Slashdot Mirror
The Internet Not for Old People
Alien54 writes to tell us the Daily Mail is reporting that if you want an internet connection and you are over 70 you may be in for a surprise. From the article: "After walking the Great Wall of China and making plans for a trip to Russia, Shirley Greening-Jackson thought signing up for a new internet service would be a doddle. But the young man behind the counter had other ideas. He said she was barred - because she was too old."
I know I've spent too much time because whilst reading the article (another sign - I'm not actually meant to do that) I noticed something in a quote:
"Somebody has decided when you turn 70 you lose a lot of your mind. I find this is ridiculous."
This lady is obviously intelligent, she spelt rediculous correctly...
People should have to pass a test to get on the internet, it should consist of lots of to/too there/their/they're type questions and only if passed you get access (I would have years of my life back because I would fail it)
I wonder if it can be retroactively applied though and if it was, would slashdot have managed 1 million user accounts?
Having said all that, the guy who rejected her should get reprimanded for his actions, if a person is competent enough to go into a store and is prepared to go through the motions of ordering they should be supplied the product. Its not like she was an anonymous web packet arriving with credit card information and an order.
liqbase
Personally, I think you would have to pass an intelligence test before you should be allowed to have an Internet connection. You should show that you posses the basic common sense that ensures that you won't let your PC be turned into a zombie. Of course, that means that about 80% of the current population would be barred.
Unusual case. Surely this strange store policy in the UK doesn't warrant the headline, "The Internet Not for Old People." I have no doubt that she eventually got her connection.
Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others. -Groucho Marx
Our society discriminates based on age at the younger end in all sorts of aspects.
The ISP was legally covering their asses, and last time I checked a free market economy allowed a company to decide with whom they'd like to do business (short of random anti-discriminatory acts the US has set, but I don't believe age is a protected factor).
Maybe she should just sign up with another company that's happy to have her business, rather than waste time being an attention whore over a minor issue.
Rarely is it that rules exist for no reason, but this one is kind of like the king whose subjects suffered from paper cuts, so as a solution he banned all the books.
All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)
So apparently they want younger (and probably more technical) people to read the contract so the 70+ people know what they're getting. Stupid, but it's not a rule without a reason.
Maybe if you need a "younger" person with you to read the fine print in the contract, maybe the problem isn't with being over 70, maybe the problem is too much fine print.
I think that if you require someone to explain the contract, then the contract is too freakin' complex. And that's bad for both sides - you get episodes like this, and people looking for and using loopholes you may not have known were in the contract.
As for technical ... the world moves on .. there are people in their 70s who were programmers in the 1960's. How old are Kernigan and Richie? (IBM's expert witnesses) they are older than me and Bill Gates anyway!
Damn right e-mail is for oldies. The youngsters can use skateboards to visit their friends :-)
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
He's following company policy. He works there... it is not his problem, it's the companies.
Thats like getting mad at the cashier because your Big Mac went up 20 cents. I assure you he doesn;t set policy.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
Only you can't kill anyone with an internet connection.
Believe me, i tried.
> I've worked in sales for a cell company and you know honestly, it was
> difficult getting some (not ALL) of the elderly customers to understand
> what exactly they were wanting to sign up for.
How tedious of those old fogies to actually want to understand what they are contracting for! Much easier to deal with young suckers who will sign anything at all without reading it, isn't it?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
If you sell contracts to old people that they don't understand - then people are going to complain you are taking advantage of old people.
If you don't sell contracts to old people who may not understand - then people are going to complain you are discriminating against old people.
Sorry, you can't have it both ways. You can't give certain members of the public special protection, without taking away some of their rights. You must either treat old people as total equals to young people, or you must treat them like children. If you want to "protect" seniors as a group under the assumption that they are more easily taken advantage of, there is no way you can treat them as fully responsible adults. The two are mutually exclusive.
I think we have reached the point in society where no-matter what you do, how you act, or how honestly you are trying to do the right thing, people are going to be perpetually outraged and trying to destroy you.
And the same just can't be true of some under 25-something. I wouldn't trust any of my (4) nephews to setup their own cable routers and home networks, even though they were all born with keyboards in their hands. Exposure to technology doesn't imply cluefulness. Your statement is ageist.
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
You've obviously never worked in tech support. 95% of the population knows jack shit about computers, the internet, and/or contract language. If "covering their ass" is what they want to do they should administer a test based on the contract -- but it's far easier (and cheaper) to just enforce an arbitrary limit on age.
So this store "mis-sold" = pushed stuff onto older people and got complaints and as a result they bar older people from purchasing their products? Two wrongs do not make a right. How about enforcing a bit more ethics among their sales staff? Of course, that's more work than pushing overly complicated contracts on people. Or, god forbid, actually offer understandable contracts?
I'm only 35 but I can actually remember when eg. phone contracts just had a monthly fee and a per minute charge that varied with distance - concepts which are intuitively understandable. Whereas nowadays the typical ad for a phone contract features a price and then at least 10 sub-clauses along the lines of "price only valid between 10pm and 2am if you still have bonus points left and the moon is full and only if you sign up for the next 10 years". Most *young* people I know, though, won't complain because they think that's "normal" and they want the product ASAP and don't want to think too much about it.
Now, maybe I'm an old fart (seeing as I seem to be talking about the "good old times" already) but I think it's high time that this kind of advertising and contracts were forbidden. It's happened before, too, in the banking sector. Can't remember where I read it but apparently it used to be that banks pushed their products like that. After a while it was forbidden and banks now are required to show the effective annual premium and stuff has become understandable again.
You've never been told that. What you've been told is that your rates are higher because people in your demographic have higher average claims per customer than do other groups.
You haven't, but other people your age have had disproportionally more. Insurance companies are very competitive, and if one could underwrite the youth market at a substantial discount and still make a profit, they would. The fact that none have says a lot.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I think the contract fine print is there deliberately to screw over the users. I doubt that will be fixed unless there is some external pressure, like with disability protection laws or anti-discrimination laws. "The market" seems to tolerate it, allowing plenty of room for abuse so I think it would have to be fixed with consumer protection laws.
Are you saying that only elderly people can be technological lunkheads? I've run into plenty of people whose microwave oven clocks are still flashing 12:00. If you want to have a restriction aimed at keeping the ill-informed and "unsuited" away from the internet, then maybe the store should administer a technology test to every applicant. That would make way more sense than some arbitrary cutoff based on age. Which is still damning the idea with faint praise.
My guess is that their experience is that old people have a hard time grasping the concept of the 'net, thus creating many (too many) support calls. They aren't shopping online, they are not buying ringtones, they don't follow the latest fad and hype, in other words: They cost money and create none.
That's what this is about, in a nutshell.
There is a load of clueless morons on the 'net, also causing support calls (and, trust me, the most inane you can imagine), but they at least swallow the whole online crap (because they're too ignorant and unwilling to figure out how to toy with it 'til you get it for free (and legally so)). They cost, but they also make you money. So that's "acceptable".
They are, though, the real problem of the 'net. Not old people. Old people don't download spyware loaded screensavers, they don't start any junk sent to them just 'cause it's labeled "free pr0n", they are usually very cautious and few of them actually cause a real problem to the 'net as a whole. Only to their provider with their calls.
Unfortunately, that's who they need to connect.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The ISP was legally covering their asses,
From what? The over-70 folks are still legally competent until declared otherwise by a court of law.
and last time I checked a free market economy allowed a company to decide with whom they'd like to do business
You are very much mistaken. Not only is discrimination based on age specifically illegal in many countries (including the US), who can do business with whom is indeed subject to many legal regulations. A free market economy is not the same as anarchy.
He should be forced to spend some time being 70. Fortunately he'll have a hard time avoiding this punishment (And the alternative would probably be worse...)
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
You *do* know that nothing they publish is actually true, right? That their entire output is only for whipping the rabid right-wing types up into a frenzy?
I think it is an excellent proposition to require the elderly to "take a test" to determine if they know "what the Internet is"... provided of course that the phone company mandating it also take a test to determine if they know "what customer support is".