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Apple and AT&T Sued, Again, Over 3G
Macworld is reporting that Apple and AT&T are being sued, again, for the lack of delivery on their 3G network. This follows a long line of other lawsuits in San Jose, San Diego, Alabama, Florida, Texas, and New York "The lawsuit charges the companies with Negligence, Breach of Express Warranty, Breach of Implied Warranty of Merchantability, Unjust Enrichment, Negligent Misrepresentation, Violation of the New Jersey Consumer Fraud Act and Other Similar State Statutes, and Breach of Contract. Dickerson is seeking to force Apple and AT&T to correct its labeling and advertising, as well as to recover compensatory, statutory and punitive damages."
The problem with AT&T's 3G is that the connection from your phone to their tower is fast but their tower's connection to the internet is 14k baud dial-up or something. Some towers don't even have internet connectivity, I was on a mountain with 5 bars of 3G, parked, and had no internet connectivity whatsoever. I drove down a small town nearby and it worked fine, except of course for that slow page loading issue.
Well they are forcing you to stick with them.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
I have to agree. If the phone doesn't work take it back get a refund and cancel the contract.
"Some days even my lucky rocketship underpants don't help."
Sounds from the comments on that article that the iPhone's CPU just isn't fast enough to take advantage of 3G data rates even with a 3G radio present.
Based on those that commented on the linked article that their laptop data card was fast and my own experience with an AT&T Tilt in 3G coverage areas, it's *not* the network. The only time I have 3G speed problems is when I'm in a fringe area with only one bar of signal strength.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Good...it's high time somebody smack them around in court for their bullshit data service. Although the connection to the tower is fine, it's slow as balls from the tower out. I mean christ, I experience lag when typing via an ssh session, something I haven't experienced since the dark ages of dialup.
You see the bit in the summary/article "Breach of Express Warranty, Breach of Implied Warranty of Merchantability, Unjust Enrichment, Negligent Misrepresentation..."? This isn't about whining that it sucks. It is about them misleading you about how bad it sucks. By then, you are already nailed to a contract. If you think this is "ok", I have some free time and an ice pick handy...
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
Except they are.
They claim it does all this wonderful stuff, you buy it and it doesn't work as promised*.
You cant switch providers or get your money back.
In that enviroment suing is the only avenue a consumer has.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Sure, but a) they are a business advertising a product and have a legal obligation to ensure their advertisements do not misrepresent their products' features and b) they are a party to a contract and have an obligation to uphold their end of that contract.
Nobody's forcing you to choose Apple/AT&T, but nobody's forcing Apple/AT&T to advertise and agree to terms they can't meet.
It's nothing but crumpled porno and Ayn Rand.
Um.. yes, AT&T _IS_ forcing one to use their service. You remember that little thing called a contract?
Granted, nobody forced me to *choose* them, but once they are chosen - I'm locked in for two years!
But what happens when after 6 months or 1 year my service begins to suck? Have I no recourse?
I have no idea if this lawsuit has merit or not, but an attitude of 'don't like it, don't use it' is likely an oversimplification of the situation.
You people on the coasts are so spoiled. Up here in ND, I'd settle for a choice of cell phone companies that provide coverage in most of the state. IPhones are an unkown commodity up here.
Time to break out the Bag Phone or a Brick.
> > >We don't need no steeekin'.....oh wait, my wife says we do.
It doesn't even come close to the promised performance, or so they claim.
With lock in contracts, and the current no refund policy most places have, what other recourse does someone who has been lied to have?
If I buy a DVD player and it doesn't work, I can take it back and get my money back. So suing is clearly not needed. Unless it explodes and burns my house down.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
If they weren't locked into a contract, they wouldn't have to sue over it.
Most purchases can be returned when the product doesn't work as advertised. Usually this is because the store has a return policy to keep their customers happy, but some of the time it's the law.
In this case, there not only isn't a policy like that, there's a contract guaranteeing that you have to -continue- paying for it.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
"Your chariot may be made of gold my friend, but your horse has a lame leg. My wooden cart and donkey aren't much to look at, but I get where I need to go every time", said the old man.
stuff |
I believe you have thirty days to return the phone and cancel the contract without the early termination charges, which brings this back firmly into the land of whiny bitch.
From AT&T's website:
Er, regardless of whether they lock you into a contract, if they promise you one thing and deliver another, they are answerable in court.
You may have had no way of knowing their adverts were lies until _after_ you signed the contract.
This is the sort of thing we have governments for.
Pull your head out of your ass about cell companies screwing American's. AT&T is GSM, verizon is Cdma of one type, sprint is CDMA of another incompatible type. This isn't Europe where everyone uses GSM. In order to switch GSM carriers in the USA you have a chploice of at&t or tmobile in some cities. Tmobile for me is as useful as using posion ivy leaves for toliet paper.
You need a whole other phone if you want to use verizon or sprint.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
3G coverage is spotty at best, and as others have mentioned, sometimes full 3G bars doesn't even provide data.
Problem has gotten so bad that I have turned off 3G altogether when I'm at home as call reliability is improved and I can just use my Wi-Fi connection for data. I could have just kept my 1st gen iPhone and lived without GPS.
The problem is network dimensioning and issues of the backhaul connection between the NodeB and the RNC. There are multiple configuration of the NodeB which provides for different Data Rates. There is 384 kbs, 1.8 mbps, 3.6 mbps and 7.2 mbps. AT&T was not interested in 7.2 Mbps until late 2007. In order to support these data rates, there must be a significant connection to the backhaul based for the most part on a number of T1 Lines. AT&T is attempting to dimension their networks based on current data usage so they will always be behind. This is due to cost and many other reasons. There is no reason to equip Nut New Mexico with a 7.2 Mb capable cells. Even on the device side, It is cheaper toi buy a device based on HSDPA only rather than HSUPA/HSDPA.
What if you want to cancel the service a year later, after the network clogs up due to hordes of iPhone users? The answer is a lawsuit, and bringing one does not a whiny bitch make. I've noticed that these 2 and 3-year contracts are now seeping into cable and satellite service. It's despicable, anti-competitive, free-market destroying corporatism at its finest. They only get away with it because their insular oligarchies make them de-facto mopolies.
Bring on the lawsuits, I say. This crap has to end at some point -- or we'll eventually be signing 5-year contracts for grocery store loyalty.
The wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead.
I'm sure he meant "pay a cancellation fee and cancel the contract".
So what if they gave priority to accounts that have been active less than a month? Your first month of service would be great, and suddenly it starts to suck after 30 days. Too bad for you, you have to pay now if you want to quit.
AT&T should be sued, forcing people into a two year contract with a company should be against the law. Especially if that company does not provide the service that was promised for that contract.
You see the bit in the summary/article "Breach of Express Warranty, Breach of Implied Warranty of Merchantability, Unjust Enrichment, Negligent Misrepresentation..."? This isn't about whining that it sucks. It is about them misleading you about how bad it sucks. By then, you are already nailed to a contract. If you think this is "ok", I have some free time and an ice pick handy...
Thanks for correcting how shortsighted the GP was (if you think that's unfair, feel free to tell me why). You'll find that anytime any large organization does something that's clearly and obviously wrong, people will come out of the woodwork to defend it. Additionally, the larger and more powerful the organization, the more true this seems to be; therefore these apologists are defending entities which are well able to defend themselves. The really strange thing is that most of them have no financial ties or anything like that which would make it merely selfish. The real nature of this is a bit more mysterious.
Conformists are looking for security and they may be looking for identity. Of course, this is a position of extreme weakness because a complete person does not derive important things like security and identity from externals. Those things are found from within; the external type makes a mockery of the real article and it always has strings attached. No one offers what you should provide for yourself without also wanting to make you dependent on them. Governments and marketers understand this. So, what I think is going on is that most people are such conformists that they identify with whoever or whatever is prominent, or successful, or mainstream, or well-established, or powerful in the hopes that some of those traits will transfer to them.
The actual nature of the entity, be it a peer group or a company or a government, doesn't seem to matter. What does seem to matter is how large the entity is and how much of a public presence it has, how identifiable it is. This process of conformity is not a conscious choice, because if the person realized that there is a choice in the matter they would never go along with this process. It's more like their failure to find their own security and their own identity creates an inner vacuum that the external world rushes in to fill.
From their point of view, they find themselves expressing feelings that have no rational basis. They often get upset when you question them about it, which should be a dead giveaway that something's not right. It's a hard truth that most human beings operate under this system. No one who really believes in what they say has a reason to get upset when you question them, or disagree with them, or reject what they advocate. They may discuss their belief or they may debate you but there's nothing to get upset about.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Even this isn't quite sufficient in some cases. The network might be fine for 30 days, but if it falls on it's face halfway through the first year and you have to keep paying anyway, that's rather annoying.
If you don't like this article, don't read and reply to it. It is that simple. Nobody's forcing you to participate in the this discussion.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
I believe you have thirty days to return the phone and cancel the contract without the early termination charges, which brings this back firmly into the land of whiny bitch.
I was given a TMobile BB for work purpose in the month of November a few years ago. Not the best signal at my house but it worked until April when the deciduous tress started filling in. In theory, I would have to keep paying the monthly fee or pay a cancellation charge for a now useless product.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
This is not a frivolous lawsuit. It is not a matter of hyping the product up "a bit" -- the product does not approach what they claimed it is capable of. They are charging and locking consumers into contracts for service that they are not providing, which is illegal. Why shouldn't a consumer who was lied to and then locked in to paying for service that they did not receive sue the company that lied to them?
Palm trees and 8
You'll find that anytime any large organization does something that's clearly and obviously wrong, people will come out of the woodwork to defend it. Additionally, the larger and more powerful the organization, the more true this seems to be; therefore these apologists are defending entities which are well able to defend themselves.
that quote gives me a hard-on. nothing better could describe Apple and its defenders.
I'd mod this FASCINATING +2 if I only had that modding ability.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Can't you get an unlocked iPhone to use on other providers like with old Palm Treos and others?
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
You can cancel your contract. You'll pay a nice penalty, but you can cancel. They are not forcing you to use their service.
There's a lot of bitching about how much AT&T's network sucks. I'm not an apologist (though I have an iPhone) so let's keep objectivity in mind.
The iPhone has limited ram and a slower CPU. Websites will take a long time to render regardless of connection speed. Therefore, test a file transfer. You should get around 1.5MBps if you're on HSDPA (I think all ATT 3g is HSDPA)
I'm not arguing for a second that someplace like NYC will probably be oversubscribed. I doubt that's the problem in general (nothing like a 14.4kbps dialup for a backhaul... jeez) but it's possible if you're experiencing genuinely slow speeds.
Remember packet-radio tech will always involve latency. Over EDGE it's around 500ms, over a (good) 3g, it's about 150ms. That's something you'd be seeing if you see slow web speeds - many webpages have 50 requests, that latency adds up.
As for this lawsuit, AT&T makes no secret that 3G isn't available everywhere. It is exactly 3 obvious clicks from the homepage. If this guy expected 3g... tough. They're rolling it out pretty quick. If he didn't, or if the service is slow... perhaps he can call and tell them that he didn't contract for this level of service?
Basically, website 'speed' is not all about AT&T's oversubscription/crappyness. It's at least composed of latency, rendering speed, the page itself, and finally the speed of the network (which will fluctuate with users). Do a bulk file transfer and then talk.
And this guy probably needs to chill out. Probably
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
I attacked your whiny bitch argument from a free-market perspective, not from hierarchy of needs stand. It doesn't matter if a consumer is "forced" to buy it, that is beside the point. Free markets work when there is choice, whether its for food or cell phones. The current American system is fucked up; in order to buy your preferred phone (market choice), one must also add a bunch of contract and infrastructure commitments for an arbitrary length of time which may or may not continue a reasonable level of service (not a market choice). The reverse is also true; some excellent carriers may not "support" a phone that satisfies the consumer's needs. It's like having your television picked out by your content service, and then being bitch slapped with an industry-wide two-year contract and told to sit down and shut up when it doesn't work very well twelve months in.
Fortunately, neither your nor my opinions matter. The legal system will deal with it in a fair, non whiny-bitch-hyperbolic manner.
The wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead.
Yup! iPhone on ATT sucked sooo baad I could no longer understand the voice traffic over thier network on the thing. Locked into contract, they had the gall to change my contract date when I opted-out of iPhone service so I'm bound longer than I would have, had I stuck it out with the iPhone contract. In San Diego, I live next to the I-5 corridor so network availability is testable. Never,ever does ATT fail to provide ringtone. QoS degrades during calls and commute time is predictably sketchy. Dropped calls follow a QoS degradation and occur with bars showing on the handset.
Call quality ranges from iffy to " pin drop" clarity. The majority of calls exhibit a kind of compression algorythm artifact that clips dead air, trips leading enunciation of words and drops portions of words. There is a difference between QoS between brands of phones. QoS is relative in this matrix of phone, network, time of day mixture. Best call clarity has twice yielded "pin drop" clarity one long distance and one local call. Both "pin drop" calls occurred well after midnight. So the network is capable of delivering incredible service.
I am a longtime mobile user from 1982-present. I have little issues with data service technically. The iPhone UI is a level above the competition in terms of richness of experience.
I have a Blackberry and consider it to be a more business reliable provider of communications than the iPhone which has nothing to say about ATT and everything about iPhone's version of "push" email service.
I'm assuming you live in a house you built with your own two hands without a telephone, cable, satellite, electricity, running water or any of those other luxuries we have in these modern times? Since you're posting here, I doubt it. So, while we may not be forced into signing into these contracts, the case is more often starting to be that if you're lucky enough to have a choice of provider they force you to stick with them, regardless of whether they can provide you the service they promised through bullshit contracts.
It appears that you're completely missing the point in order to call people whiny bitches. Consider your opinion refuted.
If nothing else works, a total pig-headed unwillingness to look facts in the face will see us through.
The Economist had an interesting article last year that predicted that the US telecom companies were waiting for bailout money to invest in infrastructure. With this new stimulus package on the horizon, I'm sure some evidence to support their argument (i.e. irate iPhone users) that it's necessary would go a long way. AT&T has every incentive to get taxpayers to foot the bill, and they'd effectively be punished if they spent their own money on it (it's not like they'll get reimbursed).
You'll find that anytime any large organization does something that's clearly and obviously wrong, people will come out of the woodwork to defend it. Additionally, the larger and more powerful the organization, the more true this seems to be; therefore these apologists are defending entities which are well able to defend themselves.
that quote gives me a hard-on. nothing better could describe Apple and its defenders.
Or Microsoft and its defenders. Or government when people buy into the lie that safety is more important than freedom. It applies equally to any of these. These apologists become what Lenin referred to as "useful idiots." The fanboys who unconditionally defend the decisions of i.e. Microsoft do so because they like Microsoft and Microsoft made the decision, not because the decision was sound and well-founded. That's why they defend the good and the bad with no regard for whether it's actually defensible. That's also why it's a form of mindlessness.
It's almost a form of worship, though it's a pathological one. This false loyalty is actively encouraged in our society; not by advocacy (in fact it's rarely discussed) but by example. You see it with sports teams, celebrities, institutions, and religions. It's a shame because no one can participate in it without first learning how to lie to themselves. If you ever wonder why so many people are weak, timid, easily distracted, undisciplined, and easily deceived, this is where much of it begins.
It never seems to occur to them that a correct idea can stand on its own merits and does not need a choir to sing its virtues. What I just said there is the very antithesis of the concept of "marketing" and shows how easy it is to find the glaring flaw in it. It's just another form of mindlessness; like all forms of mindlessness, its purpose is to control or at least to influence on the basis of something other than self-evident truth.
An interesting effect is that the more people engage in this sort of maladaptive conformity, the harder it's going to hit them when they later realize that it was wrong. It's a form of inertia. Right or wrong, the more heavily invested you are in an idea the more you are going to resist changing it even when every objective viewpoint shows that you should. It reminds me of that saying, "no matter how far down the wrong path you have travelled, turn back."
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
I'm on Rogers in Ontario and their 3G network did slow down a little at first when the 3G iPhone came out here. But now I can get >2 Mbps regularly. Yes we have fewer overall users but iPhone adoption here is pretty big. If AT&T can't support the traffic then I think it's their own fault
At SXSW no one could use their iPhones until AT&T rushed in a fix. Then the Fire Dept couldn't communicate. AT&T says it was unrelated but they sent their software people to the Fire Dept to help solve the problem. I'm so glad AT&T doesn't waste its money on infrastructure. It's better they spend it on marketing and hype and fighting net neutrality.
"nobody forced me to *choose* them"
Once you realized that, how can you continue to delude yourself that you're being forced?
You don't really have a valid argument once the premise is proven illogical, and buddy, yours is illogical.
- real hackers don't have sigs -
After 30 years, perhaps you should move from your parents home so you can have better internet connectivity? :)
You have to have high speed at both last miles in order to have a high-speed connection. Even the fastest Internet connection hairyfeet can buy won't help him communicate with his parents any faster.
You can cancel your contract. You'll pay a nice penalty, but you can cancel.
Why should I pay a penalty if the other party didn't uphold its end of the agreement?
Actually, this mentality comes from disenchantment with the legal system that is carefully cultivated by businesses to give themselves a legal leg up on consumers. If you convince people that the legal system is unable to decide consumer complaints justly according to their merits, then logically, there are only two choices: trust the corporations' word on everything or allow them to be torn apart by jealous parasites.
So, if you make people cynical about lawsuits by individuals, people see every consumer complaint as a threat to the production of all the food, services, and cool stuff that we currently enjoy. That is, a threat to capitalism and all we know as good.
Companies are happy to rely the legal system to regulate relations among themselves when they can't get along, of course. Then they gang up on consumers to exclude them from the system because they don't have to rely on lawsuits to hold consumers to their word -- that's what credit reporting services are for.
Frankly, I'd love to see our ridiculous liability system restored to some kind of sanity and credibility. Then corporations will have to face more public responsibility. These days, when a company gets walloped in court for blatant fraud and dishonesty, people don't take it very seriously because business interests make sure there's a steady stream of ridiculous personal injury lawsuits in the news. I have to admit they have a point, but they don't invest billions in cultivating our cynicism just as a public service.
Yet another trolling Swede. What is with you people?
I have a four year old EVDO phone from Sprint that will pull down 2Mbit/sec in places so devoid of people you can't even imagine it. Kansas, Nebraska, and South Dakota, I'll just leave it at that.
Actually, this mentality comes from disenchantment with the legal system that is carefully cultivated by businesses to give themselves a legal leg up on consumers. If you convince people that the legal system is unable to decide consumer complaints justly according to their merits, then logically, there are only two choices: trust the corporations' word on everything or allow them to be torn apart by jealous parasites.
So, if you make people cynical about lawsuits by individuals, people see every consumer complaint as a threat to the production of all the food, services, and cool stuff that we currently enjoy. That is, a threat to capitalism and all we know as good.
Companies are happy to rely the legal system to regulate relations among themselves when they can't get along, of course. Then they gang up on consumers to exclude them from the system because they don't have to rely on lawsuits to hold consumers to their word -- that's what credit reporting services are for.
Frankly, I'd love to see our ridiculous liability system restored to some kind of sanity and credibility. Then corporations will have to face more public responsibility. These days, when a company gets walloped in court for blatant fraud and dishonesty, people don't take it very seriously because business interests make sure there's a steady stream of ridiculous personal injury lawsuits in the news. I have to admit they have a point, but they don't invest billions in cultivating our cynicism just as a public service.
I believe you missed my point. Corporations have such powers as you describe because of this sort of conformity. Like most other potential adversaries, they have no power over you except for what you give to them. The demoralization you describe is part of that power. The mindlessness I described is why we, as a society, have given them so much power. They in turn use that power to exercise undue influence over the legal system and our politicians. If they first tried to do that without the allegiance of the useful idiots, then people would call it by its proper name, a power grab, and would refuse to go along with it.
Those useful idiots are conformists with no real selfhood, no real identity of their own. Their choice is to either embrace this falsehood wholeheartedly or to face the very painful truth of how empty their lives have become. The second choice is the beginning of wisdom but it is not for the faint of heart.
What I was getting at was a general process behind a common way that human beings become compromised. By "compromised" I refer to the fact that most human beings have ideas and beliefs, including strong ones, that are not the result of careful and deliberate evaluation which means that they can only be the result of indoctrination and undue influence. Thus, they are not themselves and they advocate, even passionately, ideas that are not their own because someone else put them there. While they do so, they actually believe that they have made a free choice. There is a saying, "no one is more hopelessly imprisoned than he who falsely believes that he is free."
Lawsuits and the legal system is just one domain to which it applies. What you describe is correct on its level. It's just a departure from how simple the underlying principles really are because you are focusing on effects and not ultimate causes.
I will add one more thing that you may be missing because I sense that you still look at this in terms of victor and victim. The people who run our society and its corporations, who appear to perpetrate this system on everyone else, are even more compromised than those they try to control. Many of them are what you may call "lost" or "too far gone". On some level they are aware of this system and realize that it offers only two choices: take advantage or be taken advantage of. Because they are not strong enough or virtuous enough to correctly deal with this, they decide that "take advantage" is the m
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Wait and see what happens with Android and a torrent client. :)
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
He is being forced to continue using their service while they do not uphold their part of the deal (that of providing working 3G connectivity). The reason why he made his choice of going with them was because there would be 3G. Now, some time later, there's no 3G. Why shouldn't he sue?
I want in on this lawsuit. Normally I'm a strong proponent of "you got yourself in it, get yourself out of it." But the iPhone's exclusivity on AT&T combined with AT&T requiring me to buy a 3G contract is totally anti consumer friendly.
I don't ever use the 3G network even though my phone has the capabilities. I leave it on the EDGE network because the 3G network drops too many calls.
I'd deserve to just be paying for the EDGE speeds instead of 3G speeds and be compensated for all the forced expenses of having to have a 3G premium. There's no way I would have known "going into the contact" that 3G would drop more calls.
I'm going to take a wild guess here and say that you're either studying or have studied in University psychology with a major in social studies. If you haven't, then you probably should :P
Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
Heaven forbid that Apple has to play by the same fraud laws that everyone else does.
Although yes, I fully agree that people shouldn't use it. Which is why it's important to publicise these issues, so that it isn't drowned out by the "Now you can copy and paste, isn't that Revolutionary?" stories.
I think you missed the fact that I was disagreeing with you in the explanation of people's behavior. People have little imagination, and for most people, almost any impulse takes them in the direction of conformity. They can find group identity and ready-made identities on the right or on the left, through worship of corporations or enmity to them. (But you know that already.)
What the corporations are doing is slightly more subtle than just offering an opportunity for conformism. Their reasoning even allows people who distrust corporations to believe that trusting corporations over consumers is the least bad option.
--You need a whole other phone if you want to use verizon or sprint.--
Complete BS. They want to keep it that way, charging us double for a tenth of the bandwidth you can get over there too.
Do us all a bloody favor and google CDMA and GSM. They are incompatible technologies. GSM use SIM cards while CDMA phones (in North America) are programmed for a network. The technologies are not compatible with each other.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Why should I pay a penalty if the other party didn't uphold its end of the agreement?
In my own little world, if the other party didn't hold up their end of the agreement then the contract is already broken and I don't owe a thing. I know, I know, try convincing the carrier of that.
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
Whoever flagged me as a "Troll" can you please identify yourself and tell me why you marked me as a "Troll?" I'd really like to know.
Health Insurance Quotes
AT&T does claim they had to change their voicemail system to accomodate the iPhone and that is probably true, but I think other networks would be willing to change for a piece of the action. The iPhone will become much more successful of the allow it to be used widely instead of locking it down with AT&T.
Now why isn't anyone suing about this kind of thing? Why should you have to pay a cancellation fee to get rid of something that doesn't work?
that's exactly what all this suing is about.
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
After buying an iPhone and paying for the data package, there is no money left in my budget for another $60 a month to pay for a dongle that has to compete for data rate at the cell towers. AT&T needs to get it together and decide to give us some real service at a reasonable rate. If they did that, they would become seriously competitive.
I'm going to take a wild guess here and say that you're either studying or have studied in University psychology with a major in social studies. If you haven't, then you probably should :P
I'm not a doctor or a psychologist or any other sort of medical practitioner, so you may consider what follows to be my personal opinion.
Several years ago I would have agreed with you. However, I did not need to study psychology for very long to realize that it's incapable of providing the deep meaning and truly satisfying answers that I was after at the time. The medical model is it's most recognizable flaw, because under that model all conditions of mind are divided into the desirable and the undesirable. It naturally follows that the latter category is to be treated or medicated away rather than appreciated and thoroughly understood. If that medical model were the path to true health, then the number of people who take some kind of psychological medication would be decreasing. Instead, it is increasing and at a rate which should make it obvious that we are missing something fundamental. Rather than acknowledge this, the practitioners continue to treat and medicate what they really do not understand. If they did understand, they would know how to cure and prevent. If they had true enlightenment, they would give us a few childishly simple principles instead of many complex explanations.
Likewise while it is not a "hard" science, psychology is limited to those things to which the scientific method can be applied, meaning it necessarily comes from a materialistic bias. What comes with that materialism is scientific positivism, so the dominant mentality is "if we can't describe it with mathematics, it does not exist." Thus, psychology has no choice but to deny the nonphysical and spiritual nature of human beings. Effectively this means that only a small fraction of what a human being actually is could be addressed under its system.
Evidence of what I am saying can be found in the swiftness with which a materialist would dismiss this objection instead of addressing it, and in many cases, the anger or indignation with which they would do so. It's not unlike how the more narrow-minded and insecure religious people respond when you question their doctrine. Science is supposed to be different, except that materialism is one of its few assumptions; like all assumptions, it's a matter of faith. Once faith is invested in the system, only then can objective evidence be gathered under it and conclusions drawn from within it, in accordance with Aristotelian logic and other rules of the system. It's important then to recognize the limitations of that system. Only external physical things which can be subjected to experimentation and logic can be addressed by science. With human beings, that means behavior.
Due to this, psychology's only real use is in manipulating or engineering behavior and at providing elaborate yet superficial explanations for why its manipulations are effective. This is an inventory of knowledge and its pragmatic application, not true understanding. That is also why it leads to more complexity and not to simplicity. Psychologists know in terms of probability the behavioral tendencies of the average person. They have rigorous descriptions of disorders and dis-ease states. They know which effect a given adjustment or pharmaceutical can cause and from experience, they know how to apply them. They know that if you make this adjustment here or apply this pharmaceutical there, you can obtain something closer to the desired outcome. That is what I mean by an inventory of knowledge. Hopefully you can see how external and superficial this really is. It's a shame that the difference between cleverness and true wisdom is not more widely understood.
When psychologists with good intentions attempt to help others, what you end up with is the blind leading the blind. I like to say that if you want to throw someo
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
I think you missed the fact that I was disagreeing with you in the explanation of people's behavior. People have little imagination, and for most people, almost any impulse takes them in the direction of conformity. They can find group identity and ready-made identities on the right or on the left, through worship of corporations or enmity to them. (But you know that already.)
What the corporations are doing is slightly more subtle than just offering an opportunity for conformism. Their reasoning even allows people who distrust corporations to believe that trusting corporations over consumers is the least bad option.
Almost everything is "slightly more sublte" than its outward manifestation. The political results (trusting the untrustworthy) occur on a more mundane level than what I intended to address. They are also effects. The fact that most people are broken and incomplete (conformity being one answer to this problem, or more accurately, a way to hide from it) and therefore derive important parts of their being from external things is the cause. It is, in fact, the cause of causes for every last one of these problems. Complete human beings with enlightenment and wisdom would never find the reasoning you mention to be convincing or tempting. Because they are complete, they would not be suckered into this type of false dichotomy. They would have none of the personal vulnerabilities on which the deception of false ideas is built.
I should explain that a bit more because unfortunately you will not find this in modern education. At one time, various clergy may have understood this (albeit within their terminology) but they have long since abandoned wisdom for the sake of piety and doctrine. That's why they resent, why they don't forgive, why they care about political power, why they don't love other people, why many of their congregation are divorced, etc. At any rate, like other constructs, deception must be built on a foundation. That foundation is made of weaknesses and personal shortcomings that people excuse and dismiss instead of recognizing and correctly addressing.
Most people are completely at the mercy of their thoughts and feelings and thus, their impulses. This means that they are reactive and undisciplined and will respond to various forms of pressure because they are externally motivated. Thus, if they were engines you would say that stress is their fuel. That makes them putty in the hands of masterful manipulators such as modern marketing and public relations practitioners.
The manipulators know how to control those who look to external things for their motivation because they know that this is an accurate definition of suggestibility. It's simple, really. They make a suggestion which creates a thought. The thought creates an emotion which in turn creates an impulse. The impulse leads to an action and that action was the desired outcome all along. The nature of the desired outcome determines the nature of the initial suggestion.
The initial suggestion might be sex, violence, humor, or any number of emotionally charged things commonly seen in advertising. It might be small children so that instinctive maternalistic/paternalistic thoughts and feelings can be exploited to make the associated impulse seem more natural. Nothing is sacred to these people -- hopefully you see how diabolical this really is. The audience believes that their thoughts and emotions were natural reactions to what was presented rather than carefully engineered responses. This denial allows them to believe that the action to which they were led was their own decision. To weak people who gauge the truth of a thing according to its palatability, belief in this mockery of free will is far less frightening than the realization that they are little more than slaves. Thus, the bars of this prison cell are made of fear.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
I once considered studying psychology, since everyone always came to me for insight and understanding. I decided against it for reasons similar to what you've discussed in your post, though condensed to one sentence: a textbook about 'average' humans won't help me understand anyone on a personal level (though your post goes into greater depth, of course, about psychology in general. My reasons were more self-centred). I don't have any questions, really, but I would like to say it's nice to read someone else's longwinded post for a change (I try to refrain from making longwinded posts, because the response is usually "tl,dr"). I have a mind that tends to wander a bit, but when I seize on a single idea, I can talk about it for hours. Plus the related topics that it brushes on. A very useful skill for writing essays, when it can be focused.
I'd just like to say, I did read your whole post, and I thank you for explaining yourself so well. The writing is commendable. I even looked up "namaste", since I'd only heard it once before. At the time, I wasn't near a computer, so I couldn't look it up. By context I figured it was a simple greeting. I don't know if there's an appropriate response to it, so I'll just close by saying
Namaste
Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
Let's say that there is a reason for that and that I can sense when I am dealing with such a person. Whether they are in the room with me, on the telephone, or on a Web site and potentially thousands of miles away is no obstacle. True insight and understanding are not the product of a deductive or inductive process, though these lower-level processes can help you to put them into words for the benefit of others. The real insight comes from connecting to the source of inspiration and it is a Divine thing, to be honored and respected by means of correct use. Connected to that source, difficult things become easy and complex things become simple and intuitive. It gives human beings the ability to perceive the true nature of things and to know the truth when they hear it. That brightness in you that others have recognized is a true gift.
Like all good things that are done for the right reason, authoring that post was its own reward. You could, in fact, reject every last part of it and insult me for writing it and this would have no power whatsoever to remove the joy I found in it. That is the contrast to what I meant by "externally motivated." Trying to upset me (especially without cause) would injure your joy and well-being, however, so it's a delight to know that you feel no such temptation. I'm not suggesting you would really be malicious, of course; I just wanted to give you a better idea of where this comes from.
When people derive important parts of their being from externals and not from the True Source, they become leaves in the wind and their joy is subject to events and outcomes which are largely beyond their control. Even their "joy" makes a mockery of joy because it is not pure; it is dependent on outcome. This is the only mode of being that psychology recognizes. The number one external with which people make this mistake is the approval and praise of other people. If you suffer without a person's approval, then you are that person's slave. This is the single biggest mistake that men make with women: they think they can have a healthy relationship at the same time that they need that woman for anything. It is a little-known fact that you can bully with phony kindness even more easily than you can bully with cruelty. When men make this mistake, they bring out the worst in a woman, the ruthlessly clever ability to manipulate, and quickly become its prey.
Subscribing to this system and its equivalents which are found in business and politics is the reason why genuine people who interact with no ulterior motives are so rare. Most of them are ignorant, operating on a sort of autopilot, and would be horrified if they could see just how fake they really are. A few of them are aware of it and enjoy the mindgames and the feeling of power; those people are very far gone. The antidote to this is quite simple: there are few things I know of which are more powerful than a truly pure motive.
You may find several meanings of "namaste." The one I like best is "that which is Divine within me salutes that which is Divine with you." It is a reminder of our true nature.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Complete human beings with enlightenment and wisdom would never find the reasoning you mention to be convincing or tempting. Because they are complete, they would not be suckered into this type of false dichotomy. They would have none of the personal vulnerabilities on which the deception of false ideas is built.
False ideas don't require personal vulnerabilities. Any attempt to engage with the world produces false ideas, because we are ignorant and fallible beings.
Personal wisdom and enlightenment can reduce one's vulnerability to manipulation, but it does not answer political questions. It can tell me why I'm scared, but if my fear is based on the prospect of an undesirable outcome, spiritual wisdom cannot tell me whether the outcome is plausible or likely. Even if you reject fear as a basis for thought and action, you will still find yourself agreeing with it quite often. For instance, assuming you have not yet achieved perfect enlightenment, you are probably scared of injecting heroin. You were manipulated into this fear by information and media provided by people who want you to be scared of injecting heroin. Spiritual wisdom allows you to realize that you are scared and manipulated, but it does not answer the question of whether or not it is a good idea to inject heroin.
In general, there's no way to dodge the necessity of examining everything on its merits, and no way to get out of the catch-22 that all the information you consume is produced, directly or indirectly, by people who care about what you do and believe. Rejecting all self-interested manipulation would mean rejecting almost all human interaction. It would certainly make it impossible to learn anything about politics. As for fear, you can reject fear, but you can't simply say, "Fear is on one side of the issue, so I must be on the other." The presence of fear is informative, but it is not that informative.
To go back to the example at hand, wisdom cannot advise me to ignore the issue, nor can it resolve the issue one way or the other. After all, the bogeyman prospect is a story of how the current legal system is vulnerable to exploitation and how that will affect American business. Wisdom helps, but not the kind of wisdom you're talking about. The issue must be approached by seeking information, reading opposing viewpoints, and discussing it.
I would consider my opinion refuted, but you didn't actually pull it off. You just whined and bitched more. I now consider my opinion reinforced.
That' I what I was saying. I was agreeing, but the BS comment appeared pointed to the message in front of me. I didn't mean for it to be taken that way. I was just agreeing and pointing that it is BS for the carriers not to agree on a single standard or be forced to by the government. Read the stuff after that. A'int I agreeing? Mistype one ffsdga character to get this. For those with AS, the las bit was supposed to be funny.
And unless We, The People run the lines all she and countless other Americans are going to get from the telecos is the finger. And I don't know about you, but I for one would like to have many choices for broadband instead of bending over and taking it like I have to do now. Most of us just can't give up our homes and livelihoods to escape the screwing.
The "government is bad & inefficient" mantra is nothing more than a means for shoveling money from the public into (a very few) private hands. We should start treating the Internet like other public utilities and interstate infrastructure. Then we might start getting 50 Mbps full duplex connections like the Asians and Europeans.
There's an article that sums up the point that we need to get back to public investment at Salon: