Contracts are renegotiated all the time, and usually are when they expire. But in most contracts both parties have the ability to give and/or take. The ISP who has you pretty much where they want you can and will gouge the price just a little bit. If they think it would average an extra 15% per customer, you can be 100% sure they're go looking for 22.
I'm not the type to keep up with the stock market, but I doubt any of the major ISP's are anywhere near short of cash. This to me, seems like something to generate some sympathy for them. So that when they do raise the rates, stupid people will just do what they're told (the beauty of them) while others will look at the trends and think that, they're right the infrastructure isn't designed to handle that much traffic. Isn't that what causes those rolling them brownouts.
The cynic will always see Enron, and manufactured shortages. If they keep saying they can't keep up, and it's going to cost more, we'll probably believe it. The truth is anything you'll believe.
I guess I find it hard to think anything the big Cable/Telco/ISP's are up to some kind of shenanigans.
Yes I guess I am a prick. I expect to receive the goods and or services for which I have and continue to pay for. $75,000 worth of free education, with up to another $25K is not nearly enough to pay for such spectacular service. 15 times through both the Sun Solaris admin, and Cisco CCNP programs with 5 more yet to be named students is not enough to pay. I should certainly think of the poor ISP that doesn't make enough money. I should certainly think of their operating costs. I should certainly think that when I don't get what I pay for; the other guy must certainly be right.
FUCK YOU... that felt good. Let me say it again, FUCK YOU
For what it's worth, I'm no longer at that school. Poor business decisions caused it to go bankrupt. Poor business decisions like trading seats for goods and or services with companies who expect to be able to renegotiate.
And I'm a jerk, for allowing my students access to the internet so they could do various research on the net. (that made up the majority of the extra bandwidth, could not have possibly been my addiction to the distro of the month club circa 2002), for allowing remote access for students, so they can access network shares from home, for creating labs that could both access and be accessed from anywhere on the web. I'm a prick for giving the students what they paid for and more without asking for more money from them (yes we did hike the prices a bit after, but we didn't go to current students and ask for more.)
Oh, anonymous coward. I guess you "got" me. Get me fired from a job I don't have anymore. Where I was underpaid, and certainly over appreciated. Next time though, why not post as yourself instead of hiding behind the mask of anonymity.
and if you want to get me fired from my current job... good luck.
I pay, I pay $50 give or take every month to connect to the internet.
I pay, I pay $24.99 every month to keep my site up so other people can look at it with their paid internet connection.
Someone has to pay, but I guess the money I pay every month doesn't count toward that goal does it.
The article doesn't go into much detail, but from what I've read the deal goes something like this.
BBC to ISP/IPP == Hi I have an idea for a website/web based product let's hash out the details.
ISP == oh yeah, great send that money right over here. We're the internet we can do anything.
ISP/IPP actually looks over the details... wait.. we'll be needing more money if you want that service we just agreed to.
That's not right, if a company cannot keep it's part of the bargain they should not have made the deal in the first place.
This reminds me of an ISP I dealt with a few years ago when DSL was just gaining popularity. My predecessor made a deal that we would get free unlimited bandwidth for the school I worked at, in exchange for free classes for some of their employees. After I took over we went from about 3GB a month to close to 25GB. The ISP called and wanted to renegotiate. I said no, unlimited is what the contract says, unlimited is what I'm getting. You may be able to limit the speed at which I download, but you can't limit the amount of time I'm hitting that at 100%. They did so, and I started removing their employees from the classes. Sometimes in the middle of the class.
From the pirates perspective. I have no problem paying a fair price for a decent product. But when the product I do pay a fair price for is hard/impossible to use, not priced fairly, or simply broken I will not pay for it.
A fair price for a product is one thing, but making it easier to steal than to buy is asking for trouble.
Personally, I don't watch TV, I go to maybe 2 movies a year, and the music I like I already have. The few new bands that might interest me enough to go out and grab a cd I'm willing to pay for.
On Topic, If media becomes pay per play, I will probably consume a lot less of whatever the crap of the month club is pushing down my throat.
You'd still be blocking creativity, by making it hazardous to release new and untested ideas. Artists won't stop making quality art, but there'll be far less of the new and truly interesting, replaced by rehashes of lots of the same. and how is that different than the vast majority of the crap being released now?
This is an excellent point, provided that you can afford to choose the car you buy. And you cannot tell me that a car is a luxury. not anymore. Public transportation in the US is atrocious. A taxi costs as much for a one way trip that gas would cost to go to the same place all week. Busses are certainly cheaper, but they don't go anywhere that pays even close to what you need to make to earn a living wage.
There have been times where I had very little choice in the car I bought. I got it because it was cheap enough for me to pick up when my last car died.
So having a brain or not, has nothing to do with what car you drive... sometimes.
OTOH I have a friend who can barely buy food he needs, and is always borrowing money 3 days before payday who waste their extra money on a custom exhaust that will make their gas guzzling SUV run even less efficient. And yes he did choose the SUV because that's what he likes to drive. This does make him an idiot. But you can't judge all poor people by the actions of a few. and you certainly can't say that poor people need to buy better cars, if they could buy a better car they're probably not poor.
at first this post seems like a great idea... lets figure out how not to kill this planet, then worry about getting to other planets.
Then you realize the human condition, no matter how great a person you are. Or no matter how eco-friendly and save the planet your country is, it will only take a small group to destroy the whole thing for everybody.
So while not killing the planet we live on is a great idea, convincing everyone else is not even remotely possible. Hmm, probably why you don't see a lot of hippie scientists.
where can I get moon property? I would love to own part of the moon. That would be awesome. I would tell my kids that when we have to go to the moon because that damn America blows up the planet, you can't go. You little brats have to stay here and deal with the Americans.
The hardcore gamers STILL don't understand that the Wii, with all of its perceived warts (to them, anyway), is outselling EVERYONE
Windows outsells Linux and OSX many, many, many times over. Windows is better..... right? ... Your argument is flawed... Windows, the dominant product in its market will obviously outsell what is considered by many to be a niche product.Ask any average pc user and they will tell you that linux is for "geeks", I don't concern myself with OSX so I don't know what people say about that.
While in the gaming market, Nintendo, who by some accounts failed, or lost the last console war is coming back with a completely different strategy and it seems like they might have had a great idea. with the last gen. PS2 obviously won and Sony went in another direction, the exact opposite of the one Nintendo went in this time. While the Xbox team kind of brought on more of the same.
If an Operating System came out that radically changed the way we used a computer and that caught some steam, then your argument would be valid.
[quote]
I'm still happily buying great PS2 games, and will continue to even after I pick up a PS3. Nintendo holds no appeal to me [/quote] There are still dozens of PS2 games that I haven't played, and will probably pick up at some point, but I'm not about to go spend $600 on a console. No way, no console is worth that much to me.
Xbox 360, just more of the same old crap with better graphics and online more integrated. Not really interested, but gears of war does look fun.
The Wii though, that's more interesting and personally I'm sick of the same old crap. Graphics don't mean all that much to me. I've always been more into the gameplay, and the Wii holds more appeal for people like me I guess.
I've noticed this trend in Both Fedora and more recently Ubuntu. Fedora peaked (as far as I'm concerned) at core 3, after that there is just no fun in it.
Ubuntu is for humans... Humans are dumb. Generally speaking of course. But I guess that's the good thing about linux, when a distro starts to go a way I don't like I just find another (currently Sabayon) that i do like.
Windows OTOH, there is no real way to get around an OS that you just "don't like". You can either get a different release and lose/gain some kind of functionality but it's still the same OS.
But consider Fedora, Debian and Slackware... all linux, but vastly different Operating Systems.
I've got to agree, although I can get *most of my games working with wine. I shouldn't have too. There should be linux binaries for the games I want to play. Until then I will most likely have an XP partition on my box. And if/when games no longer support XP, I'll have to pirate a copy of Vista just so I can continue to play the games I want.
I'll be damned however if I am going to pay for an OS that I don't want.
For the record, I actually do pay for linux once in a while. I'll order the cd's for the $12 it costs to show support for the devs.
After my post I was thinking a little bit, and the fact that an NDA exists is clear enough evidence that you can under certain circumstances sign away certain rights.
Being a member of the Armed Services you are in fact signing all of your rights away, you are no longer a citizen, but are now property of the government. (see recently a Man was going to be charged with destroying govt property by giving a kidney to his mother)
Interesting, I guess I'll have to change some of my assumptions.
would you really want a roomba(tm) with an 18 in rotating blade?
I would rather see a remote controlled lawnmower, than a completely automatic one. Far too great a risk to my cats and the neighbors children. Electronics do make errors, and I don't think the convenience outweighs the potential risk.
You sir are a fool, and it is opinions like yours that make all of us Americans look like assholes to the Muslim World. Who is to say that it is not YOU who worship the false god. That it is not YOU who needs to rethink your theological values. Perhaps it is YOUR evil moon god that has caused these people to hate Christians so much.
Forcing your religion on others is no more acceptable than them forcing their religion on you.
Sorry for feeding the trolls, but this kind of idiocy really bothers me.
but your rights cannot be legally taken away even if you do sign a contract negating them. I hate to bring up poor analogies but what if I chose to sign myself up for slavery, this would not be legal. I cannot under any circumstances sign away my right to privacy or free speech, can I? (actual question, I obviously am not a lawyer)
I would imagine it could be construed as hacking and/or virus/spyware like software. Unless they explicitly tell you that the software will be searching your drive and reporting wouldn't that violate several laws that restrict what software authors can and cannot do?
If this is deemed a legitimate way of finding the pirates, I think this would open up the floodgates for every piece of software written to call home with non anonymous usage and whatever else they decide to mine from your system.
Also, I wouldn't want any software that I run to send anything to anyone without my explicit permission. When I install Gnu/Debian, it asks me if I want to opt into anonymous package usage. That's fine with me because it asks, and I can say no. If it didn't ask, I'm sure we would be calling for the heads of the devs.
If you were standing at absolute north, and then stepped anywhere you would be traveling both south and East or West depending on the situation.
If you were to pull a ladder out of your pocket and climb that ladder straight up, you would be leaving the sphere, so you still would not be traveling north, you would be traveling up.
The directions North, South, East, West are all 2 dimensional. Latitude, longitude and altitude. In relation to the sphere, if you lose the sphere then you would need another constant.
in the interest of full disclosure, my wife refuses to give up XP, and thinks I'm a dork for all my linux tinkering. Not too say that I am not a dork, but what does she know.
But the generation that is in power now is the hippie generation. The freedom loving, peace mongering, pro love etc...
from what I hear, you couldn't step 20 feet 40 years ago and not see someone with a mostly positive message of some sorts.
Where are they now? Did they grow up, get jobs and become slaves to the dollar? Did they all turn on tune in and drop out, only to disappear from existence?
Most certainly, but it seems to be almost cyclical.
1. Corruption becomes out of control 2. Profit!! 3. Locals get pissed, get corruption back to acceptable levels. 4. Locals become complacent, stop keeping their good eye on officials 5. Corruption becomes out of control 6. Profit!!
I'm no genius but, I can see a slight pattern developing here.
Slashdot Mirror
Contracts are renegotiated all the time, and usually are when they expire. But in most contracts both parties have the ability to give and/or take.
The ISP who has you pretty much where they want you can and will gouge the price just a little bit.
If they think it would average an extra 15% per customer, you can be 100% sure they're go looking for 22.
I'm not the type to keep up with the stock market, but I doubt any of the major ISP's are anywhere near short of cash.
This to me, seems like something to generate some sympathy for them. So that when they do raise the rates, stupid people will just do what they're told (the beauty of them) while others will look at the trends and think that, they're right the infrastructure isn't designed to handle that much traffic. Isn't that what causes those rolling them brownouts.
The cynic will always see Enron, and manufactured shortages.
If they keep saying they can't keep up, and it's going to cost more, we'll probably believe it. The truth is anything you'll believe.
I guess I find it hard to think anything the big Cable/Telco/ISP's are up to some kind of shenanigans.
I know it's flamebait, but I'll bite.
Yes I guess I am a prick. I expect to receive the goods and or services for which I have and continue to pay for.
$75,000 worth of free education, with up to another $25K is not nearly enough to pay for such spectacular service.
15 times through both the Sun Solaris admin, and Cisco CCNP programs with 5 more yet to be named students is not enough to pay. I should certainly think of the poor ISP that doesn't make enough money. I should certainly think of their operating costs. I should certainly think that when I don't get what I pay for; the other guy must certainly be right.
FUCK YOU... that felt good. Let me say it again, FUCK YOU
For what it's worth, I'm no longer at that school. Poor business decisions caused it to go bankrupt.
Poor business decisions like trading seats for goods and or services with companies who expect to be able to renegotiate.
And I'm a jerk, for allowing my students access to the internet so they could do various research on the net. (that made up the majority of the extra bandwidth, could not have possibly been my addiction to the distro of the month club circa 2002), for allowing remote access for students, so they can access network shares from home, for creating labs that could both access and be accessed from anywhere on the web. I'm a prick for giving the students what they paid for and more without asking for more money from them (yes we did hike the prices a bit after, but we didn't go to current students and ask for more.)
Oh, anonymous coward. I guess you "got" me. Get me fired from a job I don't have anymore. Where I was underpaid, and certainly over appreciated. Next time though, why not post as yourself instead of hiding behind the mask of anonymity.
and if you want to get me fired from my current job... good luck.
I pay, I pay $50 give or take every month to connect to the internet. I pay, I pay $24.99 every month to keep my site up so other people can look at it with their paid internet connection. Someone has to pay, but I guess the money I pay every month doesn't count toward that goal does it.
The article doesn't go into much detail, but from what I've read the deal goes something like this.
BBC to ISP/IPP == Hi I have an idea for a website/web based product let's hash out the details.
ISP == oh yeah, great send that money right over here. We're the internet we can do anything.
ISP/IPP actually looks over the details... wait.. we'll be needing more money if you want that service we just agreed to.
That's not right, if a company cannot keep it's part of the bargain they should not have made the deal in the first place.
This reminds me of an ISP I dealt with a few years ago when DSL was just gaining popularity. My predecessor made a deal that we would get free unlimited bandwidth for the school I worked at, in exchange for free classes for some of their employees. After I took over we went from about 3GB a month to close to 25GB. The ISP called and wanted to renegotiate. I said no, unlimited is what the contract says, unlimited is what I'm getting. You may be able to limit the speed at which I download, but you can't limit the amount of time I'm hitting that at 100%.
They did so, and I started removing their employees from the classes. Sometimes in the middle of the class.
From the pirates perspective.
I have no problem paying a fair price for a decent product. But when the product I do pay a fair price for is hard/impossible to use, not priced fairly, or simply broken I will not pay for it.
A fair price for a product is one thing, but making it easier to steal than to buy is asking for trouble.
Personally, I don't watch TV, I go to maybe 2 movies a year, and the music I like I already have. The few new bands that might interest me enough to go out and grab a cd I'm willing to pay for.
On Topic,
If media becomes pay per play, I will probably consume a lot less of whatever the crap of the month club is pushing down my throat.
This is an excellent point, provided that you can afford to choose the car you buy. And you cannot tell me that a car is a luxury. not anymore. Public transportation in the US is atrocious. A taxi costs as much for a one way trip that gas would cost to go to the same place all week. Busses are certainly cheaper, but they don't go anywhere that pays even close to what you need to make to earn a living wage.
There have been times where I had very little choice in the car I bought. I got it because it was cheap enough for me to pick up when my last car died.
So having a brain or not, has nothing to do with what car you drive... sometimes.
OTOH
I have a friend who can barely buy food he needs, and is always borrowing money 3 days before payday who waste their extra money on a custom exhaust that will make their gas guzzling SUV run even less efficient. And yes he did choose the SUV because that's what he likes to drive. This does make him an idiot. But you can't judge all poor people by the actions of a few. and you certainly can't say that poor people need to buy better cars, if they could buy a better car they're probably not poor.
at first this post seems like a great idea... lets figure out how not to kill this planet, then worry about getting to other planets.
Then you realize the human condition, no matter how great a person you are. Or no matter how eco-friendly and save the planet your country is, it will only take a small group to destroy the whole thing for everybody.
So while not killing the planet we live on is a great idea, convincing everyone else is not even remotely possible.
Hmm, probably why you don't see a lot of hippie scientists.
It would be
I hate every Ape-I-See
from Chimp-an-A
to Chimp-an-Z
where can I get moon property?
I would love to own part of the moon. That would be awesome.
I would tell my kids that when we have to go to the moon because that damn America blows up the planet, you can't go.
You little brats have to stay here and deal with the Americans.
That'll learn the little bastards.
Windows outsells Linux and OSX many, many, many times over. Windows is better..... right?
Windows, the dominant product in its market will obviously outsell what is considered by many to be a niche product.Ask any average pc user and they will tell you that linux is for "geeks", I don't concern myself with OSX so I don't know what people say about that.
While in the gaming market, Nintendo, who by some accounts failed, or lost the last console war is coming back with a completely different strategy and it seems like they might have had a great idea.
with the last gen. PS2 obviously won and Sony went in another direction, the exact opposite of the one Nintendo went in this time.
While the Xbox team kind of brought on more of the same.
If an Operating System came out that radically changed the way we used a computer and that caught some steam, then your argument would be valid.
[quote]
I'm still happily buying great PS2 games, and will continue to even after I pick up a PS3. Nintendo holds no appeal to me [/quote]
There are still dozens of PS2 games that I haven't played, and will probably pick up at some point, but I'm not about to go spend $600 on a console. No way, no console is worth that much to me.
Xbox 360, just more of the same old crap with better graphics and online more integrated. Not really interested, but gears of war does look fun.
The Wii though, that's more interesting and personally I'm sick of the same old crap. Graphics don't mean all that much to me. I've always been more into the gameplay, and the Wii holds more appeal for people like me I guess.
I've noticed this trend in Both Fedora and more recently Ubuntu.
Fedora peaked (as far as I'm concerned) at core 3, after that there is just no fun in it.
Ubuntu is for humans... Humans are dumb. Generally speaking of course.
But I guess that's the good thing about linux, when a distro starts to go a way I don't like I just find another (currently Sabayon) that i do like.
Windows OTOH, there is no real way to get around an OS that you just "don't like". You can either get a different release and lose/gain some kind of functionality but it's still the same OS.
But consider Fedora, Debian and Slackware... all linux, but vastly different Operating Systems.
I've got to agree, although I can get *most of my games working with wine. I shouldn't have too. There should be linux binaries for the games I want to play.
Until then I will most likely have an XP partition on my box.
And if/when games no longer support XP, I'll have to pirate a copy of Vista just so I can continue to play the games I want.
I'll be damned however if I am going to pay for an OS that I don't want.
For the record, I actually do pay for linux once in a while. I'll order the cd's for the $12 it costs to show support for the devs.
After my post I was thinking a little bit, and the fact that an NDA exists is clear enough evidence that you can under certain circumstances sign away certain rights.
Being a member of the Armed Services you are in fact signing all of your rights away, you are no longer a citizen, but are now property of the government. (see recently a Man was going to be charged with destroying govt property by giving a kidney to his mother)
Interesting, I guess I'll have to change some of my assumptions.
If this thing can't make me a sandwich without root privs, what good is it? =P
would you really want a roomba(tm) with an 18 in rotating blade?
I would rather see a remote controlled lawnmower, than a completely automatic one. Far too great a risk to my cats and the neighbors children.
Electronics do make errors, and I don't think the convenience outweighs the potential risk.
just my $0.02
But yeah, mowing the lawn does suck doesn't it.
You sir are a fool, and it is opinions like yours that make all of us Americans look like assholes to the Muslim World. Who is to say that it is not YOU who worship the false god. That it is not YOU who needs to rethink your theological values. Perhaps it is YOUR evil moon god that has caused these people to hate Christians so much.
Forcing your religion on others is no more acceptable than them forcing their religion on you.
Sorry for feeding the trolls, but this kind of idiocy really bothers me.
but your rights cannot be legally taken away even if you do sign a contract negating them.
I hate to bring up poor analogies but what if I chose to sign myself up for slavery, this would not be legal.
I cannot under any circumstances sign away my right to privacy or free speech, can I?
(actual question, I obviously am not a lawyer)
I would imagine it could be construed as hacking and/or virus/spyware like software.
Unless they explicitly tell you that the software will be searching your drive and reporting wouldn't that violate several laws that restrict what software authors can and cannot do?
If this is deemed a legitimate way of finding the pirates, I think this would open up the floodgates for every piece of software written to call home with non anonymous usage and whatever else they decide to mine from your system.
Also, I wouldn't want any software that I run to send anything to anyone without my explicit permission.
When I install Gnu/Debian, it asks me if I want to opt into anonymous package usage. That's fine with me because it asks, and I can say no. If it didn't ask, I'm sure we would be calling for the heads of the devs.
If you were standing at absolute north, and then stepped anywhere you would be traveling both south and East or West depending on the situation.
If you were to pull a ladder out of your pocket and climb that ladder straight up, you would be leaving the sphere, so you still would not be traveling north, you would be traveling up.
The directions North, South, East, West are all 2 dimensional. Latitude, longitude and altitude. In relation to the sphere, if you lose the sphere then you would need another constant.
Sounds about right, hehe
in the interest of full disclosure, my wife refuses to give up XP, and thinks I'm a dork for all my linux tinkering.
Not too say that I am not a dork, but what does she know.
Then I'd say it's time for a new GF. ;)
When anything becomes "foolproof" the world just provides a better fool.
But the generation that is in power now is the hippie generation.
The freedom loving, peace mongering, pro love etc...
from what I hear, you couldn't step 20 feet 40 years ago and not see someone with a mostly positive message of some sorts.
Where are they now? Did they grow up, get jobs and become slaves to the dollar?
Did they all turn on tune in and drop out, only to disappear from existence?
Most certainly, but it seems to be almost cyclical.
1. Corruption becomes out of control
2. Profit!!
3. Locals get pissed, get corruption back to acceptable levels.
4. Locals become complacent, stop keeping their good eye on officials
5. Corruption becomes out of control
6. Profit!!
I'm no genius but, I can see a slight pattern developing here.