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We don't care. We don't have to. We're the Phone Company.

'fraid so, sarcasm truly is dead.. killed by political correctness. Can't run this on the TV anymore, in fact youtube pulled it on "copyright" grounds. These are dark times.

"offering unlimited free voice calls forever to anyone who signs up for its services"

A promise that cannot be kept.

Maybe he made the promise at Chuck E. Cheese?

Enjoy your life in the data ghetto that is the USA. If you want to talk to anyone from the other 95.6% of the world then it's time to get that 8th grade education you should already have.

according to my hypermetric measurement system (all rights reserved) the 95.6% is OK, but you need to refer to an educational level of 6.67 decigradeschool units. http://snltranscripts.jt.org/7...

Yes, it's Happy Fun Board! The toy sensation that's sweeping the nation! Only 14.95 at participating stores! Get one today!

Warning: Pregnant women, the elderly, and children under 10 should avoid prolonged exposure to Happy Fun Board.

Caution: Happy Fun Board may suddenly accelerate to dangerous speeds.

Happy Fun Board contains a liquid core, which, if exposed due to rupture, should not be touched, inhaled, or looked at.

Do not use Happy Fun Board on concrete.

Discontinue use of Happy Fun Board if any of the following occurs:

• itching
• vertigo
• dizziness
• tingling in extremities
• loss of balance or coordination
• slurred speech
• temporary blindness
• profuse sweating
• or heart palpitations

• If Happy Fun Board begins to smoke, get away immediately. Seek shelter and cover head.

  Happy Fun Board may stick to certain types of skin.

  When not in use, Happy Fun Board should be returned to its special container and kept under refrigeration. Failure to do so relieves the makers of Happy Fun Board, Wacky Products Incorporated, and its parent company, Global Chemical Unlimited, of any and all liability.

  Ingredients of Happy Fun Board include an unknown glowing green substance which fell to Earth, presumably from outer space.

  Happy Fun Board has been shipped to our troops in Saudi Arabia and is being dropped by our warplanes on Iraq.

  Do not taunt Happy Fun Board.

  Happy Fun Board comes with a lifetime warranty.

  Happy Fun Board! Accept no substitutes!

Saturday Night Live 1975: Triple Trac Razor Blade
The Late Show (1990's): Gillette 3000
Saturday Night Live 2000: Platinum Mach 14
The Onion: 2004

The new phones also include an octa-core processor...

The first blade grabs at the whisker, tugging it away from your face to protect it from the second blade.
Blade number two catches and digs into the stubble before it has the chance to snap back and injure you, pulling it farther out so that it is now ready for shearing.
Triple-Trac's third blade, a finely-honed bonded platinum instrument, cuts cleanly through the whisker at its base, leaving your face as smooth as a billiard ball.

The Triple Trac

When it says "the most dangerous toy" I laughed thinking this product never disabled kids or sent them to the hospital like LAWN DARTS (Jarts) which was responsible for 1000's of injures and even disabilities... don't know if any one died but this toy was certainly much more dangerous that the kits described in the article.

http://snltranscripts.jt.org/7...

http://snltranscripts.jt.org/7...

It's from the very first episode of SNL.
http://snltranscripts.jt.org/7...

Now you can BOTH win! Try Quarry... It's the only cereal that's 100% rocks and pebbles!

http://snltranscripts.jt.org/7...

No, it's actually "S" words, words beginning with the letter "S". On a side note, I've got to ask you about the Penis Mightier. Will it really mighty my penis, man?

Ernestine, is that you?

Maybe the perfect person to point out this absurdity to Congress would be that Technician in background.....Al Franken. Too bad he hasn't gone on to a position of any prominence.

a Senator who might actually do good for the general public for once and not solely for a limited cadre of corporations? no, there's no way someone like that won't make it far in DC!

Ernestine, is that you?

Maybe the perfect person to point out this absurdity to Congress would be that Technician in background.....Al Franken. Too bad he hasn't gone on to a position of any prominence.

Ernestine, is that you?

No, fire bad. Bread, gooood.

Cite

You just can't sing a depressing song when you're playing the banjo. You can't go-- "Oh, murder and death and grief and sorrow!" --Steve Martin http://snltranscripts.jt.org/7...

Are dark, sparkling Foldger's Crystals rich enough to keep these patients alive and well?

Spokesman: How do you feel?

Patient #1: Fine, thank you.

Spokesman: Did you know that we've replaced all of your blood with Foldger's Crystals?

Patient #1: An instant?

Spokesman: That's right.

Patient #1: I can't believe it. I feel great. I'm full of Foldger's Crystals, really?

Spokesman: Yes, and so are all the other patients in this intensive care unit. How do you all feel?

[ The other patients show reactions of approval ]

Good for him.

I take it you were inspired by this classic Saturday Night Live sketch?

...insurance?

They're not gonna eat my medicine for fuel.

It's a floor wax AND a dessert topping! :-) But yes, as with any systemic problem, there are many aspects that cannot easily be separated from one another. The parable of the blind men and the elephant is probably applicable.

i wonder if the technology is based on the 'silver-haired bat'?

Might try asking Jimmy Carter, he probably knows this kind of stuff.
http://snltranscripts.jt.org/76/76ocarter.phtml

Sorry for the salty language, but at worst, this company should have had to put a "10+" and "Not for internal consumption" conspicuously on their packaging. This is a harmless, novelty toy; not a Jagged Metal O in your box of Krusty O's or a Bag'o'Glass (link for those of you too young to know that one). This is a toy which has dangerous consequences if ingested...

We can make ourselves resistant to this and other bacteria and viruses. Then we can go back to the old days, and empty our pisspots out in the street and mix it up with the horse shit. It'll make a nice yummy meal and you can wash it down with some great mineral water

You can't get rid of Oracle. They are the ATT of Databases.

We don't care. We don't have to. We're the Phone Company.

Ernestine

BANDWIDTH is the RATE at which bits are transferred.
USAGE is the AMOUNT of data that has been transferred.

After 3GB of USAGE, AT&T will limit your BANDWIDTH.

I'd expect this kind of confusion on CNN, but Slashdot?

The best part about your definitions backed by judgement is that your terminology is still wrong. Politely, let me help you:

Bandwidth is not the rate at which bits are transferred. Bandwidth is the maximum capacity a transport (network link, etc.) can handle. For example, a 100mbit Ethernet link has 100mbit of bandwidth. Of course, if an ISP/provider chooses to halve that using whatever means, then that's their choice. But it's still bandwidth. TL;DR version: bandwidth = size of the pipe.

Throughput is the rate at which bits are transferred. Such examples include 400kbits/second across a 100mbit Ethernet link. In that situation, your bandwidth is still 100mbit, but your throughput is 400kbits/second. I should also note to readers that networking engineers prefer (tend to) speak in bits-per-second and not bytes-per-second. More and more rate-limiting and throttling softwares/firewalls/etc. specify things in kilobytes/sec which is just silly -- network throughput is measured with a base unit of 1000, not 1024 like kilobytes. Anyway, back on topic:

Usage is the amount of data that has been transferred -- here you are correct. However, it's better to explain it this way: usage is the aggregate total of bits or bytes which have been transferred over a certain time period (e.g. hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, etc.). You could also use the word "volume" here, or "traffic total". One thing to point out about usage is that traffic flows both ways (inbound and outbound). Some ISPs/providers only care about one direction, while others will combine the two. For example, at Hurricane Electric (co-lo in SF bay area), they only care about outbound traffic (e.g. traffic your servers send out to the Internet), while the co-location provider I use (BAIS) cares about both (and combines the two before calculating 95th-percentile averages). I've yet to see anyone ask AT&T if it's inbound, outbound, or both which they care about when doing their traffic accounting.

Thus, with AT&T the situation is this: after reaching an aggregate total of 3GBytes of traffic within a month, you will begin to be billed at a rate of US$10 per gigabyte of traffic (in excess). I see no mention of rate-limiting (read: throttling throughput) in their explanation, but I do see other people here on /. claiming they do rate-limit after you exceed the 3GByte limit.

Regardless of your above mistake, it seems AT&T is still not being 100% transparent with their policies/network model so that people will know what to expect if/when they exceed their monthly traffic total. Then again, that's AT&T -- nothing has changed since the Ma Bell days.

P.S. -- Confirmation phrase for post: "misusing". Yes indeed!

...reminds me of this.

Nope... your opinion doesn't count as a decent scientific reference, if you could link to something that would be great, thanks.

I detect just a small amount of sarcasm there, which means you must be at least familiar with the stuff. I'd like you to turn that sarcasm detector up a notch or two, reread the posts, and then see what you think. Here, I'll help (without sarcasm, I promise):

We're actually in agreement. My original post references the sample bias that can lead to counterintuitive statistical trends when you look at the introduction of protective gear. There are plenty of examples of this: helmets and head injuries in WWI, Abraham Ward's observations about bomber damage in WWII, body armor and limb injuries in present day conflicts, etc. We're basically talking about protective equipment providing the opportunity to treat people after some event rather than bury them. Your anecdote is an excellent example of that. It boggles my mind that someone would willing choose to forgo a helmet when cycling at 20 mph or so, let alone forgo a seat belt at 60. However, there are people that feel very strongly about it, and they always seem to have some twisted statistic in their pocket to justify it. My original post was a sarcastic jab at both.

And when they grab you with those metal claws, you can't break free.. because they're made of metal, and robots are strong.

Nothing new, AT&T has always been this way. SNL skits, humorously, give a historic perspective (Ernestine + one ringy dingy or something like http://snltranscripts.jt.org/76/76aphonecompany.phtml). T-Mobile touches upon it in one of their commercials, AT&T charging more for less makes sense, when you don't think about it.

As someone else notes later in this thread, AT&T exempts their services from the cap. Can't cut the throughput to another content provider's site, so they cap the data, and charge $10 per 50 GB.

This is so "Prince of Tides"!

SNL skit where William Shatner plays William Shatner hamming it up

That reminds me of the SNL skit where Eddie Murphy teaches Stevie Wonder to do a Stevie Wonder impression... Can't get to the YouTube link from here, but here's an excerpt from the skit transcript:

• Richie (Murphy): That’s the worst Stevie Wonder impression I’ve ever seen in my life.
• Alan (Wonder): [grinning] What’s the matter with it?
• [The crowd roars with laughter as Stevie grins at Eddie, who breaks down and laughs helplessly for several seconds along with the audience.]
• Alan: I can funk! I can funk! I can funk...
• Richie: Yeah, yeah, but this, what’s you’re doing is ridiculous. It’s nothing like, I know Stevie Wonder, man, and he’s like, you have to mellow out, you see, you’re too tense. Loosen up. You have to see me do a Stevie Wonder impression...
• [Eddie Murphy takes a pair of sunglasses out of his breast pocket. Crowd roars as Eddie puts them on.]
• Richie: You gotta smile a lot, like this, you see, you gotta smile. [grins]
• Alan: [grins with his mouth wide open] You mean like this?

Seeing the graphs of word popularity over time reminds me of that old Saturday Night Live skit with Phil Hartman giving word investing tips.

"We don't care. We don't have to. We're the Phone Company."
-- Ernestine

The SNL formula has always been to have a couple skits that attempt to be humorous, and then use the rest of the show to create bad memes and one-note recurring characters (which can be converted into movie franchises).

People remember when they strike gold (like the Shatner episode), and completely forget the next episode which starred football players and the "pathological liar".

http://snltranscripts.jt.org/86/1986.phtml

Not exactly original..

women who sit more than 6 hours a day were 37 percent more likely to die than those who sit less than 3 hours;

"John, you bastard! I caught you sleeping with the women down the street! I saw you to together!"

"No honey! Its not what you think! Did you notice she was on her back? You see, she sits for long periods of time every day. Because I was exercising her, on her back without her sitting, I was saving her live, one stroke at a time."

"Oh John, why did I doubt you? You're so considerate and giving. Always thinking of others. You finally found a way to make your restless penis syndrome beneficial to others. Now come here and save me life!"

What's next? Treating restless leg syndrome?*

I only hope they can one day come up with a treatment for, Restless Penis Syndrome.

I think your key ingredient might be time travel

Customer: I gotta get these pills to my girlfriend.. four months ago.

Einstein Express. When it absolutely, positively, has to be there the day before yesterday.

Yes, I think we all remember the two mile island incident, a cup of java could be catastrophic under the right circumstances.

Phhht, pass. Get back to me when you have something as good as Amazin Laser

Yes, Google is horribly broken in this area. I have a similar experience with the same lack of explanation. It's scary, actually, how quickly Google can turn into The Phone Company.

People who are putting their life into "the cloud" perhaps should be looking at online backup solutions specifically aimed at Google.

SNL even made a parody of this infamous product phase, touting the new "Crystal Gravy".

That very attitude would sink another company.

Yes, it's a shame about how airlines, cable companies, phone companies, and all those other industries that failed to provide great customer service went under.

One time I spent 10 hours delayed at an airport because United didn't have a plane ready for the scheduled flight. What did they do to make it right? Offer me $100 off the next time I bought a ticket from them. Maybe I could just not fly United again, but that attitude isn't going to be any different than any other airline out there.

The reality is that a corporation has one goal, and one goal only: to make money. For some, the best way to make money is to help the customer out the best they can. For many, it means realizing that there is little to no alternative and that all their competitors are going to be doing the same thing, so cutting costs is the best way to make more money. Don't like your bank's policy? Go to another one. Just don't be surprised when you see the exact same behavior there, too. Or, perhaps, different annoying policies that simply treat you like a walking wallet.

the game's probably going to suck

But will it suck more than stuff already approved for the Wii and DS? Lately, these platforms have picked up a reputation on Slashdot for harboring shovelware.

How do we know they're serious about putting out a game?

Ideally, one would start by making a playable prototype for PC, using the prototype as a pitch to obtain a devkit, and then porting it to the console by rewriting the graphics and input. By then you may wonder why not just publish on PC in the first place; the problem with that is not enough HTPCs in the market.

Will the thing even pass rudimentary QA screenings?

Ideally, documented QA procedures such as automated unit tests would help convince the console maker.

But the video game market is far from ideal, and console makers have been able to get away with a "we don't have to care" attitude.

I haven't bought anything by Adobe ever since I bought one of their cars. Oh, sure, you fix the dents yourself.. until it cures!!! Then good luck reshaping your new brick.

The best man that have ever lived, George Carlin, used to say "I was born in a christian family, and I was a christian ... well until I reached the age of reason. So I was a christian for about 2 and a half years"

Carlin also said, "That's what all the big ones, all the big religions said, 'Love yourself, Love your God, Love your neighbor, because you're all basically the same person. We just don't have uniforms yet, that's all.'"

Carlin was a very spiritual man, at least in his earlier work; I'm not sure if he himself, or just his work, became more curmudgeonly over the years. After all, this is the same guy who both gave us the "Seven Dirty Words", and did narration for Thomas The Tank Engine. Pigeonhole him at your peril.

Point is, spirituality and religious dogma are orthogonal concepts. Spirituality is about developing a comfortable relationship with yourself and with the universe. One can be a spiritual person and an atheist or an agnostic. See, for example, Aldous Huxley, or Percy Bysshe Shelley, or Richard Feynman, or Carl Sagan.

Sweet! Time to restart Mainway Toys! I'll be rich. And think of all the happy children with their Teddy Chainsaw Bears.