Slashdot Mirror
Legal Trouble For Multiple ISPs
Ars Technica reports that Comcast has been hit with three new class-action lawsuits due to the company's traffic-shaping practices. "The lawsuits ... ask that Comcast be barred from continuing to violate various state laws, in addition to unspecified damages." Meanwhile, members of the US House Telecommunications Subcommittee have asked Charter Communications' president to stop testing a program which uses Deep Packet Inspection to track the habits of its customers. A number of privacy groups have voiced their support (PDF). As if that weren't enough, it seems the City of Los Angeles is suing Time Warner for fraud and deceptive business practices. The Daily News notes, "... the City Attorney is seeking $2,500 in civil penalties for each violation of the Unfair Competition law as well as an additional $2,500 civil penalty for each violation described in the complaint perpetrated against one or more senior citizens or disabled persons."
for the same reasons they are being sued by LA, I believe.
Now we have Crapcast and I'm paying $20 more per month for less service.
--Minneapolis dev.
- "PowerBoost(r) makes fast even faster! PowerBoost(r) helps power downloads of large files like videos, music, and games at speeds up to 12 Mbps!"
- "McAfee(r) Security Suite featuring a series of tools to help keep you, your family, and your home computers safe, protected, and virus-free. A $120 value."
- And for their phone service: "Utilizes Comcast's own secure network, not the public Intedrnet, for secure VoIP phone service".
So 3 counts of fraud on ONE ad! Comcast are going to have a problem defending themselves this time...Now, do I see a "boost" of speed when downloading videos, music, and games (legal ones) from BitTorrent? NO! I NEVER even get a good connection! And at the bottom of the flyer, in that long list of fine print, it says "PowerBoost(r) provides bursts of download and upload speeds for the first 10 MB and 5MB of a file, respectively. So I don't even get PowerBoost for longer than a second! Theres one fraud.
I have McAfee, provided by Comcast, installed on my Windows OS (I use Linux most of the time). Guess what? ANOTHER LIE! Sure, it's free now, but in a year EVERY DAMN time you turn your computer on, McAfee nags you to buy a $120 dollar subscription. MORE FRAUD!
So your saying the NSA can't listen in? More fraud...
And why doesn't it make sense that the pipes/wires/drainage belong to the people instead and then the service providers can all lease that from some management authority to gain access to the last mile and provide everyone service?
Being a spelling & grammar Nazi is a sign you do not poses the intelligence to contribute to the conversation
Where I live in San Francisco bay area, there are three main ISPs - AT&T U-verse, Astound.net and Comcast. Unfortunately in my apartment, they do not allow anybody other than Comcast to make connections. Astound is not even allowed to enter the premises, while U-verse is not allowed to make connection from the apartment junction box to my unit. That makes Comcast the default monopoly.
What surprises me is that AT&T and Astoud.net is taking this lying down. I even went personally to Astound.net office and they say my apartment address is black listed in their database (essentially meaning they will not even try to make a connection here). At least AT&T technician from U-verse came here and argued with apartment manager with no success. I wrote a letter to AT&T U-verse and did not even get courtesy of a form letter reply. Yet U_verse is wasting their marketing dollars by sending me fliers almost everyday (and to everybody else in this complex) to sign-up with U-verse.
Comcast Internet connection is the pits these days. After a minute or two of good connectivity, it drops to almost 0 bytes per second. This creates havoc even in accessing gmail. My VOIP phone or chatting with my friends on iChat becomes impossible.
The whole situation makes "voting with our dollars" impossible. By the way, I found out that other apartment dwellers in SF bay area are in similar position.
"Democracy." It's just a slogan.
Apparently you misunderstand how "futures" trading works. Traders (the ones you're calling speculators) do not actually buy and take delivery of commodities, thereby acting as pricing and supply buffers as you seem to think. The single thing that a futures trader never wants to do is to actually own the commodity they're trading. If this happens, they're screwed as these are guys with Park Avenue offices, summer homes in the Hamptons, and winter homes in Aspen - not warehouses or tank farms.
In the futures market, a trader simply says something like: "I'll sell you a million barrels of oil for $150 per barrel on the first of next month". He doesn't own oil wells or a million barrels of oil, he is simply offering to sell something (which is probably still deep in the earth somewhere in the world) at a particular price on a particular date in the future. If I think that oil is going to be selling for more than $150 on the first of next month, I accept his offer to sell and guarantee to give him $150 million on delivery of the million barrels. This is a contract between me and him. If, when the futures market opens for trading the next morning, I offer to sell my million barrels of July oil for $160 per barrel and find a third trader willing to pay, I simply sell my contract with the first trader to that third trader.
The first trader is still on the hook to deliver the million barrels for $150 million and the third trader is obligated to buy a million barrels for $160 million. I'm out of the deal completely. The oil is still in the ground somewhere. Nothing has actually moved from the possession of one individual to another. The $10 million difference is mine to keep.
The student who wishes more insight into futures trading might want to watch the classic 1983 film "Trading Places".
They are entering into contracts with that apartment complex to tie comcast to their rentals which is completely unrelated in order to further their market share.
this falls afoul of anti-trust law, and denies customers choice.
File a complaint with the FTC or sue comcast.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
checking who owns the last stop on the traceroute:
whois 207.138.144.102
OrgName: Global Crossing
OrgID: GBLX
Address: 14605 South 50th Street
City: Phoenix
StateProv: AZ
PostalCode: 85044-6471
Country: US
ReferralServer: rwhois://rwhois.gblx.net:4321
NetRange: 207.138.0.0 - 207.138.255.255
CIDR: 207.138.0.0/16
NetName: GBLX-8
NetHandle: NET-207-138-0-0-1
Parent: NET-207-0-0-0-0
NetType: Direct Allocation
NameServer: NAME.ROC.GBLX.NET
NameServer: NAME.PHX.GBLX.NET
NameServer: NAME.SNV.GBLX.NET
NameServer: NAME.JFK1.GBLX.NET
Comment: THESE ADDRESSES ARE NON-PORTABLE
RegDate: 1996-05-20
Updated: 2005-03-02
RTechHandle: IA12-ORG-ARIN
RTechName: GBLX-IPADMIN
RTechPhone: +1-800-404-7714
RTechEmail: ipadmin@gblx.net
OrgAbuseHandle: GBLXA-ARIN
OrgAbuseName: GBLX-Abuse
OrgAbusePhone: +1-800-404-7714
OrgAbuseEmail: abuse@gblx.net
OrgNOCHandle: GBLXN-ARIN
OrgNOCName: GBLX-NOC
OrgNOCPhone: +1-800-404-7714
OrgNOCEmail: gc-noc@gblx.net
http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/06/08/1354257#
OrgTechHandle: IA12-ORG-ARIN
OrgTechName: GBLX-IPADMIN
OrgTechPhone: +1-800-404-7714
OrgTechEmail: ipadmin@gblx.net
# ARIN WHOIS database, last updated 2008-06-07 19:10
# Enter ? for additional hints on searching ARIN's WHOIS database.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Your traceroute and your conclusion are nothing alike.
Looks to me more like comcast hands it off to globalcrossing, who then takes it through what is actually their edge, and then PirateBay.org does not respond to your UDP requests, likely due to a firewall.
This can be verified with a TCP SYN based traceroute to port 80(which you know they allow). Heres one I did from a server with comcast.
TTL LFT trace to thepiratebay.org (83.140.176.146):80/tcp
** [firewall] the next gateway may statefully inspect packets
1 [AS7016] [CABLE-1] 73.201.88.1 6.2/9.7ms
** [neglected] no reply packets received from TTLs 2 through 4
5 [AS7922] [COMCAST-16] te-0-4-0-1-cr01.pittsburgh.pa.ibone.comcast.net (68.86.91.129) 18.4/13.8ms
6 [ASN?] [GBLX-13] Te6-4.ar2.DCA3.gblx.net (67.17.194.97) 14.6/25.3ms
7 [AS3549] [GBLX-8] port80.ge-2-0-0.407ar1.ARN1.gblx.net (207.138.144.102) 140.7/139.9ms
8 [AS16150] [83-RIPE] [target] thepiratebay.org (83.140.176.146):80 143.3/142.9ms
Now the fact that it jumps about 110ms in one hop is a little odd, but that just shows GlobalCrossing isn't exactly top of the line.
And just for another datapoint, heres the (tail of) the same route using ICMP ECHO requests instead of UDP datagrams:
5 te-0-4-0-1-cr01.pittsburgh.pa.ibone.comcast.net (68.86.91.129) 13.598 ms 14.115 ms 13.300 ms
6 Te6-4.ar2.DCA3.gblx.net (67.17.194.97) 14.536 ms 13.284 ms 16.724 ms
7 port80.ge-2-0-0.407ar1.ARN1.gblx.net (207.138.144.102) 137.295 ms 135.119 ms 136.846 ms
8 thepiratebay.org (83.140.176.146) 135.577 ms 133.808 ms 131.285 ms
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx