any wrongdoing. I understand such a case would be difficult to make, but I think many companies behave in this way and we need to start using bigger hammers to bring them back within the law.
I think RICO should also be applied to banks that repeatedly break the law, but that's perhaps another story.