How about an example... for this example you live in Chicago, a major company is moving a call centre from Dallas to your city, is that unethical? jobs will be created in your home town, at the expense of ones in another city. If that isn't ethical enough for you, how about moving a call centre to a neighbouring city? or just accross town?
Or a different one, you pay the kid next door to mow your grass, you move, is it unethical to hire a different kid to mow the lawn at the new house? you've just put the first kid out of work by moving his workplace.
Do we prevent any freedom of movement based soley on the fact that someone might not like it?
Or do we just decide that it all averages out, you got rid of a job in location A and created one in location B... it's really no different.
You're answering an ethical question with money. If money is now a substitute for ethics, the world is in deep trouble!
I do many things that are ethical or moral without any monetary reward, and in fact many of them cost me money. By your definition I should stop all of them right now. No more volunteering in my community, no more donating to charities, no more helping people in need, because all of these affect my pocket book.
Ethical is not the same as profitable. There are many things that are "right" but have negative financial impact, and many things that are "wrong" but pay well.
Competition isn't obsolete, in fact it's the opposite, competition is open to EVERYONE now. If you can't compete with the person on the other side of the world, why should I be forced to go with you instead of them? isn't that the basis of competition?
What makes a job in your county more important than a job in theirs? What makes you more important than them?
I believe in competition fully. If you can't compete, don't go trying to twist legalities and moralities to try to make competition between you and your neighbour "good" but between you and the guy overseas "bad" when in fact it's exactly the same thing.
$50/month gets you 15 meg speeds with 2 dynamic IPs $96.95/month gets you 15 meg speeds with 2 static IPs $166.95/month gets you 15 meg speeds with 5 static IPs
Tell me that IPv6 won't impact THAT business model!
I've said this for a long time. ISPs currently make a LOT of money reselling IP addresses, a connection with 5 static IPs costs almost double one with 2, and a static IP costs significantly more than double what a dynamic IP costs.
Redgardless of the technical challenges posed by IPv4/IPv6, the bigger challenge will be marketting. I don't think the marketting departments are ready to give up those revenue streams, so either they will completely butcher their IPv6 implementation to remove most of the advantages of the new system. Or they will effectively refuse to implement it at all until they are dragged kicking and screaming in to the 21st century.
For competition in our area there is one other large company, their publicly stated IPv6 policies are actually worse than ours (which is quite the feat to be honest!) and a handful of small ISPs reselling our lines and using us as an upstream provider... they don't have much choice in the matter.
So about that "competitive advantage" you were talking about...
I finally found the group responsible for IPv6 at my company, and asked about our readiness. now keep in mind, we don't need to wait for an upstream provider as we are the upstream provider, with many peering agreements in place.
The answer I got back basically amounted to two things:
1) nobody else is ready, so we don't need to be either.
2) it's not legally mandated, so it's not important.
I'm so glad we pride ourselves on our ability to innovate...
Some places I have lived, where winter weather can be sub zero Fahrenheit, have ruled that natural gas and electric service is so critical that service cannot be disconnected during the winter since it would make the home unlivable, a de facto death sentence.
But those same places likely allow disconnection of telephone, cable, and internet since none of those can cause you to actually and physically die. (even places that require that a phone line be left, only require it be able to call 911 and nothing else (do these jurisdictions even still exist?)) Even if you subscribe to the idea that Facebook is important, you still have to decide at what level of importance they actually are. And then you have to realize that they fall somewhere bellow heating your house, being able to call 911, and even likely below internet access.
On a side note, I live in a jurisdiction where not only does it get "below zero" it gets a LOT colder than that. Our electric company doesn't normally shut off your electricity in the winter, but they do put a restriction on it that will limit how much electricity you can use (essentially enough to power your furnace and fridge, and nothing else) I talked to one of their reps at one point, he stated that they can (and depending on the situation, occasionally do) shut off service completely, even in winter, the only reason they use the limiters most of the time is for PR, they don't like the headlines if people freeze to death because they didn't pay the electric bill.
This actually makes sense, because it is my impression that under contract law he'd pretty much be screwed, because the only contract is the EULA/TOS which essentially says that Facebook can do anything they want at any time they want. (some people argue that EULAs or TOSs aren't valid, but without them he has no contract at all, and therefore no chance under contract law.
Getting out of contract law is the only way, but the question becomes, where else can you go? You talk about discrimination, but there are only certain specific cases where discrimination is illegal, so unless his account was specifically terminated on the basis of his race, colour, religion, gender, disabilities, genetic information, or national origin, then there wouldn't be grounds there. I'm also not 100% certain that discrimination laws actually apply to this situation even in those specific cases.
"Equality of rights" I'm not sure I'm familiar with this from a legal stand point, I like the idea that everyone should be treated equally, but I'm not sure that the law agrees. Just because I offer a ride to Jill who lives down the street doesn't force me to offer one to Jack who lives next door too. I'm allowed to provide a service to one, and not the other, without the other having any legal recourse against me. Even if I were operating a business, I'm allowed to select my customers without being forced to accept the ones I don't like. Businesses do it all the time. How is this case different?
I personally think that any service as large as Facebook should have to face consequences if they unjustly terminate someone's account. That said however, I don't believe that there is actually any law that agrees with me on this, nor am I entirely certain that I would want there to be one.
It's not that EULAs "don't" hold up, it's more that they "haven't" held up. There has not, to my knowledge, been any real case law surrounding them as of yet. There is a lot of speculation that a halfway decent lawyer could successfully argue they aren't valid, but there's no well established precedent yet (unless you care to post some?)
However that's not really the problem this particular person is facing, in this case he's actually screwed no matter whether the EULA is valid or not. To successfully sue, he'd have to prove a contractual relationship between himself and Facebook which Facebook broke. So to that end, he'd have to argue that the EULA is in fact valid because without it he'd have no contractual relationship and therefore no grounds to expect service. However, if the EULA were valid, then it likely says Facebook is allowed to terminate his account without any good reason and without any notice, in which case Facebook didn't break the contract, and he looses. If instead he argues that the EULA is not in fact valid, then there is no contract between him and Facebook requiring Facebook to provide him service at all, and once again he looses.
Now I'll add the standard disclaimer that I'm not a lawyer, or even a Facebook user, so I'm not in a position to offer sound legal advice, however the above is accurate as near as I can tell from my limited research in to free services, EULAs and service obligations.
I suppose someone could come up with an app that stops you from loading other apps not approved by some arbitrary third party if you want... it could be built to disable the micro-sd slot too... most of the other features available on Android that the iPhone can't do could probably be disabled by an app... Not sure how to get an app to weld the battery compartment shut though... and you'd have to pay about $200-$300 for the app to get the price point about right... That should be close to an Android -> iPhone conversion.
except plays and concerts and live performances usually do their best to simulate 2D in their inherently 3D environment, there's a reason the audience all sits on the same side of the performers and looks at them all from the "front" if 3D were really superior, we'd want to be sitting surrounding the performers, not all on the same side of them.
In your example of the couple kissing while one holds a knife behind their back, on a 2D movie screen we'd get just the perfect angle and timing to see both at just the right moments, on a 3D stage the actors usually do their best to replicate such by turning to intentionally show off the aspects they wish to portray, in contrast to movies the resulting motion, while necessary, often creates a somewhat "fake" feel to the acting which isn't necessary in the 2D plane of movies where the camera can take more genuine acting, and interpret it by moving the viewer instead.
Don't get me wrong, I love going to the theatre and watching real shows, there's an ambience you just can't get on a movie screen. But it's not for the 3D aspect of it. You get a better vantage point for most scenes on a properly shot and directed film than you can on any theatre stage.
I could have, but it would involve a long term plan to hurt the company, that form of damage is very difficult to protect against, but also very easy to detect (anyone can verify the backup at any time by restoring it to something). The fact that I was only one of a team of admins also made it more difficult, as I wasn't always the one handling the backups.
The most common form of damage from a "rogue admin" is going to be created in a short period of time between the time they get really pissed off, and security escorts them off the premises. possibly a day or two, but much less likely to be several weeks. Additionally, anything that lasts that long is much easier to prove in court as intentional harm done by the admin.
If the cost to me of using cash is the same as using debit, then the debit card is essentially "free", my visa card gives me cash back on purchases, so it is in effect cheaper for me to use than cash. the hidden costs are irrelevant if there is no way to avoid them. Paying an extra $1.50 per transaction is significantly more expensive than cash, and can easily be avoided by using cash/debit/credit, so why would I pay it?
My carrier recently rolled out a phone based payment system, I was asked to be part of the trial. I declined.
They want me to spend $1.50 per transaction to use it. I can use my debit card for free, I can use cash for free, and my visa card actually pays me to use it, why on earth would I want to give my carrier $1.50 for each transaction? I don't pay bank fees, they already get the privilege of using my money while it's in their care, I refuse to pay money to get access to it.
better yet, if all the major ISPs shut off their DNS servers, you could simply use OpenDNS or Google DNS (or any other DNS server that is outside of the country)
Every suggestion posted so far mentions making extra backups, using third party software for audit and tracking to adding extra, bureaucratic steps into the mix that will do just that: piss someone off.
If making redundant off-site backups pisses you off, you really shouldn't work in IT!
Secure, read-only, off-site backups are the best option for this, they have multiple purposes, and anyone who is pissed off by their existence is either a control freak who I would be scared to work with, or is actually planning to do harm which is even worse.
I worked at a place where the off-site backup policy was that I handed the weekly tape backups to the owner of the company and he took them home. I was never offended at this, it was simply a prudent off-site backup policy. The worst I could have done if I had "gone rogue" would be destroy the live data, and the daily on-site backups, I could MAYBE trick him in to bringing me the most recent weekly backup, but I'd never get him to bring me all the weekly backups. So in the worst possible scenario I could have destroyed 2 weeks worth of work. Sure, that's bad, but it's not catastrophic, and they would recover.
Their policy was low-tech, easy to administer, and quite effective at mitigating a wide variety of possible disasters.
If this is SMALLER, I'd hate to think what you think "bigger" would be? I had to scroll to find the "preview" button on this comment! at least 4 times the size of the comment boxes I used to get on the old system
unions stop things by witholding (or threatening to withold) their labour. If their labour isn't required, they don't have any bargaining power.
As for voice, I don't see why computers can't do that too, and even if they can't it's much easier to find someone to talk for a character than to play for them, a couple friends in a home studio can do much of a movie that way.
The ONLY thing the existing movie companies have going for them going in to the future is a virtual monopoly on movie theatres and marketing, everything else can be (or will be able to be soon) matched or surpassed by a few individuals in a home studio.
And with better home theatres, and social networking... who knows, maybe even those strangleholds will dry up.
Truly absurd. Competition is the only answer. Switch to the smaller ISPs. If customers leave those greedy bastards in significant numbers, this idea will die. Thanks god I live in a city with 4 broadband options (two ADSL, two TV cable).
And for those of us who don't?
I live in a city with 1 cable provider, and 1 ADSL provider, the ADSL provider, by law, must make service available to resellers (for some unknown reason, the cable company doesn't have to)... but because our government regulation body is useless, the ADSL provider only needs to offer the resellers 1/5 of the speed they are willing to offer to their fastest customers. furthermore, the ADSL provider is actually allowed to throttle, traffic shape, and bandwidth limit the resellers lines! So even if I switch from the ADSL provider to a small reseller of ADSL, I still can't escape the traffic shaping, throttling, and bandwidth limiting, AND I'd have to give up my current internet speeds...
A free market is great in theory, but doesn't work when you have a government granted monopoly with a corrupt regulating body.
While that's a good theory... I don't know if I believe it.
ISPs have made HUGE amounts of money by charging a LOT more if you use 4 IPs than if you use 1 IP... why would they dump that revenue stream? I fully expect ISPs to continue to charge by the IP address, meaning NAT will continue to be necessary. (and if you tell me that's just due to the scarcity of IPV4 space, I'd like to see why my ISP charges go from $80 to $120 per month to go from 2 IPs to 4... surely their cost for the IPs isn't equal to that difference and I doubt they want to give up that profit)
With the cost of home routers these days, that means that any router not owned by a slashdot member will likely go in the garbage. It's both cheaper and easier to buy a new one then to pay someone to flash it and reconfigure.
Additionally, buying a new one may mean upgrades like 802.11n and gigabit ethernet which aren't on their current router.
As for ISP devices (ADSL or Cable "modems"), I would suspect most devices being deployed at this point could do IPv6 with a firmware update. (though they also suffer from the same lifecycle advantages of replacement as seen above, for example upgrading ADSL2+ devices to VDSL, or upgrading the wireless to 802.11n, etc)
A big reason though that ISPs are dragging their feet is that they just don't see any reason to spend that amount of time and money, not to mention the support costs of the people calling in with old unsupported consumer routers, or an ancient version of windows, etc. As with most technologies, they'll do it only when absolutely forced to do so, and not a moment before.
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How about an example... for this example you live in Chicago, a major company is moving a call centre from Dallas to your city, is that unethical? jobs will be created in your home town, at the expense of ones in another city. If that isn't ethical enough for you, how about moving a call centre to a neighbouring city? or just accross town?
Or a different one, you pay the kid next door to mow your grass, you move, is it unethical to hire a different kid to mow the lawn at the new house? you've just put the first kid out of work by moving his workplace.
Do we prevent any freedom of movement based soley on the fact that someone might not like it?
Or do we just decide that it all averages out, you got rid of a job in location A and created one in location B... it's really no different.
You're answering an ethical question with money. If money is now a substitute for ethics, the world is in deep trouble!
I do many things that are ethical or moral without any monetary reward, and in fact many of them cost me money. By your definition I should stop all of them right now. No more volunteering in my community, no more donating to charities, no more helping people in need, because all of these affect my pocket book.
Ethical is not the same as profitable. There are many things that are "right" but have negative financial impact, and many things that are "wrong" but pay well.
Competition isn't obsolete, in fact it's the opposite, competition is open to EVERYONE now. If you can't compete with the person on the other side of the world, why should I be forced to go with you instead of them? isn't that the basis of competition?
What makes a job in your county more important than a job in theirs? What makes you more important than them?
I believe in competition fully. If you can't compete, don't go trying to twist legalities and moralities to try to make competition between you and your neighbour "good" but between you and the guy overseas "bad" when in fact it's exactly the same thing.
$50/month gets you 15 meg speeds with 2 dynamic IPs
$96.95/month gets you 15 meg speeds with 2 static IPs
$166.95/month gets you 15 meg speeds with 5 static IPs
Tell me that IPv6 won't impact THAT business model!
I've said this for a long time. ISPs currently make a LOT of money reselling IP addresses, a connection with 5 static IPs costs almost double one with 2, and a static IP costs significantly more than double what a dynamic IP costs.
Redgardless of the technical challenges posed by IPv4/IPv6, the bigger challenge will be marketting. I don't think the marketting departments are ready to give up those revenue streams, so either they will completely butcher their IPv6 implementation to remove most of the advantages of the new system. Or they will effectively refuse to implement it at all until they are dragged kicking and screaming in to the 21st century.
For competition in our area there is one other large company, their publicly stated IPv6 policies are actually worse than ours (which is quite the feat to be honest!) and a handful of small ISPs reselling our lines and using us as an upstream provider... they don't have much choice in the matter.
So about that "competitive advantage" you were talking about...
I finally found the group responsible for IPv6 at my company, and asked about our readiness. now keep in mind, we don't need to wait for an upstream provider as we are the upstream provider, with many peering agreements in place.
The answer I got back basically amounted to two things:
1) nobody else is ready, so we don't need to be either.
2) it's not legally mandated, so it's not important.
I'm so glad we pride ourselves on our ability to innovate...
Some places I have lived, where winter weather can be sub zero Fahrenheit, have ruled that natural gas and electric service is so critical that service cannot be disconnected during the winter since it would make the home unlivable, a de facto death sentence.
But those same places likely allow disconnection of telephone, cable, and internet since none of those can cause you to actually and physically die. (even places that require that a phone line be left, only require it be able to call 911 and nothing else (do these jurisdictions even still exist?)) Even if you subscribe to the idea that Facebook is important, you still have to decide at what level of importance they actually are. And then you have to realize that they fall somewhere bellow heating your house, being able to call 911, and even likely below internet access.
On a side note, I live in a jurisdiction where not only does it get "below zero" it gets a LOT colder than that. Our electric company doesn't normally shut off your electricity in the winter, but they do put a restriction on it that will limit how much electricity you can use (essentially enough to power your furnace and fridge, and nothing else) I talked to one of their reps at one point, he stated that they can (and depending on the situation, occasionally do) shut off service completely, even in winter, the only reason they use the limiters most of the time is for PR, they don't like the headlines if people freeze to death because they didn't pay the electric bill.
This actually makes sense, because it is my impression that under contract law he'd pretty much be screwed, because the only contract is the EULA/TOS which essentially says that Facebook can do anything they want at any time they want. (some people argue that EULAs or TOSs aren't valid, but without them he has no contract at all, and therefore no chance under contract law.
Getting out of contract law is the only way, but the question becomes, where else can you go? You talk about discrimination, but there are only certain specific cases where discrimination is illegal, so unless his account was specifically terminated on the basis of his race, colour, religion, gender, disabilities, genetic information, or national origin, then there wouldn't be grounds there. I'm also not 100% certain that discrimination laws actually apply to this situation even in those specific cases.
"Equality of rights" I'm not sure I'm familiar with this from a legal stand point, I like the idea that everyone should be treated equally, but I'm not sure that the law agrees. Just because I offer a ride to Jill who lives down the street doesn't force me to offer one to Jack who lives next door too. I'm allowed to provide a service to one, and not the other, without the other having any legal recourse against me. Even if I were operating a business, I'm allowed to select my customers without being forced to accept the ones I don't like. Businesses do it all the time. How is this case different?
I personally think that any service as large as Facebook should have to face consequences if they unjustly terminate someone's account. That said however, I don't believe that there is actually any law that agrees with me on this, nor am I entirely certain that I would want there to be one.
It's not that EULAs "don't" hold up, it's more that they "haven't" held up. There has not, to my knowledge, been any real case law surrounding them as of yet. There is a lot of speculation that a halfway decent lawyer could successfully argue they aren't valid, but there's no well established precedent yet (unless you care to post some?)
However that's not really the problem this particular person is facing, in this case he's actually screwed no matter whether the EULA is valid or not. To successfully sue, he'd have to prove a contractual relationship between himself and Facebook which Facebook broke. So to that end, he'd have to argue that the EULA is in fact valid because without it he'd have no contractual relationship and therefore no grounds to expect service. However, if the EULA were valid, then it likely says Facebook is allowed to terminate his account without any good reason and without any notice, in which case Facebook didn't break the contract, and he looses. If instead he argues that the EULA is not in fact valid, then there is no contract between him and Facebook requiring Facebook to provide him service at all, and once again he looses.
Now I'll add the standard disclaimer that I'm not a lawyer, or even a Facebook user, so I'm not in a position to offer sound legal advice, however the above is accurate as near as I can tell from my limited research in to free services, EULAs and service obligations.
If all the reviews said they were garbage... why were you surprised when you found out they were garbage?
The reviews are there for a reason, they let you know what people think of an app. If nobody likes it, there's usually a reason.
I suppose someone could come up with an app that stops you from loading other apps not approved by some arbitrary third party if you want... it could be built to disable the micro-sd slot too... most of the other features available on Android that the iPhone can't do could probably be disabled by an app... Not sure how to get an app to weld the battery compartment shut though... and you'd have to pay about $200-$300 for the app to get the price point about right... That should be close to an Android -> iPhone conversion.
except plays and concerts and live performances usually do their best to simulate 2D in their inherently 3D environment, there's a reason the audience all sits on the same side of the performers and looks at them all from the "front" if 3D were really superior, we'd want to be sitting surrounding the performers, not all on the same side of them.
In your example of the couple kissing while one holds a knife behind their back, on a 2D movie screen we'd get just the perfect angle and timing to see both at just the right moments, on a 3D stage the actors usually do their best to replicate such by turning to intentionally show off the aspects they wish to portray, in contrast to movies the resulting motion, while necessary, often creates a somewhat "fake" feel to the acting which isn't necessary in the 2D plane of movies where the camera can take more genuine acting, and interpret it by moving the viewer instead.
Don't get me wrong, I love going to the theatre and watching real shows, there's an ambience you just can't get on a movie screen. But it's not for the 3D aspect of it. You get a better vantage point for most scenes on a properly shot and directed film than you can on any theatre stage.
I could have, but it would involve a long term plan to hurt the company, that form of damage is very difficult to protect against, but also very easy to detect (anyone can verify the backup at any time by restoring it to something). The fact that I was only one of a team of admins also made it more difficult, as I wasn't always the one handling the backups.
The most common form of damage from a "rogue admin" is going to be created in a short period of time between the time they get really pissed off, and security escorts them off the premises. possibly a day or two, but much less likely to be several weeks. Additionally, anything that lasts that long is much easier to prove in court as intentional harm done by the admin.
If the cost to me of using cash is the same as using debit, then the debit card is essentially "free", my visa card gives me cash back on purchases, so it is in effect cheaper for me to use than cash. the hidden costs are irrelevant if there is no way to avoid them. Paying an extra $1.50 per transaction is significantly more expensive than cash, and can easily be avoided by using cash/debit/credit, so why would I pay it?
My carrier recently rolled out a phone based payment system, I was asked to be part of the trial. I declined.
They want me to spend $1.50 per transaction to use it. I can use my debit card for free, I can use cash for free, and my visa card actually pays me to use it, why on earth would I want to give my carrier $1.50 for each transaction? I don't pay bank fees, they already get the privilege of using my money while it's in their care, I refuse to pay money to get access to it.
better yet, if all the major ISPs shut off their DNS servers, you could simply use OpenDNS or Google DNS (or any other DNS server that is outside of the country)
Every suggestion posted so far mentions making extra backups, using third party software for audit and tracking to adding extra, bureaucratic steps into the mix that will do just that: piss someone off.
If making redundant off-site backups pisses you off, you really shouldn't work in IT!
Secure, read-only, off-site backups are the best option for this, they have multiple purposes, and anyone who is pissed off by their existence is either a control freak who I would be scared to work with, or is actually planning to do harm which is even worse.
I worked at a place where the off-site backup policy was that I handed the weekly tape backups to the owner of the company and he took them home. I was never offended at this, it was simply a prudent off-site backup policy. The worst I could have done if I had "gone rogue" would be destroy the live data, and the daily on-site backups, I could MAYBE trick him in to bringing me the most recent weekly backup, but I'd never get him to bring me all the weekly backups. So in the worst possible scenario I could have destroyed 2 weeks worth of work. Sure, that's bad, but it's not catastrophic, and they would recover.
Their policy was low-tech, easy to administer, and quite effective at mitigating a wide variety of possible disasters.
And the comment reply boxes are a lot smaller.
If this is SMALLER, I'd hate to think what you think "bigger" would be? I had to scroll to find the "preview" button on this comment! at least 4 times the size of the comment boxes I used to get on the old system
unions stop things by witholding (or threatening to withold) their labour. If their labour isn't required, they don't have any bargaining power.
As for voice, I don't see why computers can't do that too, and even if they can't it's much easier to find someone to talk for a character than to play for them, a couple friends in a home studio can do much of a movie that way.
The ONLY thing the existing movie companies have going for them going in to the future is a virtual monopoly on movie theatres and marketing, everything else can be (or will be able to be soon) matched or surpassed by a few individuals in a home studio.
And with better home theatres, and social networking... who knows, maybe even those strangleholds will dry up.
but good cgi is getting both cheaper and easier.
I truly wonder how long until the majority of films use cgi instead of actors
Truly absurd. Competition is the only answer. Switch to the smaller ISPs. If customers leave those greedy bastards in significant numbers, this idea will die.
Thanks god I live in a city with 4 broadband options (two ADSL, two TV cable).
And for those of us who don't?
I live in a city with 1 cable provider, and 1 ADSL provider, the ADSL provider, by law, must make service available to resellers (for some unknown reason, the cable company doesn't have to)... but because our government regulation body is useless, the ADSL provider only needs to offer the resellers 1/5 of the speed they are willing to offer to their fastest customers. furthermore, the ADSL provider is actually allowed to throttle, traffic shape, and bandwidth limit the resellers lines! So even if I switch from the ADSL provider to a small reseller of ADSL, I still can't escape the traffic shaping, throttling, and bandwidth limiting, AND I'd have to give up my current internet speeds...
A free market is great in theory, but doesn't work when you have a government granted monopoly with a corrupt regulating body.
And people wonder why they drag their feet! They're waiting to figure out how to monetize it!
It also does not need to perform NAT duties.
While that's a good theory... I don't know if I believe it.
ISPs have made HUGE amounts of money by charging a LOT more if you use 4 IPs than if you use 1 IP... why would they dump that revenue stream? I fully expect ISPs to continue to charge by the IP address, meaning NAT will continue to be necessary. (and if you tell me that's just due to the scarcity of IPV4 space, I'd like to see why my ISP charges go from $80 to $120 per month to go from 2 IPs to 4... surely their cost for the IPs isn't equal to that difference and I doubt they want to give up that profit)
With the cost of home routers these days, that means that any router not owned by a slashdot member will likely go in the garbage. It's both cheaper and easier to buy a new one then to pay someone to flash it and reconfigure.
Additionally, buying a new one may mean upgrades like 802.11n and gigabit ethernet which aren't on their current router.
As for ISP devices (ADSL or Cable "modems"), I would suspect most devices being deployed at this point could do IPv6 with a firmware update. (though they also suffer from the same lifecycle advantages of replacement as seen above, for example upgrading ADSL2+ devices to VDSL, or upgrading the wireless to 802.11n, etc)
A big reason though that ISPs are dragging their feet is that they just don't see any reason to spend that amount of time and money, not to mention the support costs of the people calling in with old unsupported consumer routers, or an ancient version of windows, etc. As with most technologies, they'll do it only when absolutely forced to do so, and not a moment before.