Verizon Denies DSL Because of Subscriber's Name

mikek2 writes "When retired Philadelphia-area doctor and Vietnam veteran Dr. Herman I. Libshitz went to upgrade his dial-up connection to Verizon DSL, he was informed they wouldn't complete the order because his last name contained an expletive. Repeated calls to several levels of management at Verizon failed to resolve the problem, with several managers suggesting he change his last name. It all worked out in the end, after the Philadelphia Enquirer intervened."

Comments

Monopoly

[Alex Belits]

Next time someone will claim that monopolies' power over the market does not negate the very mechanism that is supposed to implement the market, refer him to this.

Then punch him in the face.

Re:Monopoly

[Anonymous Coward]

Well said, good sir, well said!

Re:Monopoly

[armareum]

I don't really see why it is monopolies that caused the problem here. It's not as if an operating free market would have meant that this wouldn't have occured.

Re:Monopoly

[teh moges]

If they wouldn't let him sign up, he would of gone elsewhere. With a monopoly, this isn't an option.

Re:Monopoly

[Anonymous Coward]

Verizon has a monopoly on email addresses?

Re:Monopoly

[armareum]

Oh, so you think that it's a failure of the market which caused him this problem? No, it's just a crude obscenity filter on the email address he wanted to use when signing up. A problem related to the Scunthorpe problem.
Yes, monopolies are overall not good, but not everything bad they do is *caused* by them being a monopoly. That's just a stupid position to take.

Re:Monopoly

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF does this have ANYTHING to do with being a Monopoly issue?

All ISP's have profanity filters and this guys name got caught up in the middle of it. That is all! He was NOT denied DSL service as the lame title says. He refused DSL service because he didnt want to use an email addy without his surname.

I do agree that Vz should have a better method of working with people that have names that hit on the filter list, but to start making crap up that this is a monopoly issue is just a load of "Libshitz"!

It must be a slow morning if you got a +5 Insightful for this post.

Re:Monopoly

[MindlessAutomata]

Heh, and someone else said SpeakEasy is a competitor in his area, and they provide better service.

"Monopoly"? You didn't even check; you just want to bitch about big business.

Re:Monopoly

[1u3hr]

Yes, monopolies are overall not good, but not everything bad they do is *caused* by them being a monopoly.

Being a monopoly means they don't have to care about offending or annoying their customers. So they don't take the minimal amount of care that would have been needed to have prevented problems like this. They can wait until someone makes a fuss, secure knowing that no matter how long it takes them to fix it (or ignore it) that they won't lose any customers, because there is nowhere for them to go.

Re:Monopoly

[Anonymous Coward]

You would however stand in the danger of being told that a simple law against private utilities denying service without a strong reason would solve issues like this. It would surprise me if there is no such law already.

Then you might have your skull crushed with a baseball bat, seeing as physical arguments, decisiveness of views, demonstration of conviction and the physical subjugation and activism against people you disagree with is all the rage.

Re:Monopoly

[armareum]

You quote me, but don't actually refute what I say.

This case occurred because they are a large company, and have a crude obscenity filter. NOT because they are a monopoly!

Re:Monopoly

[phulegart]

So how did that crude obscenity filter come into place when he spoke to people at Verizon... multiple times? People in the billing department... people in different parts of the country... people who suggested he Misspell his name, change his name, etc...

It wasn't until the press got involved that someone said "Well, this needs personal attention." Which is odd because he was talking to people all along, aside from the initial online signup attempt.

However, if as Verizon says, this can be worked around because it is indeed their name... why couldn't anyone else that this doctor spoke to offer him the same appropriate treatment? So, since Verizon could have fixed this all along but did not until the press got involved... it was not *just* a crude obscenity filter on the email address he wanted when he signed up.

I've got to wonder what his email address was with AT&T, since he was using AT&T for dialup first.

Re:Monopoly

[CrazedWalrus]

Because they're a monopoly, they didn't care to fix it until a newspaper came along with a bag of bad publicity in tow. If there were other options, the customer could have gone with a competitor with more willingness to resolve the problem.

Monopoly status didn't cause the problem, but it did cause a delay in the resolution. They suggested he change his name rather than fix the problem with the computer. Does that sound like the suggestion of someone who's worried about losing customers?

Re:Monopoly

[1u3hr]

This case occurred because they are a large company, and have a crude obscenity filter. NOT because they are a monopoly!

They had a crude obscenity filter because a monopoly doesn't need a better one. There is no economic incentive for them to spend the resources on things like that. They can't lose customers no matter how badly they treat them.

Re:Monopoly

[Jafafa Hots]

The problem was caused by a stupid obscenity filter AND a monopoly.

The obscenity filter made one company's product unsuitable or unworkable.

The fact that he didn't have plenty of alternatives to a company offering him what was for him a poor value or unworkable product was caused by them being a monopoly.

Re:Monopoly

[dyefade]

You're right, the filter being too strict was an honest mistake. What is less honest is the response he received from the company when he queried it. Suggesting he change his name to better comply with the whims of their computer is offensive, bordering on racist.

In anything but a monopoly he could vote with his wallet and let Verizon know what he really thinks.

Re:Monopoly

[Livius]

Monopoly capitalism (as opposed to free market capitalism) is also known as communism.

Re:Monopoly

[Jafafa Hots]

It's a monopoly issue because he had to go through hell to get the product he wanted from the only game in town.

If Pepsi tastes like shit to you, you can drink Coke or Sprite or Dr. Pepper or water... unless Pepsi is all there is.

He didn't like the "flavor" of the one product available to him, and you're saying essentially that he was NOT denied a product that suited his purposes, he just needed to not reject the "flavor" he didn't like. He just needed to change his purposes.

You don't get it.

Re:Monopoly

[Amiga Trombone]

Because they're a monopoly, they didn't care to fix it until a newspaper came along with a bag of bad publicity in tow. If there were other options, the customer could have gone with a competitor with more willingness to resolve the problem.

Monopoly status didn't cause the problem, but it did cause a delay in the resolution. They suggested he change his name rather than fix the problem with the computer. Does that sound like the suggestion of someone who's worried about losing customers?

The problem here is that they aren't a monopoly. Read the article. Dr. Libshitz himself stated that since Verizon wouldn't accommodate him, he was sticking with AT&T, who already were.

Where is the monopoly in that?

Re:Monopoly

[Anonymous Coward]

It's "would have".
http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/couldof.html
http://wvde.state.wv.us/tt/2002/grammartips/grammartip0039.html
http://englishplus.com/grammar/00000204.htm

Re:Monopoly

[jimicus]

So how did that crude obscenity filter come into place when he spoke to people at Verizon... multiple times?

I once had the misfortune to be a customer of an ISP with such an attitude. They'd essentially installed an obscenity filter on all their staff and if you said anything which tripped the filter, they'd put the phone down on you.

What made this particularly galling was that the service they were selling was filtered internet access for the benefit of the sort of organisation that wants one - schools, mainly. So you ring them up to say "There's a problem with your filter - it lets me visit www.hotteensluts.com" and they've hung up on you before you can finish the sentence.

Re:Monopoly

[johndmartiniii]

I"m frankly surprised that he didn't go somewhere else immediately. For me the conversation would have gone something like this: "We're sorry Mr. Libshitz, but your last name appears to be spelled with the word "shit" in it. For that, we cannot grant you service." "Seriously? Hey, do you have the number for AT&T then?" I'm not sure why you would fight this sort of thing with anything other than taking your business elsewhere.

Re:Monopoly

[DavidTC]

Ah, you must live in that part of the world where there's actually more than one company providing DSL over an area.

Re:Monopoly

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm on the fence about Speakeasy. They're owned by Best Buy now and in some cases it seems to show. Of all my customer service requests, only the last two, which are post-buy out, have gone unsatisfied, and they certainly did not bend over backwards to satisfy me as they have done in the past.

Re:Monopoly

[ScrewMaster]

The question is more along the lines of "why the hell do they need an obscenity filter for last names in the first place"?

I guess I could see it when it comes to choosing email address or screen names ... but people have last names that are all over the map, spelling-wise. This is just stupid.

Re:Monopoly

[ScrewMaster]

Yeah , he's one of the lucky ones. I have a choice ... Comcast (which I have, 'nuff said) or 768 kbit/sec DSL. Not much of a choice, although I suppose technically it is one.

Re:Monopoly

[xeoron]

Sure there is. Most of the major ISP's offer DSL in the markets that Verizon does, such as Earthlink. Now with that said, in my experience, all this ends up being is Verizon DSL without dealing with Verizon, which works out well, because the Earthlink is a lot more friendlier

Re:Monopoly

[mr_death]

Perhaps Duopoly is a better word. In the States, a result of government policy restricts most people to two choices for non-dialup internet -- the local phone company and the local cable company.

So, while the good Doctor has one more choice for an internet provider, the choice, both in terms of avoiding idiot management and better options, was severely limited by a brain-dead government choice.

Re:Monopoly

[armareum]

The obscenity filter was on the email address he wanted to use. Which, as is fairly common, contained his name.

Re:Monopoly

[Corbets]

Your argument: There is no economic incentive for them to create a better obscenity filter because they are a monopoly.

Another possible argument: A better obscenity filter costs money, which costs must (most likely) be passed on to the customer, who in perhaps all other cases except this man's, doesn't want to pay more for such a service. Hence, no economic incentive, regardless of monopoly status.

There are (almost) always multiple possible motives, people; thinking you can sit in your parents basement and know them all is nothing short of arrogance.

Re:Monopoly

[denton420]

After reading your post, which is in it self quite arrogant ironically enough. You fail to realize a simple alternative.

Allowing this man to create an email has nothing to do with engineering an entirely new obscenity filter.

Once he called Verizon and explained his situation, an "administrator" could have logged on and created the account while bypassing the filter.

If there was no method to do this, I am sure a computer tech could have made this happen with relative ease.

Its called customer service, something that is rapidly disappearing in light of a .... monopoly ;). I said the M word, oh no!

Re:Monopoly

[RobertM1968]

The problem here is that they aren't a monopoly. Read the article. Dr. Libshitz himself stated that since Verizon wouldn't accommodate him, he was sticking with AT&T, who already were.

Where is the monopoly in that?

Actually, perhaps you should re-read the article... he is sticking with ATT dial-up which is not a competitor for DSL by any stretch of the imagination.

Anyway, monopoly or otherwise, this problem could occur (as noted above) - simply because of a poorly written word filter - compounded by the time/cost of fixing it outweighing the profit to be made from having the new account (inotherwords, it being a monopoly market area may not be more likely to have caused this to not be addressed... see below).

But fact is, such a situation could occur with a small company as well, who cant afford to have the code revised (especially, if in being a smaller company, they licensed it out, and the code change needed isnt covered in their licensing contract).

And with larger companies, in a non-monopoly situation, it still may not have been changed until the bad press... after all, you do the math... which is worth more? A cheap DSL account, or a bunch of billable hours to fix code?

Note: I emphasized "may" in the last paragraph and asked a question in the end to indicate that such a scenario would or could be part of the determining factor (even in a competitive market) of whether the code got changed - until the incident of bad publicity.

Re:Monopoly

[Anonymous Coward]

Crap - where is the -1 didn't get the article? He stuck with At&T dial up because the available DSL service would not accommodate him.

Re:Monopoly

[DavidTC]

My local phone company, OTOH, is my local cable company. :)

Re:Monopoly

[mixmatch]

Suggesting he change his name to better comply with the whims of their computer is offensive, bordering on racist.

Well, if you're just going to throw a word out there, you might as well have said, "bordering on terrorism." Do you know what racism even means? Certainly it can be said that they are discriminating against those who have expletives in their last name, but last time I checked, there was no expletive-in-last-name race. Perhaps you know something I don't?

Re:Monopoly

[Rick Zeman]

Heh, and someone else said SpeakEasy is a competitor in his area, and they provide better service.

I moved and tried to bring my Speakeasy service with me...and ended up NOT being able to--not from being too far from the C.O., but because Verizon had a digital loop installed instead of copper coming into the neighborhood. Let me ask you this: Do you think they would have have taken that step if the area wasn't provisioned with FIOS? Doubtful.... So, in effect, by being a monopoly, they lowered the number of companies that can effectively compete for anyone here's Internet business to two: Verizon and Comcrap. And they both suck.

Re:Monopoly

[1u3hr]

There are (almost) always multiple possible motives, people; thinking you can sit in your parents basement and know them all is nothing short of arrogance.

"Arrogance"? Like some dipshit posting ungrammatical groundless sneers?

FYI, asshole, I left my parents' home over 30 years ago.

Re:Monopoly

[g0at]

If they wouldn't let him sign up, he would of gone elsewhere.

You mean he would have gone elsewhere.

Re:Monopoly

[Lord Ender]

Have.

Have, damnit.

Re:Monopoly

[Anonymous Coward]

Libshitz and Lipshitz are common last names among Jewish people. Anti-semitism is a form of religious discrimination which, though not technically racist, is close enough.

Re:Monopoly

[Anonymous Coward]

Except the product in question is not the DSL service itself but an email address which can be obtained from any number of different places whether he signed up for Verizon DSL or not.

In fact a service provider email address is the least desirable type of email address as it either locks you into a service if you wish to keep the same email address or requires you to go through the hassle of changing your email address is all the many places you've used it if you change providers. A much better alternative is to use an email address that is independent from your service provider.

Whether Verizon DSL is a monopoly or not is irrelevant. If they are not a monopoly and he chose to use a different service, guess what? He would have to use a different email address than a Verizon address, but he can already use a different email address in any case.

Re:Monopoly

[oldhack]

Yes, monopolies are overall not good, but not everything bad they do is *caused* by them being a monopoly. That's just a stupid position to take.

From the consumer's perspective, it wouldn't be much of a problem if Verizon wasn't a monopoly, because he could have told them to bug off and go elsewhere. Follow the causal chain - the main problem boils down to Verizon being a monopoly, and yours is a pedantic position.

Re:Monopoly

[phulegart]

Good story, but it doesn't apply. Because he would tell them his name, and they would reply... with.. sorry, maybe you should try misspelling your name.

I'm really glad I read the article.

Crap. I forgot. If I read the articles, I can't post.

Re:Monopoly

[fm6]

You didn't check either. SpeakEasy doesn't try to compete with consumer ISPs. If you want a business type VoIP package, a lot of bandwidth, symmetric DSL so you can host your own server, they'll cut you a good deal. But if you want simple home DSL, they'll charge you maybe twice as much as the phone company.

Re:Monopoly

[Your.Master]

Actually, perhaps you should re-read the article... he is sticking with ATT dial-up which is not a competitor for DSL by any stretch of the imagination.

Huh? Not only is it a competitor, it won the competition in this case because Verizon's DSL service left something to be desired.

The fact that B > A in some aspect doesn't mean that A is not in competition with B. These are Internet services. Dial-up is slow and ties up your phone line. DSL, in this case, requires a surname change. Often for low-usage Dial-up is cheaper and slightly more mobile. Dial-up won this round.

Re:Monopoly

[cayenne8]

"The question is more along the lines of "why the hell do they need an obscenity filter for last names in the first place"? "

Maybe they just don't like Jewish people?

Re:Monopoly

[dyefade]

I know that his last name is linked to his heritage, possibly race, which is what they are (or were) discriminating against.
Absolutely NOTHING to do with terrorism incidentally.

Re:Monopoly

[MindlessAutomata]

That doesn't change the fact that there's competition.

The entire system is screwed up because of how the infrastructure is set up, but you cannot claim that Verizon is a monopoly if there is a competition, even if the competition charges more. Service does not have to directly mirror another company's in order to be considered "competition", if it did, there would be no point to competition anyway.

Re:Monopoly

[Ghubi]

No I will not RTFA but the summary said he was trying to upgrade from dial up

Re:Monopoly

[Ghubi]

Why then did the managers he spoke with suggest he change his surname rather than simply choose a different email address? I'm confused.

Re:Monopoly

[owski]

So, the question is, why is Verizon a monopoly? It was granted by the government. All monopolies are directly or indirectly caused by government intervention into the market.

The only government solution to monopolies is to have the government simply step aside.

Re:Monopoly

[fm6]

"Monopoly" is defined in terms of a marketplace. If consumers don't have a practical alternative to a supplier, then that is a monopoly. The presence of impractical alternatives is irrelevant. It only Toyota were allowed to sell cars and small trucks, it would be a monopoly, no matter how many people bought Peterbilt rigs.

Another detail: the landline companies clearly do have a monopoly on the copper "last-mile" networks that all DSL providers use. In theory, these networks are equally available to all ISPs. But by an amazing coincidence, the dominant ISP in any given market is always the one that belongs to the local landline company. that's just not consistent with the idea that the DSL market is "open".

Re:Monopoly

[_merlin]

Considering what a speakeasy is (was), I'd hope SpeakEasy was a bit more lax in policing names.

Re:Monopoly

[johndmartiniii]

Yah, I sort of took for granted the non-monopoly as default state. In reality, the situation where I live is worse than a non-monopoly. I live in Egypt, where there are 4 companies which provide DSL. All of the companies are privately owned, save one, and each of the privates rent their lines from the government-owned one. In order to switch companies, you have to get a code from your current company to give to the new company. In order to discourage this, the process takes several months at the shortest. It is a nightmare. On second thought, I might have done the same thing this poor bastard with a shitty name did after all.

Re:Monopoly

[mixmatch]

Nothing anywhere except in your post links this incident to racism. You missed the whole point. They were discriminating against him because his name contained the word shit, not because it was Jewish. If there were a pattern or something said that correlated with your conjecture, I might think differently, but you seem to either not know the meaning of words or simply take every situation and try to find a deeper reason or explanation for situations that are obvious.

Re:Monopoly

[mixmatch]

There is still no correlation with the story, and no, religious discrimination is not the same as racism.

Re:Monopoly

[Cramer]

And how does SpeakEasy provide your connection? By reselling connectivity from, usually, the local phone company -- in some cases, from 3rd party people like Covad, et. al.

Re:Monopoly

[Cramer]

It's "open" in that anyone can get access. However, the local phone company has the obvious advantage as they get to charge anyone for access -- rack space, power, access to the copper, and even "escorted access" to your own equipment in their CO.

So, while your local Bell can sell you DSL for 45$, they make sure no one else can. Back when DSL was an emerging technology, Bellsouth (in NC) wanted $60 per UNE (unbundled network element, aka. a dry copper pair.) At the time, a BUSINESS phone line was $45, and Bellsouth had zero DSL gear anywhere and no plans to ever have any. They were selling dialup (just like everybody else, 'tho they entered the game at the end and used their monopoly position to push many ISPs under), so they bolstered their dialup business by preventing anyone from offering anything else. Once DSL caught on, they started installing DSLAMs everywhere (and I do mean everywhere... CO's, pedestals, phone poles, etc.) and undercut *everyone*.

Verizon is being very underhanded and smart. As they roll out FiOS, they remove the copper wiring. While there are numerous laws requiring "open access" to the copper, there are no similar requirements for their fiber. Once the fiber is in place, they remove the copper and all chance of any (meaningful) competition.

Re:Monopoly

[crossmr]

Not to mention the company that owns the last mile has likely been in an area for a very long time. They have brand recognition. It stands to reason that they're going to get most of the business. People are not the discriminating customers that those around here believe ourselves to be.

Re:Monopoly

[DavidTC]

How is that worse then a no choice at all?

At least there new customers have options, so companies at least have to pretend to keep customers slightly satisfied.

Re:Monopoly

[residieu]

They do have an economic incentive. If they had a better filter, or were more flexible in making exceptions to it's demands, they would have Mr. Libshitz's business, and be receiving money from him each month. Because they refused, they don't have his business and have lost some revenue. Now, just his business is probably not enough to pay for a chance in policy, but if there are others who have the same problem, it might add up. A monopoly on luxuries still has to worry about driving potential customers away (they may not be able to get the product anywhere else, but they can still choose to do without the product.)

Re:Monopoly

[Anonymous Coward]

Rejecting Libshitz because it has "shit" in it is not anti-semitism, it's just carelessness. Just like rejecting customers from Scunthorpe because of the word cunt is not anti-lincolnshirite.

Re:Monopoly

[MindlessAutomata]

...so?

Again, it's still competition. And regardless, the problem is one of infrastructure. This isn't an easy problem to fix. Beating your chest on how much you hate big business isn't going to solve any problems, too.

Re:Monopoly

[oracle128]

But if Pepsi were the only soft drink around, and you didn't like it, would you expect them to change the taste of it just for you? And if they didn't, would it be because no other beverage company has bothered to set up shop in your town, or because the changes needed to service you aren't financially viable?

Re:Monopoly

[iivel]

Sounds like a classic BOFH setup:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/30/bofh_2008_episode_20/

Re:Monopoly

[armareum]

from TFA:

When it was time to enter their user name and create an e-mail address, Verizon wouldn't let them complete the job.

" 'We can't install it because your name has - in it.' "
...
The Libshitzes got the same answer from the supervisor, who suggested they try misspelling their last name

Re:Monopoly

[armareum]

Take a look at the other examples of the Scunthorpe problem. You'll see that mistakes by obscenity filters are not restricted to monopolies. That there appears to be a DSL monopoly in his area (I haven't seen any proof of this yet) may have exacerbated his problem, and may allow it to continue to happen to others. But it didn't *cause* his problem - hence why I questioned why being a monopoly was relevant to this example of a mistake by an obscenity filter.

To say that I'm correct only through pedantry, but in the same sentence tell me that I'm wrong ("..main problem boils down to Verizon being a monopoly" - well, that doesn't make any sense. You're just trolling me, right?

Re:Monopoly

[xianfa]

The monopoly lies in the fact that he has to use dial-up. TFA reads to me that for high speed internet service, Verizon is the only game in town for this man. Unfortunately this is the case for millions of internet users.

Re:Monopoly

[Lumpy]

It wasn't until the press got involved that someone said "Well, this needs personal attention." Which is odd because he was talking to people all along, aside from the initial online signup attempt.

No it's not. This is VERY typical of a large corporation. Nobody wants to do anything outside normal operating procedures unless the company or a higher up executive is embarrassed publicly.

Comcast would not have changed any of their behaviors if they did not get called on the carpet in the press and then the FCC. It's called get away with it as long as you can and this is STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURES in every corporation on this planet.

Re:Monopoly

[oldhack]

Your pedantry is that of semantic hair-splitting that misses the forest for the tree, and wrong.

Re:Monopoly

[Anonymous Coward]

So, you claim that Verizon is the only internet service provider in Phillie and that they are so by power of monopoly? You are wrong, I know you are because I am employed by one of their broadband competitors and we have customers, lots of them in Phillie. The crap people will put themselves through to get some lousy internet service absolutely blows my mind. I understand this case and I think it is ridiculous and I applaud the customer for his efforts and for prevailing. My company has no such policies and he would not have had that issue with us. But if you are so dissatisfied with a service that you are not obligated to why would you just bitch and call it a monopoly and continue to subscribe to it, why not do what I do and cancel it and go to the competition? But I will take your advice, the next time a customer refers to my company as a monopoly, I will refer them to our competition in that market, and then punch them in the face.

Re:Monopoly

[armareum]

I'm wrong that not all not everything bad that a monopoly does is *caused* by them being a monopoly? I'm sorry, I don't understand that position. I've already shown that a monopoly isn't required for this problem to occur and I've agreed with you that being a monopoly will not help.

I get the feeling you're not prepared to countenance that I might be right now that you've publicly stated to the opposite, and so I'm not going to argue further with someone who's replies consist only of name-calling and telling me I'm wrong.

Re:Monopoly

[GrayCalx]

Or if someone tries to make the point that rage over mundane issues is not on the rise in our society I'll just show them your post.

Then give him a really big hug!

Re:Monopoly

[mi]

You did not read the article... And neither did the submitter nor the editor...

The argument was not over providing him with service. It was over his choice of the user-name:

informing him that he could not have the user name because it didn't comply with company rules.

So the couple returned the Verizon DSL kit.

See? There was no problem ordering — and getting the "DSL kit" delivered. It was, when he wanted to use something like "hlibshitz" for login, that the problem began — the computer auto-rejected his choice of login.

Not that it is a particularly smart rule either (especially leaving the tech-support unable to overwrite it), but neither his being a Vietnam vet nor Verizon's special monopoly status have anything to do with it.

Then punch him in the face.

I think, you owe that guy an apology and a couple of beers... Unless he already had you knocked-out in response, that is.

Check and triple-check your facts next time — especially if the subject is "big business" and the posting editor is kdawson.

Re:Monopoly

[Cramer]

No, it isn't competition as the local phone company gets paid no matter who provides the IP address.

Case in point... I have an earthlink cable modem. The only part of it that's Earthlink (aka. mindspring) is the ip address. 100% of the system is timewarner (roadrunner.) I am billed by and pay pay TW; not earthlink.

Re:Monopoly

[oldhack]

Amareum, I argued against your post, but did not call you "names". The difference here appears to be one of context for the semantic of "cause". I think we can agree to disagree.

Re:Monopoly

[phulegart]

Too true.. I got caught up in the moment and forgot how hard it is to get people in tech support (or customer support) to step away from the scripts and use their heads.

Re:Monopoly

[Alex Belits]

As many people pointed out, not allowing him to use his name was a crappy service that would turned him away from Verizon to another provider -- except there wasn't any practical alternative due to Verizon being a monopoly. The problem is not with severity of the product defect but with having no way to fix it due to laziness of Verizon despite obviousness of the defect and triviality of the solution.

There are plenty of other issues with the same company, however they are usually less obvious and require understanding of underlying technology to be recognized. This is blatantly obvious.

Re:Monopoly

[mi]

Yes, monopoly sucks, but it was not so bad — in this particular case — as the submitter and editor (kdawson) made it out to be, and not enough to justify the GP's mouth-foaming reaction.

And it always sucks, yet, this very forum was all the rage for several years over a monopoly called "municipal wifi"...

Re:Monopoly

[ShadowsHawk]

I switched to DSLExtreme about two months ago and gave AT&T the boot. I'm saving $7 per month and I have twice the speed.

Re:Monopoly

[Alex Belits]

And it always sucks, yet, this very forum was all the rage for several years over a monopoly called "municipal wifi"...

Municipal wifi is noncommercial, therefore it can't be a monopoly to begin with. It does not achieve control over the market, it destroys the market, however so does freely available breathing air. Not everything should be on the market in the first place.

I find it extremely offensive that people like you treat economy as if it has the goal of providing a way for producers to squeeze wealth out of the consumers. The only reason why it exists is because it provides benefit for consumers -- the fact that there is a profit to be made is merely a side effect that may decrease and disappear as technology and society develop. If service can be better provided by a public entity, and incumbent businesses on the market can't provide a superior alternative, there is absolutely no reason to keep them around, there is no "right to milk the public".

Re:Monopoly

[mi]

Municipal wifi is noncommercial, therefore it can't be a monopoly to begin with.

Why? According to some definition of "monopoly"? But I don't even care, because it is irrelevant to the argument. As you admit, municipal WiFi would've eliminated other possible service-providers thus limiting my choices. A year later they would've implemented the same feature as Verizon (rejecting usernames with indecent substrings), or installed porn-filters, and we would've had to start punching them in the faces, as the original poster suggested.

Monopoly sucks, and government's monopoly is even worse than a commercial one.

I find it extremely offensive that people like you treat economy as if it has the goal of providing a way for producers to squeeze wealth out of the consumers.

Yada-yada. I don't treat it this way at all. But that's irrelevant. So let's not drag on.

Re:Monopoly

[Alex Belits]

There is nothing inherently wrong with limiting the number of options you can choose from. It's wrong to give control over those options to the entity interested in providing inferior service for higher prices, however local population as a whole (that controls municipal services) is not such an entity.

I am sure, you also want to have the "freedom" to unknowingly consume harmful ingredients in your food that big bad government bans when it discovers their effect on public health, "freedom" to sell yourself into slavery, "freedom" to exempt yourself from police protection in exchange for tax refund, and other similar "freedoms" and "choices" that similarly dangerous for everyone around yourself.

Obviously..

[scubamage]

...OP was full ot Libshitz.

Re:Obviously..

[RDW]

Good thing he didn't live in Scunthorpe.

Re:Obviously..

[unlametheweak]

Good thing he didn't live in Dildo, Newfoundland Dildo, Newfoundland

Re:Obviously..

[MrNaz]

Good thing he didn't live here

Re:Obviously..

[srjh]

Or Fucking, Austria.

Re:Obviously..

[unlametheweak]

Meh, you are redundant by perhaps a few seconds. Too bad (although I wish Moderators would double-check time-stamps before downgrading a person's Karma).

Re:Obviously..

[Anonymous Coward]

Fixed that for ya (hence AC)

Re:Obviously..

[hvm2hvm]

He actually posted first. Take a look at the post ID. 24454787 versus 24454791.

Re:Obviously..

[bhima]

I don't live all that far from Fucking. It's a tiny, tiny village and they can not afford to replace the signs that get stolen... mostly by tourists from the UK.

So when you go to fucking, please just the pictures of the Fucking Signs and do not steal the fucking signs.

Really.

Re:Obviously..

[thasmudyan]

I don't get it. Why don't they just sell their Fucking signs to anyone who wants one?

Re:Obviously..

[bhima]

It's a couple of things... one they don't want the notoriety, two they don't have store in fucking to sell the signs in, and three they aren't that interested in the whole enterprise. My suggestion of Fucking Sign vending machine was greeted with odd looks.

There was a kid from a neighboring town who wanted to sell T-Shirts but I don't think that ever got approved either.

Re:Obviously..

[srjh]

Theft isn't as much of a problem any more, they've welded the Fucking signs to the posts.

Re:Obviously..

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone with a modicum of command in English grammar should know that "fucking" is a proper name, therefore it should be capitalised.

Re:Obviously..

[morgan_greywolf]

So, what you're saying is that Fucking tourists from the UK visit and then steal the Fucking signs. Since the Fucking village is so small, they can't afford to replace the Fucking signs.

And what you're asking is, then, for the Fucking tourists to keep their Fucking hands off the Fucking signs? Sounds Fucking good to me.

Re:Obviously..

[Anonymous Coward]

So when you go to fucking, please just the pictures of the Fucking Signs and do not steal the fucking signs.

Anyone with a modicum of command in English grammar knows that "fucking" is a proper name and should therefore be capitalised.

Re:Obviously..

[JamesP]

I bet you have a lake in Fucking where people fish a lot of God Damn fish, isn't it??

Re:Obviously..

[smchris]

I grew up not that far from Buttzville. Yeah, they gave up on replacing the signs too.

Re:Obviously..

[sukotto]

The less you get of something, the more obsessed you become. :-)

Re:Obviously..

[Punto]

The should just sell the fucking signs at the fucking gift shop then.

Re:Obviously..

[j01123]

Or Fucking, Austria.

Imagine if Johann Fux had moved there and tried to get DSL service.

Re:Obviously..

[Anonymous Coward]

Or Hell, Norway.

Re:Obviously..

[Anonymous Coward]

No, he was born and raised in West Philadelphia.

Re:Obviously..

[mjwx]

So, what you're saying is that Fucking tourists from the UK visit and then steal the Fucking signs. Since the Fucking village is so small, they can't afford to replace the Fucking signs.

And what you're asking is, then, for the Fucking tourists to keep their Fucking hands off the Fucking signs? Sounds Fucking good to me.

Gordon Ramsey posts on Slashdot.

Re:Obviously..

[Capt James McCarthy]

"There was a kid from a neighboring town who wanted to sell T-Shirts but I don't think that ever got approved either."

I bet he was pissed he didn't get the Fucking approval.

So are the Fucking town folk called Fuckers or Fuckings?

Re:Obviously..

[Himring]

All you need to do is use a portable fucking steel saw....

Re:Obviously..

[MarkGriz]

There was a kid from a neighboring town who wanted to sell T-Shirts but I don't think that ever got approved either.

Let me guess...

"My parents went on a Fucking vacation and all they brought back for me was this lousy Fucking t-shirt"

Re:Obviously..

[againjj]

So, what you're saying is that Fucking tourists from the UK visit and then steal the Fucking signs. Since the Fucking village is so small, they can't afford to replace the Fucking signs.

And what you're asking is, then, for the Fucking tourists to keep their Fucking hands off the Fucking signs? Sounds [censored] good to me.

Hey! No swearing!

Change of name

[Fred_A]

In the end he changed his name to "Harold I. Libshitz" and everything finally went through.

Re:Change of name

[Prune]

I don't get it :?

Re:Change of name

[Anonymous Coward]

I could be wrong, but I think that the joke is that the problem was with is first name, Herman, and not his last name, Libshitz.

Re:Change of name

[Anonymous Coward]

His first name, not the last one.

Re:Change of name

[jamesh]

I remember it as a skit from a Monty Python or Not The Nine o'Clock News or something from that era. The joke is probably much older. It goes something like:

A man walks into the office of the department of name changes:
Man: I'd like to change my name please
Clerk: Okay, what is your name?
Man: Colin Tittybumface
Clerk: I see. And what would you like to change your name to?
Man: Roger Tittybumface

Re:Change of name

[Anonymous Coward]

Mad TV "Dept. of Porn Star Registration"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylRbo7WidLA

Re:Change of name

[Anonymous Coward]

the joke --> .
.
.
.
. (this is the whoosh area)
.
.
.
you --> x

Re:Change of name

[elrous0]

It's pronounced ASWEAPAY!

Let me be the first to say...

[CaptainNerdCave]

What the $@%#?

hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

libshitz-0.9.5 - Digestive management architecture

Most famous Lipshitz

[BadAnalogyGuy]

People who have odd names (it seems especially prevalent in the Jewish community) are at a serious disadvantage in the culture that considers the name odd. This is the reason that the most famous Lipshitz ever changed his name to Ralph Lauren.

Re:Most famous Lipshitz

[Anonymous Coward]

What? Surely the most famous Lips(c)hitz is
Rudolf Lipschitz after whom Lipschitz continuity is named. Come on guys lets stick ti "stuff that matters".

By the way it looks like Herman should have kept the "c", if indeed his family did at some time drop it for ease of spelling.

Re:Most famous Lipshitz

[me at werk]

I thought the most famous Lipshitz ever was Dr. Lipshitz from Rugrats

Re:Most famous Lipshitz

[Ungulate]

I was once a patient of a certain Dr. Skank. Apparently it's a proud Norwegian(?) name that his father refused to let him change. I felt so juvenile, but it cracked me up every time.

Re:Most famous Lipshitz

[Freultwah]

...and in related news, I do not recommend visiting my country to anybody whose last name is Seavitt or Munn. You can only laugh at somebody's misfortune for so long. (5 minutes tops.) Plus, they probably wouldn't be able to use online forms, either. (Seavitt means pig's cunt and munn is the rude way to refer to male genitalia.)

Re:Most famous Lipshitz

[ff1324]

I guess they weren't going to let Barney Miller have his DSL either...Hal Linden's real name was Harold Lipshitz.

Re:Most famous Lipshitz

[Anonymous Coward]

Like Johann Gambolputty .... of Ulm ?

Re:Most famous Lipshitz

[jollyreaper]

People who have odd names (it seems especially prevalent in the Jewish community) are at a serious disadvantage in the culture that considers the name odd. This is the reason that the most famous Lipshitz ever changed his name to Ralph Lauren.

The second-most famous Lipshitz changed his name to Dirty Sanchez.

Re:Most famous Lipshitz

[sleigher]

Kinda like the dentist near where I live. Dr. Plack. I always liked that.

Re:Most famous Lipshitz

[Anonymous Coward]

I always thought it was Barry Lipschitz.

Re:Most famous Lipshitz

[swv3752]

I remember working tech support and getting a call for a Harold Bawlz. "Go ahead and call me Harry, everyone else does."

Re:Most famous Lipshitz

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I remember our hs class peppering our calculus teacher with questions about the "Lipschitz condition". Sounds like herpes, doesn't it?

Re:Most famous Lipshitz

[IndustrialComplex]

Except I'm in engineering and so is my wife. My name has Hebrew roots and the translation is actually pretty cool sounding and if you google it, it resolves to something called the "My last name" effect (assigned to an effect in quantum physics). My wife, on the otherhand, has been asked (seriously),

"Is your name... Klingon?"

So, oddly enough, it works pretty well in our high-tech fields. I'm really tempted to start some sort of custom-car company with our names combined. :)

Re:Most famous Lipshitz

[bamwham]

My wife got her teeth checked by Dr. Pane for a long time. It would have been more poetic if the hygenist was named Pane, but still gave me a giggle every time I heard it.

Re:Most famous Lipshitz

[Achromatic1978]

St Vincent's Hospital in Melbourne, Australia, has a ward called the Aikenhead Wing.

Re:Most famous Lipshitz

[Anonymous Coward]

If your lipshitz, what's your asshole do?

Re:Most famous Lipshitz

[Doctor_Jest]

Obligatory "Bad Boys" quote... (from the Kurgan!)

"Hey, if your lipshitz, what does your asshole do?"

Thank you, I'm here all week. :)

Re:Most famous Lipshitz

[Kabuthunk]

I had a dentist called 'Dr. Blight'. He even joked about it himself, saying that it sounded like a supervillain.

Re:Most famous Lipshitz

[Anonymous Coward]

People who have odd names (it seems especially prevalent in the Jewish community) are at a serious disadvantage in the culture that considers the name odd. This is the reason that the most famous Lipshitz ever changed his name to Ralph Lauren.

That's Lifshitz, not Lipshitz.

Re:Most famous Lipshitz

[Anonymous Coward]

According to Wikipedia that's Ralph Lifshitz.

Re:Most famous Lipshitz

[Anonymous Coward]

People who have odd names (it seems especially prevalent in the Jewish community)

I was going to say that you seem to be trying to live up to your nick; but then I realized that then your nick would have had to be "ignorantprobablyanamericanguy" though of course saying so might make me appear to be as much so as you. Maybe you need to read/get out/live more, but neither Smith nor Jones (top 5) are exactly original AMERICAN names either.

Re:Most famous Lipshitz

[pimpimpim]

The famous physicist Lifshitz comes to mind. But then again, dick-headed people like this aren't likely to ever encounter his work .

Re:Most famous Lipshitz

[Evildonald]

Try having a surname with a non alpha character in it. There is nothing like a web page to tell you to type your name exactly as it appears on your credit card to then tell you the apostrophe in your name is not valid.

Re:Most famous Lipshitz

[illegalcortex]

The most unbelievable one I've ever personally run into was this one. Would have been much better if he'd went into urology, though.

Re:Most famous Lipshitz

[HeronBlademaster]

It would help if you told us what country you live in. Or at least what language you speak there.

Re:Most famous Lipshitz

[lilomar]

Wait, wait, wait. You just said 'cunt' but you deliberately avoided 'penis'?

Re:Most famous Lipshitz

[lilomar]

"Pop, six, squish, ah-ah, Cicero, Lipshitz."

Re:Most famous Lipshitz

[ArsonSmith]

Yea I use to laugh a lot at Richard Pigkunt.

Re:Most famous Lipshitz

[Morty]

"Essex", "Sussex", and "Scunthorpe" are some "real" British names that also trip profanity filters.

Most English taboo words are very short. Some -- particularly "sex", "tit", and "shit" -- are particularly likely to occur when combining two words, or when translating from other languages, because the patterns are so simple.

So if you're going to build a profanity filter, at least build in some kind of override mechanism that can be used for these cases.

Re:Most famous Lipshitz

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, but the third most famous Lipshitz changed his name to Asswipe (pronounced "Ozweepay"),

Re:Most famous Lipshitz

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, he changed his name to *Ralph*?

Wait, what?

[untaken_name]

So, let me see if I have this straight: Verizon wanted someone to change their last name in order to get DSL, and that person didn't do it??? What, are you going to get a cablemodem or something? Just change your name, already. This is internet connectivity we're talking about here. It's important. It isn't like you haven't been getting libshitz for yoru name all your life, anyway.

Re:Wait, what?

[Standard User 79]

I read the article. They wanted him to change his verizon email address. They were fine with giving him dsl service, etc.. Most likely it was a problem because some programmer hard coded a prof filter in email creation.

Re:Wait, what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well.. it's not like programmers run around coding prof filters for all the inputs without someone requesting it specifically..

Re:Wait, what?

[Hognoxious]

They could at least try to do it properly, although chances are it was some idiot (probably from marketing) who specified it wrong.

Re:Wait, what?

[untaken_name]

Very true. However, it's funnier for Verizon to want him to change his last name, so I prefer to believe that version.

Re:Wait, what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh heh

I used to have a multiple word surname. This is impossible in the USA if you want to make use of things like credit cards, a drivers license, online banking etc. Having an unpronouncable name is bad enough, but when your surname and middle names are different on different legal documents, it's a frequent hassle at best, legal trouble at worst.

This Libshitz guy has it easy, all he has to do is change the spelling. Just adapt, change your name and fix the problem for your family for ever.

Re:Wait, what?

[YttriumOxide]

Multiple word surname... like "von Trapp", "de Waal", "Le Blanc", "van der Heijden" and so on?
If those sorts of names really do cause a problem in US legal documents, I can imagine there'd be a LOT of very unhappy people there... Surely with the US background of immigration from many different parts of Europe, these sorts of names can't be all that uncommon can they? I'd think there must be a more sensible solution than changing your name?

Re:Wait, what?

[unlametheweak]

In the end it doesn't really matter. This person had to go through various levels of management to get his problem resolved. This indicates to me that this is not just a programming problem, but an inherent problem with upper management. People (Managers) need to be fired for this incompetence. It will likely never happen because incompetent (upper Management) is unlikely to fire incompetent lower Management.

Re:Wait, what?

[Anonymous Coward]

I read the article...

You must be new here.

Re:Wait, what?

[ShadowRangerRIT]

Yeah, but they aren't thought of when programmers code name fields. I have a friend with a "van ***" name (*** for privacy, since the name is a corruption unique to him and his sisters due to Ellis Island name changes). While the problem is being fixed at larger companies, smaller companies frequently:

1. Remove the space between names
2. Capitalize the "van"
3. Hyphenate the names
4. Make "van" his middle name
5. Flat out reject it as an invalid name

Re:Wait, what?

[pjt33]

It's the other way round if you only have one name and move to Spain, especially if people copy your details from the photocopy of your passport which they inevitably ask for. They assume that your middle name is your first surname and your surname is your second surname. A friend of mine gets statements from his bank addressed to Sr Christopher, which is his middle name.

Re:Wait, what?

[happylight]

Sounds more like the filter is hard coded and couldn't easily be changed.

Management: What? It's his last name? Just let him have it.
Low level Tech: But we couldn't get around the filter.
Management: ...... See if he'll use a different user name.

Only when the media gets involved did they feel worth it to bring in a programmer to change the coding or possibly just enter his name a different way then manually edit it in the db to get around the filter.

Re:Wait, what?

[Hognoxious]

incompetent (upper Management) is unlikely to fire incompetent lower Management.

Usually it's competent lower management who get fired, because they're more of a threat to those above them. Someone should write a book about it.

Re:Wait, what?

[unlametheweak]

You may have a point there, but you don't back up your point with any evidence. Anecdotally I have met and dealt with low level managers who were (IMHO) incompetent, or at the least competent enough to meet their metrics and nothing more. This may be a bias on my part as I've only dealt primarily with low level managers.

In my view high level Managers should ensure that low level managers are doing their job, so on the extreme level a CEO of a company like Enron should have no excuses as to the conduct of their employees (however removed they are from the Top Boss). Granted people at that level have historically mainly been involved in marketing efforts and only deal in the abstractions of the business side (i.e. cut 10% of the workforce and add the remaining 10% of the responsibilities to other employees). It's simple. Simple is as Simple does.

Low level Managers, in my experience, are more likely to attribute bad (high-level Management mandates) unto their employees. So for example if I need to do 10% more work while working in the same time constraints, and I can only manage to do an extra 5% more work then it has been my experience that LOW level managers will attribute the problem to me (and the other employees). I have experienced little empathy but a lot of Bullshit from Managers. Granted I am generalizing; I think I am more likely to remember bad examples than good (or mediocre) examples.

It should be emphasized that I am not disputing your claim, but am merely offering my own perspective.

Best regards,

UTW

Re:Wait, what?

[unlametheweak]

Actually as a side note and an addendum, I think it is pertinent to note that I did work for various ISPs doing (low-level, first tier) tech support. I also remember talking to a former Manager (who was fired) about these issues (he happened to be in the ISP business himself, but on the sales side as opposed to the tech support side). The Manager in question was somebody who was promoted to middle Management and subsequently "laid off" when he noted some disagreements that he had with his boss. This person I happened to meet not through business or job related contacts but rather from a government sponsored job finding program.

Re:Wait, what?

[YttriumOxide]

Ick... that's just nasty. I've never actually come across any software like this. In general, everything I've seen just treats "first name" and "last name" as separate strings, so first name + last name would be something like "Maria\0von Trapp\0". I can see if you treated it as a single string "Maria von Trapp\0" and then tried to determine the last name by getting the text after the last space it could be messy, but I wasn't aware there were any serious developers with that little foresight! (also, isn't it EASIER to work with two strings rather than one and then parsing it?!)

1st pun!

[Anonymous Coward]

Must have given him the shitz!

Re:1st pun!

[odiroot]

Shit was so cash!

This has nothing to do with his name..

[XaXXon]

It has everything to do with the EMAIL ADDRESS he apparently wasn't willing to change. They wouldn't grant him the address he requested. All he had to do was pick another email address and he would have been fine. I'm sorry, but you are not entitled to any email address you want.

Re:This has nothing to do with his name..

[OldManAndTheC]

Oh come on. Don't defend these losers. He asked for an email address based on his name, just like millions of other customers.

It's a perfectly reasonable request, which Verizon denied solely because some arbitrary filter detected a naughty word buried in the address, a word that would only be noticed by someone with a juvenile mindset. The filter is obviously intended to screen out truly nasty phrases, like "verizonisfullofshit@verizon.com", but like most such filters it is crude and inflexible, and unsuited for its purpose.

And to make things worse, no one at Verizon had the authority or inclination to override this zero tolerance policy for the substring "shit". The only choice they gave him, if he wanted DSL, was to select an email address that was not based on his name. Naturally he refused, as would anyone with an ounce of pride in his family name.

Re:This has nothing to do with his name..

[Auckerman]

They were also giving the reason that he couldn't have an e-mail address with his name in it was because it was offensive. That's not a valid reason to decline an e-mail address based off a person's name and he was quite reasonably offended by that. It's unreasonable to ban an e-mail address based off the clients name merely because you find a few select letters in his name fit a banned word. I know that, you know that, he knew that and now Verizon realizes their mistake.

You can be cut and dry about what went on, but seriously, life shouldn't be that way. If we all looked at and dealt with each other on that level, I think it would be time for me to find another country to live in.

Re:This has nothing to do with his name..

[William Ager]

While it is true that the summary is very misleading, there is still a problem with the handling of the case. While there could be many legitimate and understandable reasons why someone couldn't have a particular email address, denying an email address of someone's name due to a policy against expletives is astoundingly offensive and inappropriate; in certain cases, it could arguably have legal implications.

Re:This has nothing to do with his name..

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry, but you are not entitled to any email address you want.

Yes you are, read the fucking constitution.

Re:This has nothing to do with his name..

[rolfwind]

It's a perfectly reasonable request, which Verizon denied solely because some arbitrary filter detected a naughty word buried in the address, a word that would only be noticed by someone with a juvenile mindset.

Well, I would think everybody would notice the bad word. It's in the cultural mindset now. Have you ever noticed that kids love bad words so much because it's forbidden, and it's forbidden only because of the reactions it gets out of adults? If they wouldn't garner such a overreaction most of the time, I'd think they'd be as bland as any other word. Funny, the sway a word can have over people while the synonyms are accepted (which I think was Carlin's point with his famous 11 words routine).

Re:This has nothing to do with his name..

[DaedalusHKX]

You're just now starting to look? Sorry bud, the good real estate is already sold. You'll be renting from those who had the sense to look before. Most places royally suck. It makes just as little sense elsewhere. You'll be paying lots and lots of "imposits" they don't call'em taxes, but they have far more of them, and you'll be submitting paperwork far more often for having the right to take a shit or to walk somewhere... or *gasp* try taking the bus while being foreign. The upside is being an English speaker, for the time being, incurs you their mercy. They realize how fucked up the English speaking side of the world really is... the problem, of course, is that they don't notice that shit having been imported into their part of the world also.

Life is good, its fucked up bureaucratic mindsets like these idiots at Verizon that is prevalent through out governing structures. These inflexible "beg me to get your rights abided by, or your service that you pay for fulfilled" type assholes seem attracted to these jobs, while no sane individuals are. Therein lies the issue, schools are such structures, so in time they attract the same type of assholes as the other bureaucracies, ensuring that they raise mostly the same type of assholes. Sure, they turn out sane individuals too, because some of us just don't take well to the programming, but the vast majorities do, so when you see the quietly obedient student in school, who never challenges a rule or bends or breaks one, remember, that will be the mindless aparatchik that will tell you what they CAN'T do for you as A, a paying customer, and B, an honest man or woman who has done nothing wrong and trades on your own name.

That being said, I'm fairly sure this doctor fellow is also doing business on that email address, and people know him because of his unusual name. Put two and two together, this fellow probably gets quite a bit of business because of his rep. That rep is partly based on his name by which people come to know him. To change it now would make him seem like every other mentally emasculated individual that lays claim to the role "man" or "male" but doesn't quite live up to any standard of integrity. Personally I'm glad he, or the enquirer dragged Verizon through the mud. By the same token, I'm not sure why he patronized their service. Speakeasy.net is a MUCH better provider and they reach out and touch his area, and have MUCH better service. Having been a customer while up north, I'd recommend them any day of the week.

Re:This has nothing to do with his name..

[johannesg]

Could you maybe refer to us to the RFC that forbids the use of undesirable words in email addresses? If his name were l@bshitz, I understand why it wouldn't be possible, but this is just political correctness taken to its most silly extreme.

What's next? Should be be forbidden to get a telephone number in his own name? Not being allowed to open a bank account with his name on it? Be refused entry to any English-speaking countries for having a rude name?

Note that the article is just as guilty: they do not want to print the word "shit", asking the guy what they are supposed to print instead...

Re:This has nothing to do with his name..

[thetoadwarrior]

Yeah why should he have the option of using his last name in his email address like everyone else? The guy is obviously a selfish, uncaring and doesn't care that his surname is now going to scar the life of many young children whose minds were pure before bumping into his email address online.

Re:This has nothing to do with his name..

[Anonymous Coward]

That's 7 words...

Re:This has nothing to do with his name..

[MichaelSmith]

If I moved to Israel I would hate to be told that "Michael Smith" sounds like a rude word in the local language and I couldn't use my normal email address.

Jewish people here occasionally have a chuckle at the name of our Friends Of The Zoos society.

Re:This has nothing to do with his name..

[MichaelSmith]

He is more likely in the future to be required by law to have an email address in his own name.

Re:This has nothing to do with his name..

[Anonymous Coward]

you first

Re:This has nothing to do with his name..

[DaedalusHKX]

I usually tend to use this angle when it actually applies. If he had already paid for service, they were being scum by denying him a legitimate email and violating THEIR contract. I have a feeling that being Jewish, this fellow would have been educated on the issues of contracts (the Torah seems to be quite specific that contracts are the way things are done, between humans and between them and their god(s), devils, etc). I'm fairly sure it wasn't just dragging them through the mud that did the trick. However, the Constitution has no provisions for "large corporations violating contracts into which they entered voluntarily wanting someone's money but failing in the providing of full service as paid for"... stuff like that. Laws and rules about that precede most national governments, and tend to be grandfathered in, since they work.

This is just your typical bureaucratic monkeys being bureaucratic monkeys, that usually get attracted to bureaucratic jobs (management, government, etc...) and doing exactly what and WHY they are hired. Being bureaucratic monkeys, with just enough firing neurons to be annoying bureaucratic monkeys, but not enough to actually be reasonable men... this is usually why you hear of bureaucratic monkeys, or monkeys obedient to bureaucrats tazering paralized kids 19 times or shooting old ladies full of juice even though they're wheelchair bound. Bureaucratic monkeys are examples of scumbags that would've been aborted (post natal if need be) by any self respecting parent, long before they got to breed more bureaucratic monkeys... until they bred and over bred to the situation we have today.

Again, the Constitution of the USA or for the USA (depending on which one you take an oath to when you get sworn in to your bureaucratic job) has nothing on this issue... this is purely a contract law issue, and that precedes the Constitution by several centuries at the least.

Also, his name containing an expletive can easily be explained as NON expletive, and can be interpreted as such by any lawyer or judge with enough functional brain matter. Why, you ask? Simple. Cultural difference. If a man who is a DOCTOR can carry that name and not change it, you can be fairly sure he has traded on it.

That being said i've seen some screwy names in the past, so while I want to believe this article is bogus, I am unsurprised if it is true. Bureaucratic monkeys make every part of the world miserable, where the locals allow them to infest. Voting has never been a cure. It wasn't when they did it in the name of the king, or the oligarch, or the tyrant (in the greek meaning of word) or the dictator or "the people's party" or any other reason for which bureaucratic monkeys perform their unquestioning duties. People to whom "duty" is a primary prerogative, should concern you, worry you, and scare you. These are the monkeys who shot kids in the back of the head for merely not complying with the new "party" or for their parents being rich (see Che and Cuba literature on this issue). Sure, here they're obeying a different "letter of the law", but its all the same. Monkey see, monkey do. We don't need "less abortions", we need a lot more. They should be looking for bureaucratic monkey genes, but who would be doing the legislating but other bureaucratic monkeys... the sense of survival is strong in the bureaucratic monkeys.

MUD: Thou canst not put this genie back into the bottle. The genie reads a scroll of rules and regulations. Thou art Screwed... royally, and without vaseline.

Re:This has nothing to do with his name..

[timmarhy]

"bad words"? what are you fucking 5 years old? this whole thing is insane and anyone who defends it needs to be quarantined and watched closely.

Re:This has nothing to do with his name..

[timmarhy]

his last name is libshitz, it's not really THAT obvious that it contains shit in the name. he wasn't some 15yo trying to take the piss, and frankly i'm astounded this went past a 1st level manager.

the fact that you are trying to defend this makes me think your partly retarded so i'll go easy on your downie ass.

Re:This has nothing to do with his name..

[Anonymous Coward]

It has everything to do with the EMAIL ADDRESS he apparently wasn't willing to change.

Next up: Verizon denies peering to China and Korea in response to the flood of "wang" derived email addresses.

Re:This has nothing to do with his name..

[jeremyp]

The filter is obviously intended to screen out truly nasty phrases, like "verizonisfullofshit@verizon.com"

FFS stop posting my e-mail address on the Internet. Now I'm going to get spammed.

Re:This has nothing to do with his name..

[Anonymous Coward]

This drama was brought to us by the very same people who brought the world Verizon math (http://www.verizonmath.com). Is Verizon trying their very best to humiliate themselves at every turn?

Re:This has nothing to do with his name..

[rolfwind]

Cultural habit, sorry:) Otherwise, I really don't give a shit.

Re:This has nothing to do with his name..

[Anonymous Coward]

I had to read the name a few times to notice the shit :)
USamericans are obsessed with shit and other 'bad words' to the level of insanity.

Re:This has nothing to do with his name..

[Anonymous Coward]

...in certain cases, it could arguably have legal implications.

How? (I'm really curious as to what legal grounds can a case like this have on the court)

Re:This has nothing to do with his name..

[Anonymous Coward]

If his name were l@bshitz, I understand why it wouldn't be possible

"l@bshitz" (quoted string) would be a valid local part, I refer you to RFC2822 section 3.4.1. However, such addresses are unlikely to pass common validation regex's for website registration etc...

Re:This has nothing to do with his name..

[Anonymous Coward]

So you are allowed to an official name you aren't allowed to use in a private, social or business context? That's hilarious.

cb

Re:This has nothing to do with his name..

[Anonymous Coward]

Well that's not very welcoming, is it?

Re:This has nothing to do with his name..

[Anonymous Coward]

-1 completely misses the point

Re:This has nothing to do with his name..

[unlametheweak]

(I'll post without Karma bonus because I'm not adding anything new to the conversation.)

I often contradict you in my replies, but this post I find so Insightful that I feel compelled to give you a Kudos.

Best regards,

UTW

Re:This has nothing to do with his name..

[pla]

All he had to do was pick another email address and he would have been fine.

Any name but his own. That seems fair, right?


I'm sorry, but you are not entitled to any email address you want.

True. But when you "want" your own name, following the same standard template as 47 million other Verizon customers, it just makes Verizon look like callous monopoly-abusing bastards to say "No".

Don't defend BS like this - Let Verizon (and the rest) know that we won't forsake our own names for their convenience, period.

Re:This has nothing to do with his name..

[JudgeFurious]

It's impossible not to notice that your post has been modded "Interesting" and I'd like to believe that's as in "Interesting, I can't believe some fool actually thinks Verizon had a leg to stand on when they did this".

He wanted an email address based on his name. There's nothing unreasonable about that.

Re:This has nothing to do with his name..

[Anonymous Coward]

Excuse me sir, but your post is obscene and i suggest you change your post, mabye? then you can be provided with comment service. Sincerly,
                                                                      Verizon buttholes

Re:This has nothing to do with his name..

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet I could register evil.is@verizon.

Re:This has nothing to do with his name..

[dotancohen]

If I moved to Israel I would hate to be told that "Michael Smith" sounds like a rude word in the local language and I couldn't use my normal email address.

What does Michael Smith sound like in Hebrew? I cannot think of a single dirty Hebrew phrase that sounds like Michael Smith, especially since Michael is a Hebrew name ("Mi CaEl"- "Who is like God?" in Hebrew).

Jewish people here occasionally have a chuckle at the name of our Friends Of The Zoos society.

Potz is more of a Yiddish term than Hebrew, though I do believe that most American Jews are of Yiddish-language decent. In any case, nice one! The Kia car company is another funny one in Hebrew, the name means "vomit".

Re:This has nothing to do with his name..

[mobby_6kl]

This might be the first time ever that I feel like punching several posters from one story in the face until they relax a little. Yeah Verizon should've allowed the name, but everyone's making it sound like it's a huge fucking tragedy. Has anyone compared this to the holocaust yet?

People are denied the use of their real names in email addresses all the time. If I were to try to register an email with any of the major providers, I would be denied the use of my real first and last names because they use the cyrillic alphabet. I could use some latin approximation which would sound similar enough or just use something else, but that would be an insult to my ancestors who were massacred by the Turks and fought bravely against the Germans. Still, I get over myself and use a latin approximation, but then it turns out that the address is already in use! Those assholes, what am I going to do now!?! I have dishonored my family by not using an email address with my full real names and now I will have to die. So long.

Re:This has nothing to do with his name..

[slashdotard]

Such a word appears in Japanese when written in Romaji (roman letters). Sometimes mail written in Romaji disappears without a trace.

I often wonder if someone who writes "shitsurei shimasu", "deshita" or "shite" in their messages or on their web pages will be jailed by the bad words cops or be expelled from university for "using bad words".

Re:This has nothing to do with his name..

[anyGould]

I'm sorry, but you are not entitled to any email address you want.

So, I can't have my own name, but I can sue you for my own domain name?

Can't have it both ways...

Re:This has nothing to do with his name..

[TavisJohn]

If he already had the e-mail address, than they should have let him keep it!
If it matched his name, than they should have allowed it, as it was not a curse word but his name.

Personally at that point I probably would have went to GMail or some other free e-mail provider that did not have a curse filter and use that one. Then tell all my family, friends, e-mail contacts that my new e-mail addy was....

Then get Cable instead of DSL Internet.

Re:This has nothing to do with his name..

[Anonymous Coward]

this whole thing is insane and anyone who defends it needs to be quarantined and watched closely.

I don't think he was defending it pal, he was blaming the ridiculous culture we have around swear words for the problem.

If we didn't have a culture that banned the damn words, there wouldn't be a fucking problem in the first place, and nobody would go through that shit :)

Re:This has nothing to do with his name..

[netwiz]

Having worked for Verizon, and directly supported the system responsible for this bullshit, I can confirm the idiocy in the story. It is physically impossible to get anything done through customer service, the development teams run by Verizon IT are made of failure and shame, and they really do reboot every system at midnight so that it passes Sheygan Kheradpir's (the IT company's president) 1am "system check," where he logs in to everything personally to make sure it's working.

It is a culture of scapegoatism and "we made the date" development, with zero regard for code quality or robustness, or even "does it work?" Ever pay your bill online? Ever wonder why there's now only a single path through the website that will actually get it paid? This is why. Anecdote: The support team on which I worked hired a Java programmer to assist with the forensic troubleshooting of the "netservices.verizon.net" site, since development never delivered the documentation of the site's design and function (I am certain it didn't exist), and after he solved two major problems by inverting two lines and reducing a 200 line module to 11 lines, he was locked out of the CVS repository, presumably to keep him from making the IT developers look bad.

They are colossal failures inside Verizon, and the company as a whole has been working to drive out every last bit of talent since Chuck Lee sold GTE to Bell Atlantic. The executives are completely disconnected from every aspect of production. Anecdote: the group president was down for a "meet the troops" day, and had been touring the Verizon Online NOC when she had to get on a conference call. Her assistant sat down at one of the work stations (visualize a NASA Mission Control-type layout) and used one of the duty phones to dial in. She then handed the phone to the local executive (which is fine, that's her job). The exec attended the call, and when she was done, rather than simply hang up the phone (which was literally within arms reach), the executive handed the phone back to ther assistant!

The bureaucratic structure is openly worshiped by every member of management (ask me how I know) regardless of the detriment to the business.It was absolutely unreal. Manipulation of performance statistics is commonplace. There is zero management accountability in any department. Check out some of the deeper pages in the "pay my bill online" section of the web site. The "Help and Support" section pages generate 404 errors. There is no way to actually order service over the phone, so if you don't already have some kind of internet service, you can't order anything from Verizon.

The only thing keeping these guys afloat is the fact that the FiOS product genuinely slays every competing technology available, and they know it.

Re:This has nothing to do with his name..

[Eli Gottlieb]

You mean kind of like if I wanted to move to France without being French?

Oh wait, I shouldn't feed the troll.

Re:This has nothing to do with his name..

[Eli Gottlieb]

What does Michael Smith sound like in Hebrew? I cannot think of a single dirty Hebrew phrase that sounds like Michael Smith, especially since Michael is a Hebrew name ("Mi CaEl"- "Who is like God?" in Hebrew).

I don't think the OP said he actually knew Hebrew. Lay off.

Potz is more of a Yiddish term than Hebrew, though I do believe that most American Jews are of Yiddish-language decent. In any case, nice one! The Kia car company is another funny one in Hebrew, the name means "vomit".

Except that the pun only works if you write it in Hebrew letters, in which peh and feh look exactly alike when unvowelized.

Re:This has nothing to do with his name..

[Minstrel Boy]

So isn't this just setting him up for failure? Isn't all his future email going to be blocked by the same (or an affiliated) filter engine at Verizon?

KeS

Re:This has nothing to do with his name..

[Lord Ender]

It's somewhat offensive to assume that people with Jewish last names necessarily give a crap for the mythology of their ancestors. For all you know, the guy has never so much as looked at a Torah.

Re:This has nothing to do with his name..

[Anonymous Coward]

If they actually told him that an e-mail address including his name was offensive, he could have a decent case for libel, as they're effectively telling him that his name is offensive.

Re:This has nothing to do with his name..

[DaedalusHKX]

I was under the impression that jewish supremacy and religious doctrine and racial purity (no, when jews do it its not "racism") was part of the standard indoctrination of jewish children. Had a girlfriend at about the beginning of my teens. When her mom found out I wasn't jewish... ye unholy gods did she raise hell. Eventually it was break up or she gets kicked out of the house. Needless to say she was a good child, very obedient, like most humans in fact. She caved... and I didn't forgive her for years, until I realized what jews gotta put up with. Anti semitism is not even a quarter as racist as pro judaism is.

Scary shit. Scarier still considering how well we got along before her mama found out I wasn't a jew. Amusing... really... now that I look back on it.

Re:This has nothing to do with his name..

[Lord Ender]

Like any group, there are crazy ones and there are reasonable people. There are even Jewish atheists. I had a Jewish roommate in college, but nobody would have ever known he was ancestrally Jewish if he didn't put fish on his bagels, heh.

Re:This has nothing to do with his name..

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Is it? depends on whether you're playing the odds or assuming that all people with jewish names are jews. They certainly are ethnically, and the actual proportion that are religious jews is likely to be high, although I don't know exactly. The GP stated that the Doc is jewish and, if his reason for doing so is sound, the rest of the argument is fairly sound; the Torah is pretty legalistic in places.

Re:This has nothing to do with his name..

[DaedalusHKX]

Actually I've got some ancestral jewish friends who can't stand that religion... call it hatred of the mindset that gave them Tay Sachs, call it hatred of the mindset that spawned Marxism and pushed it to the foreground, call it what the dogmatist jews call it (they call it "self haters") but in the end it comes down that some of the newer generation aren't buying this "us versus the goyim" crap. Not sure if my ex grilfriend ever broke free of the indoctrination... but time will tell. I've met plenty of cool non religious Israelis though... they're still indoctrinated but don't seem to be living that more hateful branch of judaism that speaks ill of all goyim... either they're hiding it, or they're actually changing as a culture.

I keep saying, if the old weren't there to push their beliefs upon the young... the young would've repaired the world long ago. And that applies to every culture... the young are curious, and capable of thought... the old repress everything that doesn't fit their world view. I frankly think school should've taught only the basics... basic math, basic language and basic hygiene... the rest should be self study. One can only wonder how the world might've changed instead of being forced to spend time in school until we can be safely included into the worker bee population, and then into the discarded retiree population... etc... no time to stop and think... and evaluate what is around.

Almost by design, there is never a break from the working ant's life. Those of us that take it, almost invariably find that the world is a place filled with awe inspiring things... in fact, the only thing I have found that I cannot change is others. And I've just about filled my list of people to keep as friends and acquaintances too.

Re:This has nothing to do with his name..

[Anonymous Coward]

They're a bunch of email nazis.

Re:This has nothing to do with his name..

[Joe the Lesser]

Don't worry, the spammers use expletive filters.

Re:This has nothing to do with his name..

[Lord Ender]

"Jewish" can have ancestral or religions meaning. An ancestral Jew can certainly be an atheist.

Re:This has nothing to do with his name..

[oracle128]

He asked for an email address based on his name, just like millions of other customers. It's a perfectly reasonable request

So if there are two John Smith's who both want this...?

Re:This has nothing to do with his name..

[dotancohen]

Except that the pun only works if you write it in Hebrew letters, in which peh and feh look exactly alike when unvowelized.

Also written in English or vocalized P and F are similar enough for the pun to be recognized. Like writing the word 'punny', one can recognize both roots 'pun' and 'funny'.

Re:This has nothing to do with his name..

[OldManAndTheC]

So if there are two John Smith's who both want this...?

Cage match, no holds barred. Winner gets bragging rights to "jsmith@verizon.com". Loser is rendered limb from limb as the crowd screams "FINISH HIM!"

Seriously, where have you been? Why else would there be addresses like jsmith87@somedomain.com?

Re:This has nothing to do with his name..

[oracle128]

But his name isn't John Smith87. It's John Smith. You've just forced him to change his email username for technical reasons, just as you would have to with 'hlibshitz' to 'hlibshi87tz' or 'hlibsh1tz' or 'hlibshi+z'. Sure, one is because limitations in the email system doesn't allow the same username per domain for different accounts, the other is because limitations in the Verizon system don't allow usernames containing profanity. But both end up with the user forced to choose a different name.

Re:This has nothing to do with his name..

[Cougar_]

The Kia car company is another funny one in Hebrew, the name means "vomit".

Pretty sure that's what it means in English too. :)

Re:This has nothing to do with his name..

[OldManAndTheC]

In the first instance, the limitation is purely technical. It's reasonable to require that usernames are unique.

In the second instance, the limitation is due to an absurd and unworkable corporate policy.

So yes, both situations result in Verizon requiring that the user select a different username, but the reasoning (if we can call it that) behind the two limitations is completely different. The second instance is not in any way "technical", except that the system is enforcing a policy that some corporate bureaucrat set in motion with no way of providing for exceptions.

Re:This has nothing to do with his name..

[oracle128]

And one could equally say that RFC822 is the result of some bureaucrat dictating that 2 email accounts can't have the same address, with no way of providing for exceptions.

Re:This has nothing to do with his name..

[Capt James McCarthy]

Agreed. There are too many folks out there who want to believe and mandate that the World should be "G" rated. Information flows better when left unfettered and unfiltered. Does the word 'shit' offend some folks, sure it does. Are there more descriptive words; it depends on the audience. But I will say that in the context of the web, typing "I don't care about that" just doesn't have the same power when you type "I don't give a shit about that."

So if someone wants "shit@verizon.com" as email address, good for them. I've always wanted to send shit somewhere and there's no better place then verizon.

Re:This has nothing to do with his name..

[Anonymous Coward]

The mindset online lately is that people have the same rights when dealing with a corporation as they have when dealing with the government. They don't. It's a business transaction. It is quite possible that the cost of changing that particular piece of software would run into thousands of dollars or more, if the software was developed outside the company. So yes, of course they asked him to change his email address. I would have done the same in their place.

A company, any company, has to view a business transaction through the filter of profitability. Yes, it will often do things that are not immediately profitable if it means keeping the good will of its customers, but _they don't have to_. And at some point the balance between somebody's convenience and renegociating a software maintenance contract is just way to skewed. They'd probably rather have him go to the competition and pay his subscription too.

Of course, none of this applies if the software provided an override possibility but they were just to prude to use it... they they're just stupid.

Re:This has nothing to do with his name..

[againjj]

If I moved to Israel I would hate to be told that "Michael Smith" sounds like a rude word in the local language and I couldn't use my normal email address.

What does Michael Smith sound like in Hebrew? I cannot think of a single dirty Hebrew phrase that sounds like Michael Smith, especially since Michael is a Hebrew name ("Mi CaEl"- "Who is like God?" in Hebrew).

He doesn't say it does. He says he would hate to be told that it does and be forbidden an email address based on his name as a result. Perhaps if we change the name to "Cece Smith" and the country to "Laos" -- pronounced the average way, this could sound like "four fuck Smith". Or people would see that it was a name and not have a problem.

Re:This has nothing to do with his name..

[dotancohen]

He doesn't say it does. He says he would hate to be told that it does and be forbidden an email address based on his name as a result.

Ah, I see now. His username is MichaelSmith, so one could assume that really is his name, not a specific example. I did not notice that before.

Summary and Title are highly misleading

[rolfwind]

They gladly gave him DSL. What they didn't do was allow a username/email address with 'shit' in it and he insisted since that was part of his name. I'm glad he got his way in the end, but he wasn't being denied the service itself.

Re:Summary and Title are highly misleading

[Dan541]

But "Shit" is not normally considered to be a rude word.

I can understand if the name was Cuntington but "shit" is an everyday word (So is "cunt" where I live) and part of someone's name.

I've never understood the whole profanity thing, why would someone want to be offended by a word, you would think people would have better things to do than create reasons to be offended.

Re:Summary and Title are highly misleading

[martin-boundary]

Some (really stupid) anti-spam systems scan email addresses for rude words. It's likely that their accounts system prevents the creation of email addresses containing these kinds of words, eg because the IT people couldn't be bothered to fix their deployed anti-spam software.

Re:Summary and Title are highly misleading

[shish]

I can understand if the name was Cuntington but "shit" is an everyday word (So is "cunt" where I live)

I think that says more about where you live than the use of the words...

Re:Summary and Title are highly misleading

[Anonymous Coward]

Boy, do I wish I had mod points. +1 for you, sir.

Re:Summary and Title are highly misleading

[rve]

My friend mister Koksukhar had no such problems

Re:Summary and Title are highly misleading

[Dan541]

Porn spam often contains the words "fuck" and "cunt" so its easy to see why those words might be used in a primative filter,
I myself have stopped users registering names similar
to "admin", "support", "help" in the past for obvious reasons,
but this user already existed in the system so it should not have been a problem and Verizon staff should have seen that it is legit.

Re:Summary and Title are highly misleading

[Dan541]

I think that says more about where you live than the use of the words...

I'm a Truck driver in Australia, some of the people I deal with are not what people here would consider civilised.

Re:Summary and Title are highly misleading

[YttriumOxide]

I grew up in Southern New Zealand, where the word "cunt" certainly wouldn't be used in "polite society", but is (or maybe was) very common amongst teenagers and people in their 20s.

Pretty much to the point where we didn't really consider it a "bad word". Someone beats you in a game on the console du jour, then acts all smug about it, you'd call them a "smarmy cunt". Or you greet a friend you haven't seen in a while with, "Good to see ya you old cunt, how's things?". Or even referring to a third person as a "good cunt" if you think they're someone very reliable and friendly. And so on ad nauseum. It's just a word...

(also, it's more common to use it for males rather than females, whereas in places where it's exclusively a "harsh insult", it tends to be used for females only)

Re:Summary and Title are highly misleading

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a funny story about Scunthorpe in the UK, the councils new email server rejected all emails because of the bad word filter... So are we suggesting that the name of the town is changed because of email, when nobody seems to have been offended by it in letters and snail-mail addresses?

Re:Summary and Title are highly misleading

[Tony Hoyle]

I can understand if the name was Cuntington

Why? If it's his name he's entitled to use it.

It doesn't matter if is name is Mr Shitbollox. He'd have enough problems with a name like that without his ISP being wankers about it.

Re:Summary and Title are highly misleading

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never understood the whole profanity thing, why would someone want to be offended by a word, you would think people would have better things to do than create reasons to be offended.

Because it's a nigger thing to do.

Re:Summary and Title are highly misleading

[Anonymous Coward]

"I think that says more about where you live than the use of the words..."

That statement says a lot more about you, then the parent.

The usage of words is a cultural thing, perhaps you should be a little more accepting of cultural differences, and a little less snobbish.

Re:Summary and Title are highly misleading

[jamesh]

What if his last name was one of 'Hitlerwasmisunderstood', 'Niggersmustdie', 'Kidsarefuntotouchinappropriately', 'Americagotwhatitdeservedon911', 'Linuxistheworkofthedevil'?

In the unlikely event that one of those was actually someone's last name, proudly carried from generation to generation for hundreds of years, would you let someone use it on a system that you were responsible for?

I'm sure the admins of Slashdot would never let that last one in :)

Re:Summary and Title are highly misleading

[Anonymous Coward]

the most offended of the english speakers I know of are americans for some reason, english speakers from other parts of the globe will see certain words as normal but americians get offended. their are so many english speakers that you can appreciate the cultural differences

Re:Summary and Title are highly misleading

[Anonymous Coward]

Americans are so comfortable, all they can find to be distressed about are incredibly trivial things like naughty words, getting "cut off" on the road, and challenges to their sincerely held beliefs like virgins having babies and dead people coming back to life.

Re:Summary and Title are highly misleading

[Anonymous Coward]

It goes beyond "[creating] reasons to be offended", although, unfortunately some people put it in that light.

It's more of etiquette that anything. When you're having dinner in a restaurant, do you grab your fork and knife with your fists and do the "Bob the Barbarian" act? Although, the flip side is that being Bob the Barbarian in a restaurant is completely hilarious and would look great on YouTube! :D!!!!! No, I'm not serious.

At the same time there's an element of maturity, and deciding what's good and not good, bad and not bad to say.

Re:Summary and Title are highly misleading

[Earered]

why would someone want to be offended by a word, you would think people would have better things to do than create reasons to be offended.

If you like the onion, you might be entertained by this: http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/05/28/101-being-offended/ ;)

Re:Summary and Title are highly misleading

[Hemlock Stones]

>I've never understood the whole profanity thing

Do-do, ca-ca, poo-poo, and good old number 2. Thanks George.

Re:Summary and Title are highly misleading

[roman_mir]

George Carlin died too early.

Re:Summary and Title are highly misleading

[mooingyak]

I once had a work email filter that would only filter out very specific full word matches. It didn't like fuck, but had no problem with fucking, fucker, or similar words. Most of us had figured out its tolerance within a few hours of it going up (I actually sent myself about 50 emails to see what would or wouldn't make it through).

Re:Summary and Title are highly misleading

[holywarrior21c]

Imagine an asian, named "Hung Lo", signs in to register at Verion.com .would names like that get filtered also? Porn star registration

Re:Summary and Title are highly misleading

[Ichijo]

I have that problem all the time.

--Ichijo Matsushita

Re:Summary and Title are highly misleading

[monktus]

Perhaps cunt is an everyday word in your part of the world, but we don't all live in Australia do we?

Re:Summary and Title are highly misleading

[monktus]

Do you know what? I was joking around with that comment, then I read your reply a bit further down and realised that you are actually in Australia. You couldn't make that cunting shit up!

Re:Summary and Title are highly misleading

[Shadowlore]

See, that is the problem: we don't. It seems to be the natural result of what appears to me to be a fundamental driving fore of humanity: make things better.

Parents refer to wanting "a better life" for their children, and generally work toward that goal. Non-parents tend to identify what they believe to be better things for society, and work toward those goals.

This process has in general served us well, but like most evolutionary changes will eventually become a detriment, if it has not done so already, to the human race. At this juncture in our societal and possibly human evolution we have attached priority to feelings. Why? Most real and physical problems are either solved or determined to be insolvable. With fewer big problems the mind turns to smaller problems, and perceived or invented problems. Offensive behaviour or talk, or even thought become problems of historical import that need to be solved.

A factor in this is that people are as general rule under less survival pressure. Take a brain wired to make things "better" and remove things to make better. It will invent new things that are bad. Slavery: bad. Once slavery is abolished there will the next step: continued violence against the former slaves and the slavers (aka both sides). When that for the most part abates ("problem solved for vast majority of cases"), those who thrive or depend on the continuing of the efforts (what today we call a "war") will then "see" new problems. Hence, offensive words, phrases, etc.. There will always be gullible people and wussies - people for whatever reason can't seem to stand on their own. So the cycle persists down further and further.

Combine this with another fundamental aspect of humanity: conflict. Looking around at this planet we see conflict. Predator and prey, for example. Vegetative growth and natural fires, for another. The dynamic of this planet is centered on conflict. it is thus no suprise that humans reflect that dynamic in our natures - it would be suprising if we did not. Time and again we see that abundance leads to stagnation when conflict is not present or is lessened.

So as we "solve" our physical priorities and move up the pyramid from food, water, shelter to emotional and intellectual "needs" (wants become needs when the needs are no longer a concern), I expect we will discover more and more "needs", more and more "problems and ills". I believe this has an effect on our literature and escapist entertainment. People in general gravitate toward stories that have conflict, hardship, and of course eventual human triumph. Being offended by the word "shit" in a name is but one small but common example of the lack of this release valve.

This is one of the many reasons mankind needs a "new frontier". Something that provides an outlet for those of us with the drive and wiring to seek that conflict. Not all conflict has to be interpersonal (war, arguments), it can be conflict of man vs. environment (man vs. the sea being a driver not that long ago). This brings in my mind the most logical choice to be space exploration and expansion. I think a solid case can be made for a biological imperative to do so. Animals search new places for food, and generally only when their food is scarce. Mankind appears to be unique on this planet in that he will search new and difficult areas out of sheer curiosity. Absent major conflicts and devastation on Earth, there is no driving source of inspirational conflict serving to unite the people behind a goal.

Day to day most of the world is falling into a corporate, governmental, or business slackery. We go to work, we do our jobs, we come home and we play or do more work, or sit around and vegetate. We are becoming tamed. Yes, we are taming ourselves. Therein lie the seeds of our downfall.

Re:Summary and Title are highly misleading

[Anonymous Coward]

You laugh but during my brief stint doing cable internet support i once got a call from a Mr. Cuk Sukker, almost bust a gut trying to prevent myself from laughing out loud when i read his name during the greeting. (Turns out it's pronounced "Cook Sucker")

Re:Summary and Title are highly misleading

[shish]

"I think that says more about where you live than the use of the words..."

The usage of words is a cultural thing

Well... yes. Is there some disagreement here? o_O

perhaps you should be a little more accepting of cultural differences, and a little less snobbish.

Did I ever say there was anything wrong with his culture? (also, lol at the "intolerance will not be tolerated" logic :P)

To clarify, I was taking issue with "Shit is not normally considered to be a rude word.", because while that may be true for his culture, in the global culture (ie, what yahoo is complying with), I would dare say that the majority of people would consider it rude (if only slightly so).

Re:Summary and Title are highly misleading

[sixsixtysix]

no kidding. i hate people that give any words the power to offend. words are words!

Re:Summary and Title are highly misleading

[Anonymous Coward]

You can joke about it, but there is a city in Lincolnshire, England called Scunthorpe.

Many people there have had problems on the Internet because automated software has borked at their address.

Re:Summary and Title are highly misleading

[poot_rootbeer]

But "Shit" is not normally considered to be a rude word.

Are you shitting me?

It's part of Carlin's "Six Words You Can't Say" routine (I don't count "motherfucker"; it's redundant due to the inclusion of "fuck" on the list already).

Granted, not all the words on that list have the same shock value today they did back then, and community standards obviously will vary, but I can't conceive of any place in the English-speaking world where "shit" is not considered at best vulgar.

Change their last name?

[19061969]

Quoth TFS:"Repeated calls to several levels of management at Verizon failed to resolve the problem, with several managers suggesting he change his last name."

Good idea! He could change it to "Dr Herman Verizon management are cocks"

The arrogance reportedly shown by the managers isn't exactly reasonable. Change a name just to use a poxy DSL service? This must have been in jest.

Re:Change their last name?

[Anonymous Coward]

Was it change the name, or change the email address?

I seem to recall reading somewhere in TA that they got the ADSL, but the electronic-m address was the problem.
Not that I'm encouraging human rights violations, but sometimes setting up a totally unrelated electronic-m address such as a gmail one is actually a good thing.

Re:Change their last name?

[quadrox]

Thanks man, I can't stop laughing now because I'm imagining this guy introducing himself to someone:

"Hi, my name is Dr Herman Verizon management are cocks."

*puzzled look on the other guys face*

Re:Change their last name?

[Anonymous Coward]

TFA pointedly notes where the customer service reps were located.

Tell me about it

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't even get dial up and had to wait until my neighbors had wireless to steal it.

  -- John Fuckinson

Re:Tell me about it

[Anonymous Coward]

You are not alone.

-- Fook Yew Wong

Re:Tell me about it

[Steneub]

An elementary school classmate of my mother's had the surname Fuckarelli.

Re:Tell me about it

[Anonymous Coward]

Is the very real surname Dickinson really significantly less bad than your fictitious example of Fuckinson, if you try to overanalyze it?

The policy is just stupid. Anyone should be allowed to use their real name (according to what they signed up as, pay the bill as etc.). For pseudonyms, you can include some filters, but even there, it's all too common to go overboard.

WTF?

[Stanislav_J]

It has everything to do with the EMAIL ADDRESS he apparently wasn't willing to change. They wouldn't grant him the address he requested. All he had to do was pick another email address and he would have been fine. I'm sorry, but you are not entitled to any email address you want.

Are you serious? Why in the hell should he have to -- IT'S HIS NAME. It's on his birth certificate, his Social Security card, his drivers license. It's probably in the phone book, and on every check he's ever written. And now he can't use his OWN LEGAL NAME that he has had since birth for his e-mail address because it "contains an expletive?" It's not even like he's some anarchistic goofball who somehow managed to legally change his surname to "Shit" in an attempt to be cute or radical -- it's his family name, borne by his ancestors, and it just happens to contain that four-letter sequence in the middle of the name. And, what, he can't use it because somewhere, somehow there might be some handful of insanely moralistic wackos who would be offended by it?

I'm sorry, but this is just about the most ridiculous thing I've heard of in my life. And, given what I've witnessed in my half century on this planet, that's really saying something.

Re:WTF?

[ByteSlicer]

And it was only a substring of his name. I wonder what would happen with names like Dick Tracy or George Walker Bush...

Re:WTF?

[stephanruby]

Are you serious? Why in the hell should he have to -- IT'S HIS NAME. It's on his birth certificate, his Social Security card, his drivers license.

So is my name, but somehow someone with the same full name I have beat me to a gmail address with my name on it. Am I crying about it? Am I yelling BLOODY CAPITALIZED MURDER? No, I got over it. I moved on. I got a slightly different email address. And I'm fine now.

At least, services like Compuserve (or was it Prodigy, I forget) have stopped requiring you to use some 10-digit number as the first part of your email address, those email addresses were way too difficult to remember.

And, what, he can't use it because somewhere, somehow there might be some handful of insanely moralistic wackos who would be offended by it?

No, I think you're attributing far too much malice to something that was probably just some minor programming/validation/usability error.

Probably some programmer/web monkey/contractor got overzealous in the form validation he implemented. You know, some people do enter bogus information on web forms. And some people will register an email address that says eatshit@verizon. And sometimes, if you call customer service or whomever, they may have no idea who to contact within their company to have their web forms changed (most likely, either their customer service call center is outsourced or their web work is outsourced).

And it's not like having an exact email address with a full name is a necessity. If it were such a necessity, there would be a law forbidding duplicate full names right from birth.

Re:WTF?

[Meumeu]

Are you serious? Why in the hell should he have to -- IT'S HIS NAME. It's on his birth certificate, his Social Security card, his drivers license.

So is my name, but somehow someone with the same full name I have beat me to a gmail address with my name on it. Am I crying about it? Am I yelling BLOODY CAPITALIZED MURDER? No, I got over it. I moved on. I got a slightly different email address. And I'm fine now.

So you suggest he takes herman.libcrapz@verizon.com instead ?

Re:WTF?

[LordHatrus]

What? Our depraved liberal government allowed such obscenities to be posted to his birth certificate, social security card, and driver's license?! This is outrageous! I call for a vote of no-confidence in Chancellor Valorum's leadership! Vote now! Vote now!

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry, but this is just about the most ridiculous thing I've heard of in my life. And, given what I've witnessed in my half century on this planet, that's really saying something.

Yes....It says you need to get out more.

Re:WTF?

[Stanislav_J]

So is my name, but somehow someone with the same full name I have beat me to a gmail address with my name on it. Am I crying about it? Am I yelling BLOODY CAPITALIZED MURDER? No, I got over it. I moved on. I got a slightly different email address. And I'm fine now.

That is an entirely different situation (and you know it). No one is telling you you can't use your name because it contains a "dirty word." It would be one thing if there were another Dr. Libshitz out there, and the good doctor in the story merely had the option of appending a random number, or his birth year, or something else to the name. No matter what he does, if his surname is to be included, it is still verboten. And all because of a very silly and overly-broad anti-expletive policy, not because there are legions of Libshitz's competing for that address.

And BTW, my sincere apologies if my use of a few capitalized phrases got your panties in a wad. So, I'm a little lazy and sometimes it's faster to just hit the shift key for emphasis than putting in HTML codes to italicize or bold the text. Mea culpa. I shall deny myself dessert this evening in self-reproach...

No, I think you're attributing far too much malice to something that was probably just some minor programming/validation/usability error.

Probably some programmer/web monkey/contractor got overzealous in the form validation he implemented. You know, some people do enter bogus information on web forms. And some people will register an email address that says eatshit@verizon.

Leaving aside the whole über-issue of "naughty" words in general (I could rant for hours on that), it still remains absurd that someone might be offended not by the word itself, used contextually, but the same four-letter string happening to be part of another legitimate word or name. And the more important point that you bring up: more and more, we are cutting the human element and common sense out of these things and just trusting the software to do the work for us. So, Verizon couldn't just have a human look at the case in question, understand that there is no "expletive" issue here, and manually override the rejection of his name? Or did they leave themselves with no way to do that? Even the Internet filters that we all hate and revile usually have the provision for the user to manually unblock innocuous sites that are caught up in their overly-broad algorithms. No, apparently, Verizon doesn't want the responsibility of doing that, so they just implement some filters that cannot possibly understand the difference of intent between "eatshit@verizon" and "libshitz@verizon." That takes a human being with a brain actually taking a few minutes to review and correct, but I guess that is too much of a bother for them.

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bless you for that :)

Re:WTF?

[Al Al Cool J]

The problem is, Verizon aren't the only people on the internet with crappy filtering software. Now that Mr Libshitz has his email address, I'll bet dimes to donuts that at some point he runs afoul of other filters. He may yet regret having such a "shitty" email address.

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

What about Mike Rowe?

What's in a name?

[unlametheweak]

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet."

- Romeo and Juliet, by William Shakespeare

Of course that quote would have serious humour ramifications with a name like "Libshitz". Shakespeare was however cognizant of the political ramification of mere words and, alas, names. My theory that bad and stupid people primarily get into management positions has once again proven to be correct.

Re:What's in a name?

[Oktober Sunset]

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet."

- Romeo and Juliet, by William Shakespeare

What if it was called stinkblossom?

- Bart Simpson

Re:What's in a name?

[YttriumOxide]

Did Shakespeare truly speak of country matters?

Re:What's in a name?

[unlametheweak]

What if it was called stinkblossom?

- Bart Simpson

Bart Simpson is an asshole. But then again he reminds me of myself when I was ten years old.

Re:What's in a name?

[unlametheweak]

I take it somebody in a Management position got Mod points today and decided my Karma was too high.

Re:What's in a name?

[Anonymous Coward]

Heheh, you said "ramification".

Re:What's in a name?

[Landshark17]

According to one of my English Lit professors, that line is actually a jab at the Rose Theatre, the main competitor of the Globe Theatre, where most of Shakespeare's plays were heard. One day the sewer runoff that ran under the Rose Theatre seeped up into the center of the theatre, giving it quite the aroma. Hence the line about a rose by another name smelling as "sweet."

Here we go again

[Anonymous Coward]

What's this with systems design and complete idiots at the wheel?

You either end up with some Politically Correct idiot taking decisions that don't make a lot of sense (or are actually deepy insulting - how would you feel if someone starts singling out parts of your name) or with a base design assumption that totally sucks or lacks any flexibility.

Sjeez.

Luckily they don't have Verizon in Austria

[Anonymous Coward]

or it could be much worse.

What about these names?

[KH]

Does Verizon also refuse email addresses to those who have such last names like: Takeshita, Fukuoka (common Japanese names), Dikshit (common Indian name). There must be more unfortunate names.

Re:What about these names?

[Anonymous Coward]

First that pops up (pun not intended) is Dick Cheney. And the second one is the owner of a small electronics-shop in Leiden, the Netherland, who goes by the name Dik Kok. (http://www.kokonderdelen.com/)

Re:What about these names?

[KGIII]

I got a kick out of Kuhntown, PA.

Re:What about these names?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's usually spelt Dixit

Re:What about these names?

[compro01]

There's the infamous Dick Assman up here.

Re:What about these names?

[imagin8r]

There is the name Lund, for instance, which is a crude term used in North India for the male organ. When a US dignitary of that name visited India, people had a hard time referring to him without bursting out laughing.

Re:What about these names?

[Cro Magnon]

The problem is, those are all forigners. Now, if this guy had a nice American name like me, he wouldn't have had a problem.

                                          Dick Head

Sorry to say: typical American

[Teun]

Indeed a sorry preoccupation you guys in the USofA have.

Nearly any dickhead can (without serious checks on mental health etc) have guns but the moment someone has a misunderstood name it becomes a management issue.

I know many US ISP's don't allow hosting your own (mail)server at home, what would Verizon have done in case the man registered iamaturd.com (still free!) and pointed libshitz@iamaturd.com to his own server on a Verizon line?

Well at least someone finally had the good taste to not levy a fine for Janet Jackson's titty incident and now the name of Libshitz can be used on Verizon, there is hope!

Oh, and in a couple of months please go out and vote!

Re:Sorry to say: typical American

[Teun]

I don't know why you think I hate America.

As a matter of fact I really like the place and it's people.

And therefore I feel I can and have to speak my mind.

I feel going by the examples I gave things do go wrong, there is a preoccupation with the trivial, be it on a corporate level like the Verizon filter or more public level in the Janet Jackson case.

The example I gave with the very great freedom regarding fire arms has relevance, this policy is based on the cherished concept that People have their own responsibility in handling them.

But the moment something trivial as a naughty word or picture comes around the community needs protection!

We obviously do not agree on what is trivial or important.

Re:Sorry to say: typical American

[Tony Hoyle]

Keep the people focused on the trivial and they won't notice the important stuff.

It works so well we don't realize that it's being done a lot of the time. And it's not just the US - here in the UK it's just as bad if not worse.

Re:Sorry to say: typical American

[Anonymous Coward]

dickhead would have been acceptable.

Re:Sorry to say: typical American

[houghi]

Oh, and in a couple of months please go out and vote!

They did that 4 yours ago as well and look how that worked out. Oh and then there is the time before that.
I would not be surprised if they made the wrong choice again.

So be carefull with what you wish for, ...

Re:Sorry to say: typical American

[Oligonicella]

Oh please. Give us your home country and we'll find a bunch of inane shit about there.

Re:Sorry to say: typical American

[Teun]

Oh, and in a couple of months please go out and vote!

They did that 4 yours ago as well and look how that worked out. Oh and then there is the time before that. I would not be surprised if they made the wrong choice again.

So be carefull with what you wish for, ...

Ah no, a little over half of the eligible voted, in the end 62 million of 142 million registered (221 million of voting age) Americans voted Bush back in office.

Truly scary this 28% of the population can give the man so much power, not just inside the USofA but in the world.

I feel with a larger voter participation a next president might be more respected.

Re:Sorry to say: typical American

[WeirdJohn]

The difference is that other countries don't run around claiming to be tho shining example of freedom whilst being wilding obsessed about rules. They don't claim to be the greatest example of democracy whilst having an electoral system that basically works on the basis that he with the most money can buy Government and Legislation. There are many things that are great about the American people, and some things that are great about American society. These pale into insignificance before the failings in light of the *claims* of Freedom and Democracy. Other countries show a lot about your upcoming elections on the news, mainly because its so mind boggling funny in light of the hypocrisy. Americans will (of course) see this as an attack on their country. The rest of the world waits with bated breath for the American people to demonstrate that they really care about Democracy and Freedom by voting, and breaking the stranglehold on power by the oligarchy of the wealthy.

Re:Sorry to say: typical American

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Why host your own mail? Just go to some webmail outfit and get imap hosting for $20/yr.

Re:Sorry to say: typical American

[Shadow99_1]

If the popular vote actually determined the winner of the presidential election (rather than the electoral college) you might have a point.

You may remember the first time GW was voted in their was a good bit of chaos over the fact that he'd won the electoral college, but not the popular vote (until Florida recounted)... The first time it had ever happened, but they made sure to fix that so the masses wouldn't have to know their votes are pointless....

Ouch!

[beadfulthings]

The "National Enquirer" is a notorious scandal sheet.

The "Philadelphia Inquirer" is a respectable daily newspaper.

I just felt the need to point that out.

Re:Ouch!

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you just use the words "Philadelphia" and "respectable" in the same sentence?

Re:Ouch!

[russotto]

The "National Enquirer" is a notorious scandal sheet.

The "Philadelphia Inquirer" is a respectable daily newspaper.

Well, it's a daily newspaper all right. The top story (front page above the fold) today was about how USAir has greatly improved baggage handling. It wasn't actually bylined with the name of USAir's head of P.R., but it may as well have been. So you can drop the "respectable".

Re:Ouch!

[Anonymous Coward]

Libshitz, Libchitz
Enquirer, Inquirer
Nuclear, Nuculer

Re:Ouch!

[Anonymous Coward]

Libshitz, Libchitz
Enquirer, Inquirer
Nuclear, Nuculer

What's Jimmy Carter have to do with this?

not the National Enquirer...

[cigaretteroutine]

Speaking of names that have bad connotations... plz fix our newspaper's name to its correct spelling of Philadelphia INquirer rather then ENquirer. (we have our many flaws here, but our newspaper is at least mildly legitimate)

Re:not the National Enquirer...

[YttriumOxide]

I would have though "enquirer" would be more correct than "inquirer", no? If not, why not?

Re:not the National Enquirer...

[cigaretteroutine]

it may be more correct, but its not how our paper is spelled.

Re:not the National Enquirer...

[YttriumOxide]

Ah, okay... I thought your original post was meaning the paper should change its name from "Enquirer" to "Inquirer", not that it was already spelled "Inquirer" and that it was spelled incorrectly when being referenced.

Re:the name fits here

[Anonymous Coward]

There's nothing inherently liberal or socialist about objecting to monopoly power. Monopolies destroy the market mechanisms vital for capitalism to work.

Headline/summary/article mismatch

[pedrop357]

Pointing out the obvious:
The headline and summary aren't really accurate to the linked article.

Has anyone considered the impact this sort of thing has on Slashdot's credibility?

Maybe I'm looking at it through rose colored glasses, but I used to like reading through all the summaries and linked articles on Slashdot. Now it seems like in the last 8-12 months, more and more headlines and their accompanying sumamries are deliberately misleading and inflammatory. I skim the RSS headlines and have found myself assuming that any headline that says "Microsft does X", "Comcast now doing Y", "Verizon did Z" etc. is probably off the mark and just nother boy crying wolf. It seems that I'm right about hald the time; which is about 45% more then I should be.

Most of these "inaccuracies" seem to pander to various anti-insert-company-here sentiments - ie., Verizon has been shown to have done a bunch of shady shit regarding spying or Comcast with it's throttling/filtering/P2P blocking or whatever, so now they do something stupid and it gets twisted into something much larger and more sinister.

Yes, Verizon is moronic for not allowing customer serivce people a little latitude or for having simplistic filtering, but nowhere did I read they denied DSL. They did deny an email address though. Verizon should also probably work on dealing with people-telling someone to misspell their name in order to avoid some stupid email address name filter misses the point. BUT, everything I read suggests that he would have been ok with an email address like DrHermanIL@XXX; not that he should he have to do that though.

If Slashdot's motto was something like "It's not news, it's Slashdot", I'd make a little one line post about how the headline and linked article disagree. But with a motto of "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters", I'd expect accuracy and a little less hysteria and/or pandering.

Re:Headline/summary/article mismatch

[kaos07]

Yet again the answer lies with kdawson. I'm not trying to flame, but every point you've mentioned is valid and the vast majority of cases regarding mis-information, poor headlines, shoddily edited articles and the general "Anti-company" tendencies come from kdawson.

Lately I've been playing a game with myself. I'll read Slashdot articles and try and guess who "edited" them. Strangely, the only guesses I get right are the stories posted up by kdawson.

Re:Headline/summary/article mismatch

[daemonburrito]

It's an outrage.

Re:Headline/summary/article mismatch

[u38cg]

kdawson. I like it when CmdrTaco is (increasingly rarely) on duty; he might be just as ignorant, but at least you get a balanced selection and the /. bullshitometer is applied before a story is submitted, rather than being left to the posters.

Re:Headline/summary/article mismatch

[dword]

The headline and summary aren't really accurate to the linked article.
Has anyone considered the impact this sort of thing has on Slashdot's credibility?

This must be your first time on Slashdot, if you're complaining about misleading headlines.

Re:Headline/summary/article mismatch

[Anonymous Coward]

I couldn't agree with you more. Less blind corporate hate and more interesting news please.

Re:Headline/summary/article mismatch

[eccenthink]

I have to agree. The summary is particularly bad in this case. It says three managers suggested he change his name. If you RTFA nobody suggests he change his name and the three managers the summary says told him to change his name actually agreed that needing to change his username was absurd but couldn't help him and pushed him to other managers (actually the article says supervisors) that simply never followed up or called him back.

So Verizon just never followed up and all the supervisors he talked to tended to agree that he should be able to use his name. This is almost the exact opposite of the summary. Seems Verizon simply failed to follow up or call the guy back.

Can we start modding headlines as +/- "Accurate Summary" or something?

Re:Headline/summary/article mismatch

[smoker2]

You lost me at "credibility".

Re:Headline/summary/article mismatch

[Anonymous Coward]

Just look for the "badsummary" tag.

Re:Headline/summary/article mismatch

[Phroggy]

Lately I've been playing a game with myself. I'll read Slashdot articles and try and guess who "edited" them. Strangely, the only guesses I get right are the stories posted up by kdawson.

Um, if I guessed kdawson every single time, the only guesses I'd get right are the stories posted by kdawson too...

Re:Headline/summary/article mismatch

[Anonymous Coward]

it is called the digg effect*

Re:Headline/summary/article mismatch

[Evildonald]

I completely agree. Slashdot quality has really dropped. Maybe if they sat on a story for a few more hours before posting you wouldn't get so much alarmist gossip.

Re:Headline/summary/article mismatch

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait... you read the linked article? You must be new here.

Scunthorpe

[cliveholloway]

Coincidentally, nobody in the town of Scunthorpe has Verizon service either. Reps are apparently mystified...

Re:Scunthorpe

[dforreal]

From the website of the hamlet of Dildo, Newfoundland Even though Dildo doesn't have a town council it still has many resources and regarded for its activities. Dildo has it's own swimming pool, an S.U.F. lodge, and Lions Center. Every year Dildo celebrates Canada Day and our own Traditional Dildo Days. These events are held on the swimming pool grounds where there are many activities, such as games, swimming, hot dogs, cold plates, and much more. As you can see Dildo is a very historic and traditional community.

Ahh memories...

[sleeponthemic]

I used to amuse myself by ordering free stuff from the internet using abusive names. It was great receiving hand written postal pickup notices for Peter Cuntbridge.. I could see the turmoil the employee had clearly suffered in writing that surname. The slight "squiggle" at the un to cloud the perception just in case ole Pete's name had been mistaken.

Jason Vomit has been receiving his victoria's secret catalogues for quite some time.

Mario Luigo Bowserpeach entered the readers digest sweepstakes. Believe it or not, he has in his possession a genuine cheque for 1 million dollars*

I guess they might want traceability in this particular instance but in general, from working in a mailing house and my exploits of immaturity I think it's pretty clear that businesses mostly have a "whatever" attitude to this sort of thing.

*This is not a real cheque.

Re:Ahh memories...

[jagdish]

All of my free stuff is addressed to James T. Kirk.

That's also probably the reason why I don't have a girlfriend.

I had a company website blocked for the same thing

[Lord Byron II]

Back in the early days of the WWW, I was doing IT for a small business whose name was RTS Executive Services. Their phone number was 1-800-RTS-EXEC, so they wanted their website to match: www.rtsexec.com, but that lead to a "sex" in the middle of the domain name and I can't tell you the number of customers we had who couldn't access the website because the blocking software they installed on their computers to stop their kids from accessing porn had determined that our website must be porn too.

I had the same problem!

[Cryacin]

It seems I'm not alone. Hugh J. Farquad esq.

I can't get Verizon either!

[Legion_SB]

Thanks for fighting the good fight, sir!

Sincerely, Dr. Hancock

Re:I can't get Verizon either!

[vk2]

My cow orker says the same here - Nicole Sexton.

Re:I can't get Verizon either!

[Ron_Fitzgerald]

That was the first thing that I thought of was names like Cock, Cocker, Hancock etc.

With the amount of subscribers to any of their services the must have had to deal with this issue before.

Verizon in the UK

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Good thing Verizon hasn't expanded its monopoly across the pond to the UK yet, else the entire town of Scunthrope would be blocked from the net. For the children's sake, of course!

Re:Verizon in the UK

[Oligonicella]

Monopoly -- I don't think that word means what you think it means.

Re:Verizon in the UK

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Monopoly -- I don't think that word means what you think it means.

I'm pretty sure that I know what it means far better than you do.
Hint, there is more than one definition.

You Americans and your "morals"

[Cathoderoytube]

Here's a personal story about profanity and a content company... My user name for my cable account is an expletive describing my feelings about the cable company. What's interesting though, is that apparently I'm not the only one who feels this way about the company, since 'fuckyourogers' has been taken and I've had to add numbers on the end of it.
What's even MORE interesting though have been my attempts to get technical support on my account. But during my somewhat angry registration process I didn't hit any snags where the cable company thought my username was inappropriate.

Funny how life works...

Re:You Americans and your "morals"

[thetoadwarrior]

Most of the US is employed by Verizon. Everyone knows that.

Re:You Americans and your "morals"

[Anonymous Coward]

My ogers are not amused.

the next library?

[Anonymous Coward]

anyone see this as being the next library dependency for some weird linux program soon

i can definitely see a ./configure error out with something like
ERROR: UNMATCHED DEPENDENCIES -- libshitz

Email address

[Anonymous Coward]

He who ties his email address to his access provider is an idiot. The guy should have taken the hint and gotten his email address from a professional email service provider, preferably with a domain in his own name.

Uh oh

[barnyjr]

Dear Verizon,

Does this mean I'm out of luck then?

Sincerely,

Ernest K. Fuckwad

Bad move.

[ericvids]

I think the guy *shouldn't* have gone through the trouble and just got another e-mail address.

Reason? He may be able to convince Verizon to grant him the email address, but he won't be able to convince the rest of the Internet to stop filtering the messages he sends.

Let's face it, the spam filtering that's currently in place in many systems on the 'net isn't very smart, and it would take years to fix (assuming it ever does get fixed).

Re:Bad move.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey everbody, look at me! I'm posting comments on subjects I know nothing at all about! Wheee!

Get gmail

[z_gringo]

who the hell uses their ISPs email address anyway?

Does this guy not have a gmail address?

videochatik.ru - videochat

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes? Okey? www.videochatik.ru

NPR

[Pancake Bandit]

This was on NPR last night. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93218205&ft=1&f=7

nom nom nominative determinism

[huwgently]

What's in a name? Ask Bobby Tables

What about Babcock and Hancock?

[mangu]

People who have odd names are at a serious disadvantage in the culture that considers the name odd

Only because those are uncommon names. I'm willing to bet that the Verizon filter does not check for "cock" in the names.

Well, I guess Dr. Libshitz must be used to that. He probably had a lot of fights with kids who called him "shit lips" in school.
 

Re:What about Babcock and Hancock?

[Anonymous Coward]

God, what are thousands and thousands of Japanese supposed to do?
"shita" is common letter in Japanese, and there are plenty of names that use it. ... Hey I have an idea, if there's enough Japanese in the west coast who came across this problem, maybe I can open a discrimination case against Verizon, and make Lipshitzloads of money!

WELL SAID!

[gbutler69]

Well said, my friend. Couldn't have put it better:

To change it now would make him seem like every other mentally emasculated individual that lays claim to the role "man" or "male" but doesn't quite live up to any standard of integrity.

I, for one, applaud this gentleman for standing up to these pricks!

'Swearwords' outdated

[twazzock]

The whole concept of 'swearwords', IMHO is terribly outdated anyway. As someone else mentioned above, while these select words are considered taboo, their synonyms are not. Why is it okay to say 'crap' or 'poo' and not 'shit'? They mean the exact same thing. I can only imagine it was taboo to say 'shit' in public because of what it meant, but no-one seems to care about that any more. Everyone remembers it's a taboo word, but not why.

Re:'Swearwords' outdated

[GearheadX]

It's because words such as this are derived from a 'lower' dialect of English than the English which was spoken by the nobility when the French took over England. A lot of the words we consider swear words today are words derived from the language of the peasants that no noble would be caught dead saying.

Re:'Swearwords' outdated

[jamesh]

I also find it interesting how the word 'nigger' has actually become more taboo than it was 20 or so years ago (unless you actually happen to have black skin, then you can say it all you like). Watching some old episodes of The Goodies they made reference to black South African persons as 'Nig-nogs'. They'd never get away with that these days, despite the fact that the whole episode was poking fun at the whole idea of apartheid(sp?) anyway.

Also, does anyone remember reading a book called 'The Faraway Tree' by Enid Blyton? One of the characters had the name Fanny. Recent editions of the book have had her name changed to Franny.

Funny old world isn't it?

Re:'Swearwords' outdated

[Austerity Empowers]

But if you think about it, 'nigger' is actually highly offensive and using it is likely going to brand you as a terrible person (unless you are black, in which case you are just ignorant). It's probably one of a few words my potty mouth will never use, it bothers me to type it. Pretty much any racial slur falls in to that category. They're mean spirited words intended to cause hurt. Yet there was a time when they were everyday bad words.

Shit on the other hand is just a "bad" word. Why it's bad has been lost to time. At most using it is impolite and brands the speaker as such...but that's a designation most people can tolerate.

I think all it says is today we're more sensitive to heredity than to social status. Insulting someones background is the most crude thing you can do. Perhaps in the future words like fag/queer/dyke/heshe etc. will also become taboo for the same reason. For the moment they're impolite words, best not used at work, but pretty common.

Re:'Swearwords' outdated

[Anonymous Coward]

It is not okay to say "poo." Now get back into timeout and stay there this time mister!

Re:'Swearwords' outdated

[Phroggy]

"Crap" used to be taboo as well, but for some reason in the mid 90s, it suddenly became OK.

Re:'Swearwords' outdated

[jamesh]

But if you think about it, 'nigger' is actually highly offensive and using it is likely going to brand you as a terrible person (unless you are black, in which case you are just ignorant). It's probably one of a few words my potty mouth will never use, it bothers me to type it.

Ditto. I felt uncomfortable typing it, even though it wasn't used in a derogatory context. It's just a word, but the word invokes so many feelings in so many people. And that's just it isn't it... the whole 'swear words' thing is really subjective. In Australia there are some communities of Aboriginal people who readily refer to themselves as blackfella's and to the imports as whitefella's, and think nothing of it. It's just a convenient way of identifying who they are talking about. Other groups get mortally offended if you so much as hint that their skin color might be different to someone elses. The n-word is probably much the same... (ever seen a movie called 'cabin fever'? Hilarious use of the n-word in that :)

Then again, someone who's brought up to think that certain words are really really taboo might get really offended if they were used in front of them. Are their feelings any less valid than those offended by the n-word?

Re:'Swearwords' outdated

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like a lot of merde to me.

Re:'Swearwords' outdated

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not about the denotation. Consider Coprolalia. Shit, fuck, bitch, faggot, nigger, etc have nothing tying to them together in their denotations, but they all have similar connotations of anger, hostility, bitterness, disgust, contempt, etc.

Re:'Swearwords' outdated

[Quattro Vezina]

Or how, on the Jeffersons, they had a white supremacist saying "I won't kiss anything that's been kissed by a nigger".

You'd never see that today.

It's because the word "shit" has become LESS taboo

[dpbsmith]

Petty officialdom is no different than it has ever been. There's nothing new about bureaucrats rigidly implementing regulations and claiming that there is no way to make an exception in cases where the rules are patently inapplicable. "The computer made me do it" is just a variant on "Sir, we cannot do anything about it because of our policy."

But I don't think this would have been a problem five decades ago because the word "shit" was truly taboo... because nobody would have been willing to admit that they noticed the English-language vulgarities lurking within a name like Libshitz.

It couldn't have been done by computer, because no executive would have been willing to dictate such words in a specification that an (almost-certainly female) secretary would have to listen to, no secretary would have been willing to type them up, and, very likely, coders would have been unwilling to key them in.

Sure, in those days people might change the spelling of their surname from "Fuchs" to "Fewkes" but nobody would ever dare way why!

(Come to think of it, did Bible translations start using the phrase "gopher wood" in place of "shittim wood?")

 

Re:I had a company website blocked for the same th

[Tony Hoyle]

I can only guess what the owners of Pen Island especially if they need a therapist

Verizon's Name Should Be Banned

[hyades1]

The word "Verizon" shares all but two of its letters (the z and the n, if you're interested) with the words "coercive assholes". Can this be allowed to stand, this perfect example of a company cold-bloodedly choosing a name that shares so much with an aggressively obscene phrase? Church-going matrons across the world will surely keel over in a dead faint when they hear the company named in public, then rise up in righteous outrage to protest its vile decision to share letters in such an unclean and ugly way.

End the madness. Demand that Verizon change its name to something decent and righteous. Perhaps Zzzzzzz would be appropriate.

File under "Sauce for the Goose".

Re:the name fits here

[Archtech]

Monopolies destroy the market mechanisms vital for capitalism to work.

Unfortunately for many theories and schools of economics, it turns out that capitalism destroys the market mechanisms supposedly vital for capitalism to work.

The markets - and capitalism - go on working all right, but not along the lines of Adam Smith's fairy-tale "hidden hand". Oh no.

Free markets go either of two ways. Either they remain entirely free and unregulated, in which case they sooner or later evolve into "robber baron" markets dominated by players like Microsoft and IBM. Or else governments step in to regulate them, in a process that soon comes to resemble the Ptolemaic system of astronomy - adjustments to adjustments to adjustments, while the whole thing becomes steadily less stable and credible.

Our current system is a compromise between raw capitalism and socialism. You can argue that it has the strengths of both, or the weaknesses of both, or both. One aspect that has recently hit the headlines is the tendency to privatise profits and nationalise losses, thus giving rich speculators a free run at even greater wealth.

Well, if you were an influential politician, what kind of friends would you have - rich ones or poor ones?

Name he ended up with

[noidentity]

So, the name he ended up using was Verizonsucksdonkeyballs, which was OK because it didn't have the word "shit" in it.

mod parent insightful

[unity100]

thats the very thing im trying to tell a lot of 'invisible hand strokes all' fairy tale conservatives here all along. this guy just put it in a VERY short and neat form.

Re:mod parent insightful

[Anonymous Coward]

The 'invisible hand' that Adam Smith referred to was the Hand of God. He believed that if things got too out of hand (pardon the pun) and started to become egregiously unjust, that God would intervene and make everything right again. I shouldn't need to point out the fallacy in this line of thinking.

Innuendo

[Archtech]

Is it just me, or is English communication being progressively subverted by an incoming tide of innuendo? Back in the 1960s (really) when I was at school, many of us were dirty-minded kids and would snigger at double meanings (real or imagined, we didn't much care). Then we hit 15 or so, and grew out of it.

Today it seems that practically every second word has a double meaning that's somehow obscene - and that's supposed to be funny. Maybe it's got something to do with the crowd of third-rate "comedians" who rely on that kind of "joke" to keep their audiences laughing.

How many men's names do double duty for body parts? How funny can that really be, and how long can it keep you amused? Even when I was about 9, and learned the names of the planets, it never struck me for a moment that there was anything funny about "Uranus". Nowadays, if we need to refer to that planet, we have a choice of "the 7th planet", "the planet between Saturn and Neptune" or perhaps the authentic Greek pronunciation (something like "Oo'ranos").

Couldn't we all just get over it, and agree that those jokes have been done? (Yes, I know - no way).

Re:Innuendo

[russotto]

Is it just me, or is English communication being progressively subverted by an incoming tide of innuendo?

No, just the opposite. It used to be all innuendo. Now there's a lot more outright swearing instead. Chaucer and Shakespeare are packed with innuendo, though much of it modern audiences don't get.

As for poor Uranus, I think you can blame Stephen Spielburg (E.T.) for elevating that joke out of elementary school.

Re:I had a company website blocked for the same th

[SirShmoopie]

I know a certain international corporation whose chosen naming convention for the various divisions on their intranet meant the uk branch got the name kfuk.

Scunthorpe

[chris_sawtell]

The British town of Scunthorpe had similar problems for many years

This reminds me of Japan

[erroneus]

Are we REALLY that stupid? Apparently so!

In Japan, it's nearly impossible to order something from a restaurant if it isn't on the menu. (I say nearly, because I haven't been to every restaurant in Japan, so this only applies to EVERY SINGLE restaurant I've been to in Japan) IF, on the menu is a ham sandwich and a cheese sandwich, and you try to order a ham and cheese sandwich, they will look at you funny and/or tell you that it is not available to order this item. This example, of course is fictitious, but a real life example was at an "italian" restaurant I went to in Japan. (Most of them are pretty good, but this one was not!) I wanted spaghetti with italian sausage. Not on the menu. So I ordered spaghetti with sauce and the sausage as two items that WERE on the menu. I thought I had successfully solved the problem. Nope! Failure: The two orders came out SEPARATELY at COMPLETELY different times. It was considered an appetizer and came out first... people started eating from it and was gone before my spaghetti with sauce arrived. I didn't know how to say anything but "Dame!" which would have been very rude so I said nothing. I was defeated.

And every time I see human minds get trumped by a script or something in software, I get offended. Perhaps it's odd that I, as a "technology professional" would be offended by technology, but I am. But then again, I would consider this to be a clear misapplication of technology and I find that equally offensive. To this day, I prefer going through a checkout line run by humans rather than the 'self checkout' lines where you scan and pay for your stuff by yourself. Humans are still better than machines... for now... and only when humans aren't acting like machines.

Re:This reminds me of Japan

[GleeBot]

to this day, I prefer going through a checkout line run by humans rather than the 'self checkout' lines where you scan and pay for your stuff by yourself. Humans are still better than machines... for now... and only when humans aren't acting like machines.

I do, too, but this probably isn't the best example. Unless you're buying produce (for which the self-check line is truly an ordeal), you're using the exact same mix of humans and automation in both lines.

The difference, of course, is that even a grocery clerk working a summer job and making minimum wage is better at scanning groceries than your average and completely untrained shopper.

Of course, it doesn't help that the scanners are clunky (do I really need to scan my item, then put it in the bag, then oops, I wasn't supposed to put in the bag, scan it again, no, false alarm, it was just fine, just leave it in the bag), but you're actually comparing apples to oranges here.

Re:This reminds me of Japan

[Joe the Lesser]

We once trained some Englishman to make iced tea.

They said 'we don't have that'

We said 'Brew some tea, and pour some freaking ice over it.'

Re:This reminds me of Japan

[cognibrain]

Did I read you right that the only word of Japanese you knew was "dame"? If so, you should not be surprised that you can't get what you want from people if you can only speak *one word* of their language. How much success would someone speaking entirely in Japanese have at ordering in a restaurant in your country?

I had almost universal success getting items not listed on the menu, even in chains like Watami, where the menu is laminated and identical from Sapporo to Fukuoka. My first success was with a whole roast garlic, and it was well worth the effort.

But I digress. It's possible to infer from what you wrote that you think that Japanese people act like machines more than people of other cultures. I don't know whether you really think that or not. Whichever is the case, I felt the need to challenge that implication.

Re:This reminds me of Japan

[InakaBoyJoe]

Mod parent up. Negotiation works a lot better when you speak the same language, and people seem a lot less like machines when the communication bandwidth increases. :-)

Also, there might be some reasons you're not aware of: some food safety laws in Japan are much stricter than in other countries. The point-of-sale system likely isn't only responsible for figuring the bill, but also tracks inventory of the ingredients that go into the food and their storage times. Are you willing to reprogram the system for a special order that likely won't be requested again in the future? Also, suppose the sausage has to be cooked up to a certain temperature per the food safety laws, but serving it with the pasta might not be able to guarantee that it's reached that temp -- thus exposing the restaurant to liability. These kinds of things are to some degree taken to an extreme in Japan -- but in a way, that's the price you pay for decent food safety and a culture of responsibility towards one's customers.

Anyway, the point is, as the parent said, generalizations are easy to come by but sometimes there is some unseen, or uncommunicated, rationale. Somehow I doubt there is much excusable rationale with the Verizon case though...

Re:the name fits here

[morgan_greywolf]

Unfortunately for many theories and schools of economics, it turns out that capitalism destroys the market mechanisms supposedly vital for capitalism to work

I took a class in high school called 'social justice', which was ran by a very liberal teacher who said that communism works -- but only on a small scale and only if nobody cheats.

It turns out he was right. But that goes for any theory of economics.

Capitalism, socialism, it doesn't matter what system you use. The fact is that turn out that none of the theories and schools of economics work the way that economists theorize them. In the end, there will always be those who will find out how to abuse the system and those people will abuse it.

In the end, the only way to make any system work is to punish the cheaters.

Ah Verizon...

[inthealpine]

I worked for Verizon Fios and when anyone switched from one type of service such as dial up to DSL or even DSL to Fios the email was always transferred incorrectly by sales. Someone probably screwed up then decided it was just easier to say 'you can't have that email anyways' than try and fix it. Normally those in management at Verizon don't know anything about technology or computers and know far less how to 'get things done' at Verizon.

Family Guy

[plutoXL]

"Thomas Jefferson." "Here." "Benjamin Franklin." "Here." "John Footpenis." "It's John Hancock now." "Why?" "None of your damn business, that's why!"

Bad summary

[Spazmania]

If you actually read the article, the problem wasn't that they wouldn't let him enter his last name. The problem was that they wouldn't let him include his last name in his -login- name because it contained a four-letter word as a substring.

Why would Verizon care what you put in your username? How about the fact that when you call support, the rep will have to say what you typed in multiple times. And then a troll is going to record it and upload it to Youtube. Why should their staff be subjected to that embarrassment?

Granted in this case the call should have been passed to an engineer with the ability to edit at a level past the word filter. But that's Verizon for you: compartmentalized to hell and back.

Re:Bad summary

[Shados]

The article said it was in their email address that they couldn't use bad language. I guess its to stop people from having stuff like "suck_my_cock@verizon.com" or something. And considering what the article said further, it seemed like it was configured that way in the system and they couldn't bypass it, thus they refused it. (But further down they DO state they make exceptions, and it was a big confusion that they didn't in this case...yeah, right).

They would probably hate me, then.

[Huntr]

Signed, Mike Fuckyouverizon

Re:I had a company website blocked for the same th

[schmeckelgruben]

http://www.penisland.net/ sells custom made pens, presumably from Pen Island.

Also Experts-Exchange.com

[Airw0lf]

I was told that experts-exchange.com used to be expertsexchange.com. At the time I had a bit of a laugh and dismissed it as a good story. However, Wikipedia confirms it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experts_exchange#History. So in all, I reckon that must be one of the more famous examples of an embarrassing domain name.

experts-exchange

[Anynomous Coward]

Like that experts-exchange site (SWF) that often sits in the top Google results.

Sherril Babcock

[Xian97]

This reminds me of a story I read years ago about a filter not allowing someone named Sherril Babcock to register on a website until she changed her user id to Babpenis. I guess John Hancock might be denied too.

http://www.apnic.net/mailing-lists/apple/archive/2000/08/msg00013.html

Re:the name fits here

[int19h]

Hah. USA is not in balance, but very close to raw capitalism.

Re:I had a company website blocked for the same th

[jez9999]

And for some reason, the New York council's www.nystopchildporn.com website seems to be attracting a very different calibre of individual than they'd planned...

Girl Scouts

[Anonymous Coward]

Either they remain entirely free and unregulated, in which case they sooner or later evolve into "robber baron" markets dominated by players like Microsoft and IBM.

See Vanderbilt, Fisk, Hariman, and other 19th century railroad tycoons. Taught Rockefeller everything he knew and they made MS and IBM look like Girl Scouts.

Oh, and thank you for pointing out how economists don't have a clue.

Remember this...

[Anonymous Coward]

Verizon was originally GTE.
GTE was consistently ranked by J.D. Powers for having the WORST customer service satisfaction in the entire industry.
Once a turd, always a turd. Even if they call it a 'bowel movement' instead, a turd is a turd.

Hey, Fuk U Do Me!

[cbowland]

My favorite name is the Chicago Cubs player Kosuke Fukudome. MLB won't let you put "cubs suck" on official merchandize, but you can get "Fuk u do me" (minus the spaces) with no problem. Plus, his number is 1, which could be interpreted as extending the one figure salute.

Re:Hey, Fuk U Do Me!

[meringuoid]

MLB won't let you put "cubs suck" on official merchandize

How can they stop you - is this some nightmarish corollary of the DMCA I'm not aware of? Buy the shirt, then put whatever letters you like on it.

Re:Hey, Fuk U Do Me!

[gardenwall2]

The current Cubs radio announcers seem to always use his first name by itself. How I long for Harry Carey and his skill at mispronouncing the easiest names. I would like to hear his attempts at this name after a few Buds!

I know the feeling

[Sniper98G]

I had a similar experience to this. My last name is Snipes; when attempting to create a PSN login which contained my last name I was told I could not have it because "Snipe" is in inappropriate.

I ended up changing my username, but after reading this I think I should have pressed the issue. Then I could have gotten the name I wanted; a name that has nothing wrong with it.

No understanding, talk clearly.

[burni]

Ok this is really odd, because as a native german speaker I needed several minutes to get it right, why it was rejected.
But as a native german speaker this name would not be an offense, it's just a reciculously absurd act of censorship to me.

Btw. sorry /. but perhaps this site is going to get a > 18y disclaimer,
but censorshit.

Re:the name fits here

[LEMONedIScream]

Hold on, hold on. I agree entirely about communism except that it only works on a small scale because nobody can cheat.

We're talking village small scale here, where everyone knows each other type thing.

Bad name

[phorm]

Well, obviously the Philadelphia Inquirer poorly chose the name for their paper. I, for one, demand that they change the name of their newspaper so that we can take them seriously...

false

[bussdriver]

All markets are regulated.
The free market does not exist and idealistically never has existed.

Somebody enforces and writes the rules by which the markets run; which INCLUDES fundamental things like ownership, law enforcement, a legal system...

Even the most free markets-- the black markets are defined by law (indirectly) and how those laws are enforced.

If you're Lipshitz . . .

[tubegeek]

. . . my ass talks!

Not exactly an aryan evangelical name

[smchris]

Maybe he could muster an army of lawyers to make Verizon kiss his ass if he so desired?

where else

[bussdriver]

What other countries are so moronic about certain single WORDs being banned from use?

Re:where else

[Anonymous Coward]

China

Re:the name fits here

[Austerity Empowers]

On a small scale, almost any system can work, including capitalism. If you all know each other, and have adequate controls on the rich and poor alike...there's no issue. But that's not helpful, such things won't exist in developed countries.

Arse

[BancBoy]

Arsene Wenger was unavailable for comment.
Perhaps he couldn't get an email address.

Re:the name fits here

[TriggerFin]

So you're a troll, then? Oh, that's fine.

Re:the name fits here

[defaria]

True monopolies only exist with government support. Socialist systems never work as they are opposed to true human nature.

Slashdot has credibility?

[Anonymous Coward]

IMO it stopped having credibility once the slashvertisments started getting through on a daily basis.

Use of the "S" word

[Anonymous Coward]

I once worked on a GPS system with a programmer from a non English speaking country. His code was written to keep track of which satellites the system was "hitting" signals from. He abbreviated his array name to "shitlist".

Re:I had a company website blocked for the same th

[Dirtside]

Let's just hope they don't work in the Italian energy industry.

Verizon is anti-semitic

[joneser]

Libshitz is a very common Jewish last name. Silly rules like this are clearly anti-semitic and prejudice.

Re:I had a company website blocked for the same th

[cos(0)]

When I was a working at a school district, I could not update the software on my Gentoo laptop from within the district's network. The FTP connections would time out, and HTTP connections would give a firewall error message.

The reason? My laptop was configured with the mirror of the Free Software Lab @ UTD, which was just a few miles away and had a very large pipe. The URL was http://mirror.fslutd.org./

It took an appeal to the IT department to get them to unblock it.

Re:the name fits here

[dgatwood]

Or, to a lesser degree, it works in a totalitarian regime on a larger scale because almost everyone is afraid to cheat. That doesn't make either the totalitarian regime or communism a good idea, though....

Clbuttic

[AlpineR]

This is a clbuttic problem with automated censorship.

german collegue with f-word surname

[peter303]

I haven't heard of any actual problems, but this one of the more extreme. The 'u' is a long vowel, so it doesnt sound like it.

If he is to change his name...

[bjorniac]

... I'd suggest that he look here for inspiration:

"After being charged £20 for a £10 overdraft, 30 year old Michael Howard of Leeds changed his name by deed poll to Yorkshire Bank PLC Are Fascist Bastards. The bank has now asked him to close his account, and Mr. Bastards has asked them to repay the 69p balance, by cheque, made out in his new name."

From The Guardian.

Then I guess Verizon is unavailable here

[Skapare]

Then I guess Verizon is unavailable here.

I had a similar experience

[Ankh]

When I lived in the Boston area, I tried to get Internet service with Verizon. They took ages, so I contacted their support.

Eventually they got back to me and said that they were unable to sell me service because of "a problem with your name".

I never found out the exact nature of the problem. By best guess was that I have two middle initials, and they are both on my credit card, but their application form only allowed me to enter one middle initial. But I don't know for sure.

I was able to get at least five free wifi signals from the couch in my room, and for anything using significant bandwidth I'd walk to my office at MIT, so in the end I went without.

Rugrats

[EEBaum]

What, so the Rugrats can say Libshitz on kids' TV, but Verizon finds it too racy for a name on a DSL account?

The real scandal is..

[The Breeze]

...the next call the Indian tech took was from some guy who had a one-word name - "McLovin" and he didn't get any issue, nor did the caller after that, "Mike Hunt."

-Steve

Re:the name fits here

[Anonymous Coward]

It (communism) would have to be an incredibly small scale. Like a single family.

It was tried (sort of) by the Pilgrims that landed in Massachusetts (USA), long before Marx officially put it into the manifesto.

It didn't really work out for them and they abandoned it quickly. Basically, in most implementations it requires that people work to their fullest without expecting comensurate rewards. This happens all the time in a family; mom and/or dad work FT jobs and feed the kids without any economic compensation from the kids. The emotional ties they have override any economic ones.

If you can get everyone to agree to work for the betterment of the community then great. Otherwise the leeches destroy it. With capitalism the leeches destroy themselves, so that problem is solved. Monopoly abuse, however, does become an issue any time a situation arises where a monopoly can be formed and there is no plausible way for an abusive monopoly to be uprooted due to barriers to market entry. You generally cannot open up a competing telco due to zoning and other laws, so the telcos are definitely hard to beat with anything other than a law. (We're past the soap box stage and at the ballot box stage, but we're not at the ammo box just yet ;) .)

Wait!

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot to punch that guy in the face...

How to fix democracy.

[Kaenneth]

Well, if you were an influential politician, what kind of friends would you have - rich ones or poor ones?

Well, ideally in a democracy/democratic republic, since the poor usually outnumber the rich, I could get elected by having the larger number of poor friends. Unfortunetly, the poor are influenced by money spent in ways that don't benefit them, such as on advertisments for other politicians. Poor people are kinda stupid that way.

One possible way to fix this is to allow to buying and selling of votes. It would be like the 'economic stimulus' checks being sent out, except on every election year. That way, in order for rich people to gain power, they give money to the people, instead of other rich people. Voters have power (votes), they should be able to trade that for another form of power (money). Not being able to do so is an undo restriction on their freedom.

Each persons vote could be a source of income for them, potentially eliminating voter apathy. You could give each voter a difficult to counterfeit slip of paper simply verifying that they did vote, and they could take it around to the party offices and get paid and stamped/hole punched (so they can't take it to both parties!). The slip would NOT record their actual vote, simply the fact that they participated; that they voted a particular way is on their honor.

To keep everyone from voting one way, then claiming money from the other party, the partys could have an offer where they only pay if they won. So that they are essentially bidding on the districts block of votes, and should have enough money (perhaps in escrow) to pay for a landslide victory.

This would solve all problems with democracy. A campaign promise you can literally take to the bank.

Re:How to fix democracy.

[randyleepublic]

Brilliant! Let's do this. Only why not record the vote? I want people to get paid whether the payers win or lose.

Re:How to fix democracy.

[WNight]

I'd much rather have a gallows we could drag people to for breaking their campaign promises.

Re:the name fits here

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly.

Where the difference lies between supporting arbitrary corporate power, even to the extent of a monopoly, and trying to limit it, is how authoritarian and Machiavellian someone is.

An extreme authoritarian and Machiavellian supports the right of the powerful to have a free reign in whatever they do - "might makes right".

Anyone who is either liberal (and interested in the rights of the consumers) or truly in favor of a free market (and thus genuine competition on a level playing field) would balk at the ability of any corporation to circumvent competition on merit due to existing power, due to a monopoly or a lesser controlling position.

Even if a corporation succeeds initially due to merit, this should not give them a right to future success on their own terms regardless of merit.

Oh, Rob!

[Anonymous Coward]

Where does this leave Dick Van Dyke?

Re:Oh, Rob!

[X0563511]

Nowhere. Dick isn't a name, it's a foreshortened name. The real name is Richard.

Re:Oh, Rob!

[larjon]

Where does this leave Dick Van Dyke?
No worries, he got that approved when he changed his name from Penis Van Lesbian.

Re:the name fits here

[dreamchaser]

Monopolies are inherently anti-capitalist because they negate the free market forces that make capitalism work. Try again. And yes, I'm conservative, though with very strong libertarian leanings.

That being said, yes there are a lot of misguided liberals on Slashdot who think Government is the solution to all of societies ills. That has zero to do with this story of the general reaction to it.

False dichotomy

[mdmkolbe]

Free markets go either of two ways.

Free market doesn't mean no-regulation and a regulated market doesn't mean socialism. I challenge anyone to call the New York stock exchange socialist, but it is very highly regulated by the SEC.

The difference between socialism and capitalism isn't whether there should be regulations, but the kind of regulations. In a pure free-market, the interactions of the sellers and buyers are regulated (e.g. honest sale, no collusion) but the goods and their prices are not. There is nothing baroque or byzantine about these rules so how you leap to the conclusion that proper free-market regulations become "steadily less stable and credible" is beyond me. (You provided no justification for that assertion; you just asserted it.)

Re:False dichotomy

[Anonymous Coward]

Free markets go either of two ways.

Free market doesn't mean no-regulation and a regulated market doesn't mean socialism. I challenge anyone to call the New York stock exchange socialist, but it is very highly regulated by the SEC.

The difference between socialism and capitalism isn't whether there should be regulations, but the kind of regulations. In a pure free-market, the interactions of the sellers and buyers are regulated (e.g. honest sale, no collusion) but the goods and their prices are not. There is nothing baroque or byzantine about these rules so how you leap to the conclusion that proper free-market regulations become "steadily less stable and credible" is beyond me. (You provided no justification for that assertion; you just asserted it.)

Nail. Head.

Pesky thing the rule of law.

[crovira]

Good thing Bush and the Imperial Presidency(TM)® did away with it and instead we have Guantanamo Bay, the Department of Homeland Security and Bush's insistence that he can sign bills into law and not obey them.

Watch what happens in November.

We can pinpoint the movements of anybody anywhere in the 'States, Chine, Europe and Russia, to within a few feet and yet we can let Bin Laden go free for years?

Pull the other one.

Its got fur on it...

The election's not going to take place while the "emergency lasts" (And guess when its going to end? NEVER...)

Re:Pesky thing the rule of law.

[Anonymous Coward]

Paranoia is a serious illness and should not be taken lightly. I hope you can find the strength to seek help.

Arbitrary name strings

[Anonymous Coward]

Just as a hypothetical, what if I officially changed my name to something similar to ";DELETE TABLE *;" and then requested an email address?

Re:the name fits here

[arth1]

In the end, the only way to make any system work is to punish the cheaters.

I agreed with your entire post, until this line at the end.
You are assuming a correlation that just isn't there.
To get a system to work, you want to reduce crime, and contrary to right wing beliefs, being hard on criminals doesn't deter people noticeably. Making easier available alternatives to crime works. Having meaningful rehabilitation of criminals works to prevent recidivism. But punishment doesn't really help -- it only causes criminals to go to greater lengths not to be caught.

Names that amuse me.

[fm6]

http://www.putzmeister.com/

Funny if you know a little Yiddish. I'm guessing "putz" is not an offensive term in modern German.

http://www.cumminsonan.com/

Every time I see one of their products, I wonder if spillage is an issue.

Re:the name fits here

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is it that whenever I advocate capitalism people always straw-man me and say I'm anti-regulation. I have no problems with regulation, it just has to be done in sensible ways (e.g. monopoly & union busting, not price ceilings).

I'm not sure I agree with the idea that free markets tend to monopolies though, there are plenty of free markets which do well e.g. the telecoms market anywhere outside the US, car makers (competitive oligopoly?), the high-street here in the UK...

DSL fu~~~!

[Anonymous Coward]

This does remind me a little of the time I moved into a new flat, and found that a previous flatmate had set up our DSL with the username "hardgay".

The only problem this caused was phoning up tech support, and having the guy on the other end of the phone cracking up laughing and saying "I'm sorry, that's just so awesome" for two minutes before he could continue fixing our line issues.

Better that than a more recent addition

[Krishnoid]

Seriously, I'm wondering how anyone with this man's surname will ever be able to get past this particular problem ...

I think i linked against this guy...

[shlompo]

libshitz.so ?

Re:the name fits here

[Myopic]

Anger at failures of the open market is typically a conservative issue.

(I know, I know, don't feed the trolls... still, this troll isn't even trolling right.)

If you're Libshitz...

[gregh76]

then my Asswhistles.

Common sense is thoroughly misnamed.

[Tumbleweed]

It has everything to do with the EMAIL ADDRESS he apparently wasn't willing to change. They wouldn't grant him the address he requested. All he had to do was pick another email address and he would have been fine. I'm sorry, but you are not entitled to any email address you want.

1) He was already using his name in his email address for his dial-up connection. Keeping the same email username and merely switching domains is a good way to help your friends & family remember your email address. User-centered design. Look it up.

2) It's his fucking NAME, dipshit! All Verizon had to do was verify that's the name on his credit card, so they knew it really was his name. Unless the email username they want conflicts with formatting requirements or with another user already using it, yeah, you really ARE entitled to any email address you want when it's your name. You have the letter X (three times!) in your username; you're clearly talking about XXX porn, so we should refuse you the username you want. This is just as smart an idea as that.

another thing for this guy to be wary of

[Tumbleweed]

He shouldn't drive a Chevy Nova around in Mexico.

Re:I had a company website blocked for the same th

[Joe the Lesser]

What is "the penis mightier" for $400!

oblig south park

[Joe the Lesser]

Step one, instead of ass say buns, like kiss my buns or you're a bunshole

Step two, instead of shit say poo as in bull poo,
poo head and this poo is cold

Step three, with bitch drop the T cause "bich" is latin for generosity

Step four, don't say fuck anymore,
cause fuck is the worst word that you can say.
So Just use the word "mmmkay"

Re:oblig south park

[Gunstick]

waht is very funny is US reality shows in german TV. Example: Orange County Choppers....

The show is full of beeps. The german voice-over does not contain beeps, it's featuring the full collection of german swear words. I bet the translators have fun finding always new meanings for the single english word.

So no customers named "Yamashita" either?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or most any other Japanese name involving the dread "-shita" set of characters presumably.

BTW, it's pronounced "-shta".

How many o' them thar other "furrin" names get this treatment?

Re:the name fits here

[DigiShaman]

First you have to break down the levels of crime. I assume you're talking about a level of crime who commits it out of desperation. For these individual, I agree with you. Compassionate support, education and rehabilitation will go a long way. They need to be embraced by the community and not shunned to obscurity. Of course, this only works if that individual *wants* to be helped. You cannot force them otherwise to achieve the previously stated goal.

On the other hand, we really do have nasty socio and psychopaths behind bars. These people literally feed off the misery of others. It's as though a portion of their brain matter is missing that causes them to act like animals (violent rape, murder, serial killing...etc). For these individuals, nothing short of them being executed will change a damn thing. But as a compassionate society, we at *least* keep them behind bars. Exactly where they should stay...

Obscene to whom?

[nurb432]

Who gets to decide my name is obscene?

Well...

[Samah]

I wonder if I would have had a similar problem. My surname ends in "cock".
No, I'm not kidding, take your purile jokes elsewhere.

Don't defend this scum consumer

[Anonymous Coward]

He has that kind of a name because his family was trying to subvert the French nobility. back in the dark ages. There's no reason why he doesn't make an email address as "libsh1tz@verizonmail.com." Notice that's why he's here in America, terrorizing our nobility that we hold dear to our hearts. If you are with him, then you are against all that is good and decent. Take a better example of good people with good names that endorse my reasoning; Courtney Love, Christian Slater, Charles Manson...Bob Saget. Do you see a pattern of good behaviour yet?

Next time political questions like this try to come around again, we'll have legislation in place that will raise the filing fee for nuisance questions as these. If you don't like anyone just because you chose to use a bad name, then pay a higher court fee to dismiss your frivolous complaint.

Sinseriously,
Rite Honourable Lord Admiral President Dr. Bob B. Bob, III, Sr, DDS, MS

Re:the name fits here

[arth1]

On the other hand, we really do have nasty socio and psychopaths behind bars. These people literally feed off the misery of others. It's as though a portion of their brain matter is missing that causes them to act like animals (violent rape, murder, serial killing...etc). For these individuals, nothing short of them being executed will change a damn thing. But as a compassionate society, we at *least* keep them behind bars. Exactly where they should stay...

Indeed, but then it's not punishment that is doing something good, but separation.

Punishment's only purpose is slaking people's thirst for vengeance. A harsher punishment doesn't reduce the amount of crime -- that's a false belief. If anything, it causes criminals to take more desperate measures not to get caught. If prison is a horrible place, people will do more to stay out of it, up to and including arson or killing witnesses or police. But not including staying lawful. Getting caught is something that happens to others, not oneself.

Re:the name fits here

[Brain Damaged Bogan]

"In the end, the only way to make any system work is to punish the cheaters." by giving them huge 7+ figure severence packages when they drive a multinational into the ground

Re:the name fits here

[morgan_greywolf]

A harsher punishment doesn't reduce the amount of crime -- that's a false belief. If anything, it causes criminals to take more desperate measures not to get caught.

I disagree. I think that harsher punishment does work, to an extent, in deterring crime. An example: When I was younger (and stupider), many years ago, I used to perform various feats of security cracking. Since then, the penalties have gotten much, much harsher and that at least has something to do with the fact that I now refrain from doing so except on systems I control (for security hardening purposes).

Re:It's because the word "shit" has become LESS ta

[welshsocialist]

(Come to think of it, did Bible translations start using the phrase "gopher wood" in place of "shittim wood?").

To answer the question of the previous post, "gopher wood" (or "gopherwood") is still the preferred translation of the wood Noah used to build the ark. Starting in the 70's other words have been used. The most common is "cypress wood. Other recent translations of "gopher wood" include "resinous wood", "good lumber", "good timber", "teakwood", and "gofer wood".

Shame on Verizon!

[wshwe]

More than 1 person at Verizon needs to be taken to the wood shed.

Another case from long ago

[Technician]

When I was in the service, one of the guys couldn't get a Vanity license plate for the same reason. His legal name is Lust. After pointing out to the clerk, he said thought the clerk's name was offensive to him. He got the plate.

I first met him with the plate on his van and asked how he got the plate. He told me and we became friends.

This type of stuff has been happening since the 1970's or before. The only news is it is an online name.

What about

[Anonymous Coward]

other services on the net that he needs to enter his email address into and they deny access due to profanity... government, banking, SERIOUS BIZNIS. His one and only special verizon email account with his real name can't be used for all that jazz.

Re:the name fits here

[Anonymous Coward]

The government has a monopoly on the use of physical force. It is the most important monopoly to keep in check.

Re:the name fits here

[Anonymous Coward]

And since you had that experience it must be true! Rip apart all studies about behaviorism, morgan_greywolf has an anecdotal evidence that says it's wrong!

Would you go the same way if you saw a ball bouncing in a strange way too? Sorry Newton but I, morgan_greywolf, have seen balls bouncing in a way I wouldn't have expected so it's time to rething this whole gravity idea!

Now, you can very well be a socio or psychopath which is what's being discussed here and if that's the case I'd recommend you seek up help. If that's not the case I'd suggest you rethink your anecdotal evidence and maybe read up a bit about this subject.

Re:the name fits here

[Archtech]

Absolutely correct! This post deserves to be a 5, IMHO.

Everything any government does is backed up by the ultimate threat of lethal violence. It doesn't start with that, of course, but the threat is always there.

For my money, that's the main reason they get so bent out of shape by "terrorism". As the dominant practitioners of terrorism, ruling politicians hate to face competition from non-government groups.

hard time at school

[Anonymous Coward]

I knew a person called Robert Wanker. He must have had a very hard time at school.

Re:I had a company website blocked for the same th

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you think of using www.rts-exec.com?

Re:the name fits here

[Anonymous Coward]

Depends on the reason for the monopoly. If it's because someone has cornered a natural resource and there is no way around it, yes. And objections to that can cut all the way down to the level of basic ownership rights. But if it's a monopoly in something that is created and optional, we usually just call that "branding". Nobody else can sell actual Nike's (without defrauding customers), so Nike has a monopoly on them. That's just our problem, and we have no basis to complain if Nike makes us pay a lot of extra money. We have absolutely no claim over them.

There are very few monopolies in the ISP business, and those that exist are the fault of the state for granting them in the first place based on their methods to establish last-mile service. If you can't get DSL, try cable. If you can't get cable, try a local high-speed wireless provider. If you can't get wireless try satellite. If you can't get satellite try a cell network modem. If you can't get any of those then your problem is not the monopoly.

Re:I had a company website blocked for the same th

[Anonymous Coward]

Precisely, thank you for pointing that out. Everyone is so quick to blame the provider and shout 'monopoly' when they don't get their way but the fact remains that this man's name contains the word 'SHIT' and that word is blocked by Verizons profanity filter because while the alternative may not bother some of us it does bother a great many of us. Many people are not responsible enough to censor themselves in the public domain so it is up to the powers that be to censor ourselves for us. And if you don't like it you do have the choice, as a consumer, to go with another provider or to be reasonable and change your email address to something sensible and realize that even though it is your name and you should be able to use it any way you like, it does in fact contain the word 'SHIT'. So he is not being picked on or singled out, we don't need to call out the lawyers and the big guns, just change your email address. Oh, and Slashdot, you might want to regain some credibility and drop this story, it's not news and it is just stupid.

E-mail addresses aren't constitutionally protected

[Drenaran]

The fact that we aren't just given sequential alphanumeric email addresses says something. We are only allowed to choose the "name" on the email address as a gimmick, to make it seem more personalized. While this man has every right to his name (it is his name after all, which is a legally defined concept), why would one expect that he should get to use his name as part of his email address? It's just a common standard because it's an easy way to implement "standardized personalization". The email address itself is still effectively owned by the company he is renting it from (and yes, he is renting it - that's what that bill every month is), and as such they have EVERY right to determine it's form.

If you don't like it, let's remove all controversy and use generated alphanumeric naming.

Re:the name fits here

[mi]

Unfortunately for many theories and schools of economics, it turns out that capitalism destroys the market mechanisms supposedly vital for capitalism to work.

It does?

Or else governments step in to regulate them, in a process that soon comes to resemble the Ptolemaic system of astronomy - adjustments to adjustments to adjustments, while the whole thing becomes steadily less stable and credible.

Points for referencing Ptolemaic system of astronomy, but nothing else. The piling up of adjustments upon adjustments is not inevitable. If it weren't for the socialism-minded demagogues, we would not have any of those beyond the original anti-trust laws, which would also have applied equally to trade-unions. And there would've been much more rejoicing.

easier solution

[Anonymous Coward]

He should have changed his last name to "Libshi'; drop table customers;"

Re:the name fits here

[Anonymous Coward]

On the other hand, we really do have nasty socio and psychopaths behind bars. These people literally feed off the misery of others.

Some of them aren't behind bars but working on the other side as part of the criminal justice "system". These are the people who feed off the misery of others by inflicting "punishment" on them. Some get a vicarious thrill by just watching, reading or hearing about it. When asked how much punishment there should be, they just answer "more".

Re:the name fits here

[Dread_ed]

So what you are saying is that a criminal will be a criminal regardless of the possible negative outcomes of their crime. In other words, a criminal who wants to steal something will (if the punishment for theft is harsh enough) murder a whole family to cover their tracks.

I don't want someone like that "rehabilitated." They obviously do not posess rational though like that of other humans. I couldn't even begin to justify stealing something much less murdering to cover my tracks.

Elimination, not seperation or rehabilitation, seems to be the only sensible action for a defective creature that acts like that.

Programmers need to learn statistics

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

A harsher punishment doesn't reduce the amount of crime -- that's a false belief.

I keep hearing this, but it sounds to me like bullshit on its face: If harsher punishments don't do anything, then we could save a lot of money by reducing all punishments to incarceration for a single day. According to this theory, doing so would not increase crime. That seems really unlikely to me, and our experience with rioting (where the probability of getting punished drops, and at the same time, crime increases dramatically) seems to suggest otherwise. You're going to need some compelling evidence and an explanation of how this affects rioting to convince me of the soundness of your theory.

I'm guessing that somebody did a study showing that, for example, an increase in fines for speeding on the highway did not significantly change the number of speeding tickets issued. Or maybe it was a study showing that increasing the penalties for possession of illegal drugs didn't reduce the number of convictions for possession.

Assuming that, let's look at some possible confounding factors:

1. In both cases, it's still fairly unlikely that any particular person is going to get caught, so the expected cost of the illegal activity (penalty_if_convicted * probability_of_conviction) doesn't change much.
2. In both cases, if the people who enforce the law are operating at capacity, then the limiting factor will actually be their capacity, not the number of actual instances of the illegal activity.
3. In the second case (drugs), addiction is involved. For addicts, the cost of quitting is probably quite high compared to the expected cost of the illegal activity, even if penalties are increased. (See #1, above.)
4. Were data in the papers collected through double-blind experimentation? If not, can we account for experimenter bias? (How do you do a double-blind experiment with this kind of thing anyway?)
5. Are the statistical models in the paper sound, and are the calculations correct? Smart people routinely screw up statistics in very significant ways.

That's a far cry from proving that "an increase in penalties never affects crime".

Re:Programmers need to learn statistics

[arth1]

I keep hearing this, but it sounds to me like bullshit on its face: If harsher punishments don't do anything, then we could save a lot of money by reducing all punishments to incarceration for a single day.

You're disregarding one of the best reasons for incarceration: rehabilitation.

The justice system exists to reduce the overall crime and to lessen the impact of crime. Sentencing serves several purposes:
- Prevention through separation. If the recidivism rate is higher than for the average population, removing the criminal from the temptation of or possibility of crime is a protective measure. But only if there is such a real risk.
- Rehabilitation. The convict is given an opportunity to learn how to live without crime. Including the ability to be given a truly fresh start, with blank cards. If you can't ever be fully accepted into society again, the imperative becomes to not get caught. If you aren't given the means to live a life outside crime, the road back to crime becomes very short.
- Determent. Sentencing is supposed to "send a message" to other would-be criminals. This only works up to a point -- if the punishment is seen as especially hard, this will work against its purpose, because the prime goal then becomes not getting caught. And in some cases, like the proposed death penalty for child abuse, it will reduce the chance of the crime being reported in the first place; I think very few girls would want their fathers to be killed. Also, if you already risk capital punishment, what incentives do you have to not kill a victim, witness or a cop? They can only kill you once.
For determent to work, sentencing needs to be mild enough that each additional sentence truly makes a difference. And honestly, is there such a difference between 6 years in jail and 8 years in jail that the two extra years will truly deter anyone? I say no -- if 6 years doesn't deter them, 8 years won't either.

What a sentencing should never do is exact revenge. That doesn't reduce crime in any way -- if anything, it causes vendettas and polarization.

And yes, for many crimes, a day in prison would be enough. If the risk of recidivism is low, and there's no need for rehabilitation, a longer sentence might not be helpful to anyone. For first time offenders, a day in prison might be more than enough to teach them the value of their freedom. Heck, perhaps every 18 year old should go to prison for a day, just for the experience.

Re:Programmers need to learn statistics

[DigiShaman]

You're disregarding one of the best reasons for incarceration: rehabilitation

Correct. Just ask anyone in Singapore who've been caned. I'm sure they got rehabilitated real quick!

Being thrown in the slam for X amount of years is one thing. Getting your ass beaten with a stick is whole other experience.

The fact is, corporal punishment works. Fearing pain does keep one's judgement in check.

Oblig Futurama

[kutuz_off]

Professor Hubert Farnsworth: I'm sorry, Fry, but astronomers renamed Uranus in 2620 to end that stupid joke once and for all.
Fry: Oh. What's it called now?
Professor Hubert Farnsworth: Urrectum. Here, let me locate it for you.
Fry: No, no, I, I think I'll just smell around a bit over here.

Punishment

[cartman94501]

I recall reading some time ago that swift and certain punishment is a better general deterrent than severe punishment, though of course a punishment can be all three.

Expletive deleted

[cartman94501]

One thing he should definitely NOT do to solve this problem is move to Scunthorpe, England.

in other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

saying 'seal' in french sounds like the f-bomb. ... so what?

Re:the name fits here

[Alex Belits]

Monopolies are inherently anti-capitalist because they negate the free market forces that make capitalism work.

They are also the only possible result of the economy unless the government actively prevent them from forming.

That being said, yes there are a lot of misguided liberals on Slashdot who think Government is the solution to all of societies ills. That has zero to do with this story of the general reaction to it.

Of course, government is the solution. It's the only player that is supposed to be controlled by the population in general -- the rest are businesses, and their interests are inevitably at odds with the interests of population in general. If you want businesses to win this game and take control over the population, weaken the government or let businesses to take over the control of it. If you want to support the population, you need someone to constantly oppress the businesses -- and only government can do it. What is perfectly fine because businesses aren't people, and governments only have obligations toward people.

If you are one of those Social Conservatives or Libertarians who scream "but businesses provide benefit to society! don't touch them!!!", try to imagine what amount of damage you need to inflict on a company in a monopoly position before it will start negatively affecting any actual well-being of any person. Please note that ability to control others is not "well-being", and I am sure, actual usable possessions of shareholders and executives are not going to decrease in quantity and quality if the company will go from "ridiculously profitable" to merely "very profitable" -- what would happen if it actually was beneficial in the first place. This also explains why government has to be strong -- it should be capable of inflicting such a damage, or otherwise it would succumb to businesses' power.

How population is supposed to control a government is a different problem. History shows that educated people usually can do it by whatever means that system of government allows, unless someone managed to convince them that some force other than themselves -- God, democracy, market, particular school of philosophy, superiority of some ethnicity or race, etc. -- provides a guarantee that their rulers can do no wrong. So if someone is really concerned about keeping the government from oppressing people, the best thing he can do is to make sure that next generation of people is educated and resistant to propaganda. Please note that "resistant to propaganda" also means "hard to influence by advertising", so most businesses won't help with that part.