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.
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 the article is sourced from the Daily Mail, well known for spinning articles in interesting ways. (I recall they saw the introduction of a home test kit for chlamydia as a bad thing because it signalled a rise in chlamydia rates...nothing to do with going to an STD clinic being embarrassing, then).
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
"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.
In Soviet Russia trips plan...
Oh, hell. You people don't even make it challenging anymore.
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?
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.
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.
... 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 fail to see the Funny. (did the moderators RTFA?).
This comment does seem a bit disrespectful.
The lady said she completed a VISA application to go to Russia, and went to China last year.
She was legitimately comparing the complexity of Passport/VISA requests to a common subscriptions service contract.
Now, I don't know if either country has particularly complex VISA application processes, but even if they are not the accumulation of absurdities, redundancies and mistranslations that government forms often are, they should be definitely comparable.
Perhaps it wasn't the most interesting quote ever, but there is no reason to be condescending.
Freedom is the freedom to say 2+2=4, everything else follows...
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?"
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.
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.