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."
But the Internet is a prerequisite for email, which in turn is only for old people. I'm confused.
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
The amount of old-people porn on the Internet will dwindle rapidly if the old codgers are prevented from signing up for broadband!
FREE THE GERIATRICS! Bottles of Ensure and Cable Modems for ALL!
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.
MAKING PLANS for a trip to Russia?! My, aren't we adventurous?!
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
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
That's SOUTH Korea. In North Korea, only Kim Jong-Il uses email.
(srsly.)
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
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.
Bear in mind that many elderly people have trouble understanding the workings of computers and the Internet (insert Ted Stevens joke here). This is more of a cover-your-ass routine so that people with little prior understanding of technology don't buy something completely unsuitable then come back ranting and raving.
I'm sure it's an inconvenience to elderly people who do understand the Internet and computers, but then I'm sure speed limits are an inconvenience to people who can safely and skilfully drive at 100mph.
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
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
"Insightful"?
...But how many 12 year-olds would you want having driver's licenses?
There's a reason there are anti-discrimination laws in the US, and yes, age IS one of the protected factors. So we discriminate against people at the younger end of the spectrum... thousands of years of experience show that younger than a certain age, people tend not to behave responsibly. Are there exceptions? Of course!
This isn't a "minor issue", this is turning the most experienced, and often wisest segment of our population into second class citizens. Look at the average ages of our Supreme Court Justices. Now tell me that they can't handle signing up "all on their own" for a damn cell-phone because they might get "confused," because it's so darn "complicated."
Speaking for everyone over 30, BITE ME.
m-
You catch enchiladas by picking them up behind the head and holding them underwater until they don't kick anymore -VeGas
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.
You apparently haven't been to MySpace. Young people add a great deal of value to the Internet.
After all. Who wants them poking along on the Internet, slowing everybody down with the left blinker on?
Carphone Warehouse is normally packed with sales people in their early 20s working primarily for commissions (e.g. for selling extended warranty, and some manufactorers pay a commission for selling their new high end models). Their technical knowledge is normally about the same as the kid who doesn't shave yet working at Radio Shack, althought I've personally known a couple of knowledgeable sales people from Carphone Warehouse.
They most likely created the policy after too many complaints of pressuring older people into buying a fancy but complicated phone or expensive cell/mobile phone contract.
Our society discriminates based on age at the younger end in all sorts of aspects.
So that makes it all ok!
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.
She did the right thing, IMO. This was such a pissing-off action by the ISP that quietly running off to another company would not have made Carphone Warehouse suffer some like they needed to.
Appearently they'd sold service to a few people who didn't need it who also happened to be 1) old and 2) unable or unwilling to read and/or understand the fine print.
The solution is to
1) make the fine print bigger, say, newsprint-size.
2) make the fine print easier to understand, say, newspaper-reading-level.
3) go over the fine print with every customer to make sure they understand it.
After all, if companies can find a way to sell a 70-year-old a reverse morgtage without getting complaints, surely they can figure out a way to sell internet services.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
silver surfers ??? Did I miss something here ?
This is really about the ISP wanting to be able to enforce its contract. If the terms were fair, it wouldn't be an issue. The terms probably aren't fair, so the ISP is worried that she'll cancel the service and claim ignorance of the contract's disclaimer of sevice warranty, authorization to throttle bandwidth, permission to share private information, multi-year commitment, punitive cancellation charge, multiple hidden monthly fees, restrictions on ports and services, and advance agreement to any additional unfair terms the ISP's evil lawyers can dream up.
Young people are probably even more casual than old people about signing such agreements, because young people haven't been burned by them yet, but the ISP doesn't care whether the customer actually agrees to the terms. The ISP cares only about being able to enforce the terms. If a customer was able to read and understand the terms, the terms will probably be enforced against her. The ISP has more trouble proving agreement to the terms by a senior citizen.
This isn't a "minor issue", this is turning the most experienced, and often wisest segment of our population into second class citizens.
And this is new? In the western world, we take the most experienced, and often wisest segment of our population and throw them into rest homes because we're too damned lazy/selfish to take care of them ourselves. This is just the continuing of a trend... in our culture, the elderly are considered a useless, incompetant burden on the young. It should be amusing to see how we handle the baby-boomers as they enter their 70s and 80s...
Wikipedia sez Brian Kernighan is 64 and Dennis Ritchie is 65. Ken Thompson on the other hand is a youngster, barely 63.
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
... people over 70 are in no way lithe enough to surf through a series of tubes.
It's for their own good.
My grandmother is 88 years old and is an active and intelligent Internet user. She bought her first computer at the age of 77 and has upgraded it twice since then. She walks into the computer store and the salespeople try to steer her toward little useless beginner machines, until she straigtens them out and tells them the specs she needs.
She uses scanners and digital cameras, and does almost everything a normal Internet user does. Email is still the best way to reach her.
For people who pride themselves for being on the cutting edge, a lot of your opinions on this issue are retrograde to say the least. Welcome to the 1960s, everyone.
"Stop throwing the Constitution in my face! It's just a goddamned piece of paper!" -- George W. Bush
> 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.
I wish that had happened to my ex-gran-in-law who has slowed down to only taking three week-long hikes this summer into the Trinity Alps and Olympic Peninsula to record birdsong. She had to yield to family pressure after the pacemaker was installed and take a couple companions along, in fact that's where she is now, somewhere in western Washington with a parabolic mic and the new digital recorder she just got off Ebay. All of 82 and a 95 pounds soaking wet I'll bet she woulda walked out with a piece of that kids ass between her teeth(All 28 original).
This is all because AOL dropped dialup service. (Could you ever get it in the UK? There must have been an equivalent.)
My cousins conspired against me and gave my mother a computer last winter. Now she is calling me with questions like "how do I get the email into the computer?" and "Do I have to plug the computer in for it to work?" I TOLD her not to sign up for broadband but she did anyway and has had it for six months and never AFAIK seen a single web page or sent a single email.
If I had the time I would develop a Linux liveCD "GrandpaOS". (Knoppix and the ilk come close but still have too many bells and whistles.) Instead, I will give all my cousins' small children drum sets next Christmas.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
Old farts!
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?
Well... Them and most of the gov seem to not know much about the internet.
That doesn't imply a lack of intelligence. A lot of the judiciary is pretty old and can handle legal issues that are far more complex than what it takes to operate a computer.
If you want to blame someone, blame the people in your age group for driving like idiots.
Well maybe Mrs. 75 year old should 'blame the people in her age group for not understanding contracts so well', hmm? Wasn't the point that that was a stupid assumption because people are individuals and not necessarily all the same as their 'group'?
If you have a better way of judging relative risk, start your own insurance company, or just submit your proposal as an application for the Nobel prize for economics. It'll be a shoe-in.
How about ONLY using an individual's personal actions as a factor in determining the charge?
We get cheaper insurance because, gee, we don't fuck up as much.
Then you don't get to sign up for this service because, gee, your age group is too retarded. Oh, was that another dumb rampant generalization?
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
Cheaper car insurance is about as discriminatory as people living in flood plains having to pay higher house/disaster insurance.
No, it's much more discriminatory because you get to choose whether you live in a flood plain, but not your age or gender.
Discriminatory would be barring them insurance just because they are young.
It would also be charging them, as an individual, more or less because of certain of their demographics.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
The internet is for porn!
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.
AFAIK the Daily Hate isn't one of Murdoch's shitty papers... it's a horrible pile of right wing crap _without_ his help!
Funnily enough, "the Mail's founder, Lord Northcliffe, said his winning formula was to give his readers 'a daily hate'" (ref: Polly Toynbee in the Grauniad).
-- "...I'm a bad guy because I, well, I sing some rock-and-roll songs." M. Manson
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?
Old people think the internet is a series of tubes.
The women in the story is presented as savvy, experienced etc. yet she receives horrible service, and she doesn't know what to do other than complain to the media?
Of course not, she wouldn't waste another second in that store full of idiots, she would find another ISP pronto.
Story smacks of BS to me.
sigs are for losers (except to point out that sigs are for losers)
I do telemarketing at a well known and legitimate call center agency. My department signs people up for one of any number of services, and generally speaking the individuals in question who actually do sign up for the service are quite old. However, they're also the least likely to get screwed because they have a) the time and inclination to cancel or raise hell b) the incentive of a more limited budget.
It's likely that the company in question is making some questionable upsells with their service, or doing something rather nasty in the terms and conditions. It's probably more along the lines of avoiding a lawsuit than being genuinely concerned about the elderly.
I have found when dealing with internet inquiries from a broad cross section of the population, ability to understand the Internet has nothing to do with age, sex or background.
The sad fact is, some people *get* it, some people don't, and never will. I have had 60 year old housewives who've never touched a computer before pick up the concepts and understanding required extremely quickly after just giving them a little nudge in the right direction. Conversely, I have had young, up and coming businessmen who will never understand what is required of them even if I repeat it over and over.
That said, Literacy plays a large part in getting around on a PC and using the Internet. I find a lot of people who won't read out what is on the screen because they don't know the long unfamiliar words...
I'm with another poster on the idea that people should have to pass a test first. Half the people who buy Internet from my company don't even know what the internet *is*
kill elrond
take elrond
put elrond in cupboard
..I think anyone over 70Kg should be banned too because when they are using webcams to send themselves across the internet they use up more bandwidth than skinny people.
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".
Taken at face value this is ridiculous ageism. However I currently work in customer service for a major telephony provider and have dealt with a huge number of people calling on behalf of their parents claiming they have been missold an expensive package and demanding they are released from the contract. I can fully understand why they are hesitant to sign up people who are statistically very likely to enter a contract, having it fully expained to them, and then a week later demand to be released from it saying they weren't made aware of terms.
Incidentally the excuse used by a lot of the sons and daughters who phone is is "she's 84, she had no idea what she was entering into"
Life must be tough for Daily Mail readers. Every day they're told by their paper how evil in the world is conspiring against them to steal their jobs, money, property and very way of life. They must live in a constant state of alarm. No wonder they hate and fear everyone who aren't exactly like them.