Supporting small local ISPs is something I have always been totally for.
Hey, as someone who used to work for a small local ISP I'm in 100% agreement with you. Now find me a small local ISP. Because to a tee, every single one of them in my area went out of business:(
But in this case it just sounds like they can't figure out how to do it right.
It's not that they can't figure it out, it's that they aren't even bothering to try and shape traffic. They'd rather interfere with it.
Back in my ISP days we ran our entire operation (400 dial-in lines and about 60 WISP clients) off two un-bonded T-1s (they went to different POPs for redundancy). We couldn't afford to add more bandwidth at the edge, so I hacked together a traffic shaping setup using Linux. It prioritized ssh, telnet, TCP ACKs, icmp packets, and the VPNs of our business clients. VoIP wasn't a big concern in those days but had it been I would have prioritized it as well. When online gaming started becoming big we started giving that traffic priority over bulk transfers as well.
The bulk downloaders/p2p'ers didn't notice or complain. They still got the lions share of the bandwidth -- and are you really going to notice if your transfer gets 139KB/s instead of 140KB/s due to that ssh packet moving ahead of you in the queue? During peak hours my T-1s were running at 90-95% of capacity but my users were all still humming along quite nicely, none the wiser. There was more to this then just traffic shaping (we also had a pretty slick squid setup), but the point is we got along just fine with our limited resources.
If we could fucking do it, then sure as hell Comcast could. They have apparently decided that it's better to block/drop the traffic then shape it. If they had real competition they'd probably pay for this over the long run.
They are on a metered model! They just don't tell you what your limit is.
That's not quite true. My electric company won't cut off my service if I use more electric this month then I did at the same time last year.
Metered service could work in one of two ways. They provide you with X gigabytes of bandwidth and charge you an overage rate for each gigabyte over that (or cut you off for the rest of the month), or they just charge you X dollars per gigabyte and maybe a small monthly fee. That's how electric or gas works.
That said, I don't think metered service would play very well. What happens when someone gets a huge bill because of their PC being owned? It'd be a PR nightmare for them and their competitors would doubtless use it against them (our service is unlimited!). So they'd have little choice but to invest in their network.
I actually have some sympathy for them. But it only goes so far. They shouldn't have the right to sell something as "unlimited" when it's really not. Plain and simple.
That's an interesting take on it. And as far as I'm aware there is no DSL provider in the United States doing anything like this. It certainly seems to be the case in the wireless world. The carriers removing or blocking features that may compete with their own content offerings.
One wonders what the solution to this is. Prohibit someone from being in the content business AND the delivery business at the same time? They'd fight you tooth and nail on that -- and you'd have the "free market" types after you as well.
In any case I think they will shoot themselves in the foot in the long run. What happens when all P2P traffic is encrypted and looks like any other encrypted protocol (ssh, ssl, etc)? At that point you may be able to identify WHICH subscriber is using p2p (bittorrent stands out like a sore thumb for the sheer volume of connections it establishes) but how will you identify which individual packet is p2p and shape it? Or will they just start sending random RST packets to ALL your connections, including (as TFA suggests) Google?
If bandwidth IS the issue then in the long run they only have two options. Invest in some upgrades or stop selling "unlimited" service. Personally I'd take the best of both worlds. I'd offer a "premium" package aimed at p2p users (no monthly bandwidth limit and/or higher speeds) and use the money from that to expand my network.
That's essentially what forged, fraudulent RST packets from a MITM attack are doing
I fail to see how they think these types of "traffic management" tools will work in the long run. It's only going to encourage the P2P users to adopt more protocol masking/encryption techniques to hide from these devices. And then what are you left with? Blocking encrypted traffic? Breaking the internet by refusing to route packets directly between end-users and only routing them to major sites?
In a fair world with a fair marketplace they'd have two options. They could choose either one and the market would decide which was best: 1) Stop selling unlimited service and switch to a metered model. 2) Upgrade their friggen network to support it.
Let's see, how about their high prices for flaky "broadband" with minimal upload capabilities ($60/month with taxes and fees in my area
I've always been able to get them to to knock Roadrunner back down to the promotional price ($29.95) every 12 months when it expires by quoting whatever DSL offer Verizon has at the current moment. I'd swear they have a database of who can and who can't get DSL though, because I've tried to bluff this a few times from friends houses and they've never been willing to give the same price.
That said, I fucking hate them. Despise them. Loathe them. They bought out all of the local cable co's around here over the years. Somehow basic cable went from $22.95 to $50/mo. I refuse to pay for it. Rabbit ears and coat hangers get me the network shows. The Daily Show and Colbert can be watched from their website. Any other cable shows (South Park and Mythbusters come to mind) are easily bittorrent'able.
There is no reason to give the cable co a dime of your money for anything beyond internet access. I don't miss it at all.
Funny, I just consider that theft regardless of who you're stealing from. It's bad for your karma whether you do it to Best Buy or some civilian.
As with everything, it's dangerous to make black and white statements. If this person is telling the truth and if he winds up being stuck with the charge (not likely as your credit card company will side with you 99% of the time) then I would personally have no problems with him taking a five finger discount from Best Buy.
That's probably not the PC thing to suggest, but oh well.
I once ordered three widgets and got six. This widget came in boxes of two. Someone at the warehouse had put three boxes of widgets in the shipping box, not three widgets.
I stopped at a local computer shop once upon a time to buy a network card. Got carried away, wound up buying a NIC, new video card, and a hard drive. Came to about $350. Paid with my credit card and left.
Few days later I notice a $350 credit on my card. I go back and look at the receipt and realize that the guy processed it as a CREDIT instead of a CHARGE. So I'm gonna do the right thing and tell him about it. Stop in his store a little while later:
Me: Hey, I was in here the other day. I think you messed up the charge for my credit card.
Him: I didn't OVERCHARGE you sir, and I'm getting sick of people nickel and diming me.
Me: Yeah, you didn't overcharge me, I was looking at this receipt and....
Him: Read the sign. NO REFUNDS, NO RETURNS
Me: Your right, what was I thinking?
Went in to do the right thing and got attitude for it. So fuck 'em. They never did catch it. They PAID ME $350 to take their stuff. For some reason they went out of business a few months later.....;)
My friend receives a regular "allowance" from the trust. This is the same sort of set up that the Dupont's, Kennedy's, Rockefeller's, and Bush's have.
I have to say, and this will probably sound heartless, but there is zero chance of me doing that for my kids even if by some fluke I become a billionaire. I'm not even inclined to pay their expenses while they go to school, because it's been my experience that the kids going to college whose parents have paid for 100% of their expenses don't have a whole lot of respect for education or the process. I will pay for their tuition, books, etc during undergrad, but none of their other expenses and they are on their own for their graduate degrees should they decide to get them.
The fact of the matter is that the estate tax actually increases the establishment of an aristocracy. If it wasn't for the estate tax, fewer wealthy parents would set up trust funds for their wealth.
Well, the sad reality is that no matter what tax scheme you come up with, the rich will find ways around it. I was just saying that I find it funny to hear people bitch about it and call it the "death tax". During the original tax debates there was even an amendment introduced to provide an exemption for the first ONE HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS of an estate. This was voted down because the Republicans wouldn't settle for anything less then a complete elimination. Yeah, I feel real bad for people who stand to inherit estates that are valued high enough to be subject to the tax in the first place (generally over four million bucks). That tax burden must be crushing them.....
Buffet made lots of his money in insurance. My experience with insurance companies, and the overwhelming majority of anecdotal evidence that I've encountered, is that they are complete and utter bastards. The goal is always to deny the claim, not matter what.
I'd have to disagree with you here. I've previously worked for an insurance agency. Not all companies are "complete and utter bastards" looking to deny claims. My personal experience is limited to a collision loss. Never had to fight them on that. None of the companies that my agency sold ever gave insureds a hard time with claims either. I even got to see a fire loss in my time in the business. The company wrote a $300,000 check on the spot like you or I would write a $20 check at the grocery store. The insured didn't have to do anything more then file her claim. I've also seen flood losses that were handled as quickly as, "Here's your check".
It would be more fair to some outfits are complete and utter bastards. All evidence I've seen suggests that GEICO (owned by Berkshire Hathaway, whose majority shareholder is Buffett) is one of these. Rate-jacked premiums after they buy because the company "missed" things on the quote, denied claims or non-existent claims service, fees for mid-term cancellation, etc, etc.
Yeah, they're not exactly a tobacco company, but they're not really far off in my mind. To me, the Coca-Cola corporation exemplifies everything that is bad about American culture - fantastic marketing, no nutritional value.
They aren't even remotely close to a tobacco company. Come back to mind when we find scientific evidence that Coca-Cola has deliberately engineered their product to be addictive. I find soda disgusting and refuse to drink it, but many people enjoy it and I don't see a problem with that. Then again, I'm Libertarian-minded with these things and I don't even see a problem with people who enjoy tobacco as long as they are educated as to the risks of doing so.
Buffet is one of the better ones, by far. I admire much about him, but let's not quite give him sainthood yet
Eh, I didn't advocate sainthood. I just needed to throw out the name of a well known philanthropist and this being/. I couldn't very well use Bill Gates as my example of someone who isn't evil;)
I'd bet a kidney that Colbert would beat Dubya on a teast covering basic knowledge of current events. Colbert a really sharp guy. Bush is not. So who is qualified?
The whole thing about "qualifications" is just a smoke screen to scare people away from voting for candidates (republican, democrat or third-party) who aren't establishment and mainstream. What does "qualify" you for President? I'd make the argument anyone smart enough to listen to others for advice and surround themselves with intelligent people in the right positions (State, Treasury and Defense come to mind as the most important ones) is qualified to be President. Lincoln went from a seat in the House (where he made quite a few glaring mistakes in retrospect), to being a lawyer, to being President of the United States. Think that would happen in this day and age with the focus on "experience" and "qualifications"?
One thing I could respect about Clinton was that whatever you could say about him, good or bad, he wasn't born with silver spoon in hand... he wasn't no Senator's son, no, no...
My problem with Bush lies less with the silver spoon and more with the way he does business. A better comparison would be that Clinton was smart enough to surround himself with the right people and wasn't afraid of listening to dissenting opinions in his administration. He even had a Republican has his Secretary of Defence. Contrast that to the insulated world of the Bush administration, the paranoid secrecy, people chosen more for loyalty and/or kickbacks then competence (your doing a heck of a job Brownie.....), etc, etc, etc. I miss Bill Clinton:(
Here's my rebuttal: George W. Bush. Having a rich and powerful family is the only reason he is where is.
I'm kinda with the parent on this one. I have zero respect for GWB but being rich and/or powerful does not automatically make one evil. Is Warren Buffett evil?
I'll grant you that GWB wouldn't have made it past college without his family connections. To me that's somewhat anti-American. Americans aren't supposed to condone or support the concept of a permanent nobility. We fought a revolution to free ourselves from it. That's one of the reasons why I'm always amused when people whine about the estate tax.
People like Paris Hilton are rightfully despised because they've never accomplished anything on their own and the only reason they are famous is because of their parents. I doubt I'll ever be rich but should I happen to make the right choices in life and wind up rich and/or powerful I won't be leaving millions of dollars to my kids. They should find success on their own.
Because it doesn't matter if you get to https AFTER login - the login procedure can be sniffed anyway:-/
I'm all about security and paranoia, but do you really think there is somebody sitting on a router or network between you and/. with nothing better to do then steal your/. pw?
Granted, I'll be using https the next time I get some spare cash to subscribe, now that I know it exists.... but not because I'm worried about somebody sniffing my pw.
I hardly think the Final Fantasy series counts as a good story. How many poorly created love triangles can one be forced to endure between 2 dimensional characters?
Wow, them's fighting words;)
Eh, to each their own I guess. I don't think the combination of storyline and score can be beaten though. That's just MHO.
I looked at GnuCash quite awhile ago and to be honest I wasn't very impressed with it. I should probably give it another look because that was quite some time ago and as you pointed out they've made a lot of improvements. Having a Windows version would be helpful too -- I could keep the data files on a drive that both Windows and Linux can see and not worry about which OS I'm using when I enter transactions.
I was also considering a product called Moneydance once upon a time. It's closed-source but it's written in Java and would also run in Windows and Linux. Other then games (and work), Quicken is really the only thing forcing me to retain Windows on my system.
The government hides behind 3 things, the Flag, the Bible and the children.
I must have missed your sig before. That's awesome!
Yes, I was talking about the fingerprinting, fuck that, I would refuse at the airport, send me back to the UK
It's a bunch of bullshit. I've written my Federal legislators about this. It would absolutely 100% not be acceptable if they were demanding this of American citizens, so why the hell are we imposing it on non-citizens?
I was simply stating that the few proprietary applications I use don't measure up.
Eh, I can think of a few smaller ones that measure up in every arena save cost. But you won't get any argument from me on open-source generally being the better solution.
The one that comes to mind personally is a Personal Accounting Package. Both Money and Quicken have their drawbacks for me. If I had the source I could have them tweaked in short order. One of these days I'll either go through the hassle of converting my Quicken file to something else or just writing my own damn accounting suite.
Well, upon re-reading your original post I'm somewhat confused. Have you always had these problems or did they start recently? If you always had them then the recall analogy with Ford is apt -- they should MAKE it work. But if it's something that you changed (Operating System upgrade or new hardware perhaps?) then I think my analogy holds true and they don't owe you anything.
If it is broken, what did I pay for?
Might be a time to consider seeking a legal solution to the problem if the product never worked as advertised to begin with?
You can boycott them at one level but you can't escape the fact that sooner or later your money (however indirectly) will end up in their hands. I ditched Verizon POTS service for Verizon Wireless and later ditched them for T-Mobile. Now my money is going to little pink instead of big red, right?
Of course T-Mobile has to purchase their connections to the PSTN from someone...... gee, I wonder who that is in New York State?
Granted, it's still somewhat effective, and I'm much happier for not giving them any money, but don't think that Verizon and AT&T don't have a death-grip on all of our collective balls, regardless of whether or not you do business with them directly.
I can't believe I used to defend these scumbags. Using the courts to kill competitive upstarts, hogging all of the wireless spectrum to prevent newcomers (did you know that in some markets AT&T owns 75% of the available Cellular and PCS bands?), removing the copper from your house to prevent you from switching to a CLEC, etc, etc, etc.
I know Communism has been tried before and doesn't work, but it's business practices like these that start to make me wonder if Karl Marx didn't have an idea or two......
Uhh, says who? Most of the stuff I've read about it has been merchants bitching that it gives too much power to consumers.
They make you jump through thousands of hoops and may cancel your credit card
I charged-back my last payment to Verizon Online for their DSL service, because they owed me $25 out of a final bill of $39 (they bill a month ahead) and refused to refund my money in a timely manner. The "thousands of hoops" I had to jump though was a phone call to my credit card company, a letter to put the dispute in writing and photocopies of the invoices from Verizon. It didn't even cost me a stamp to send that stuff in because they let me fax it to them. Two weeks later I got a letter saying they reversed the transaction.
Some car rental companies won't even accept a debit (vs. a credit) card because your bank (vs. CitiCorp or MBNA) *actually might* give you the chargeback power
Then don't fucking do business with Shitty or MBNA! Last time I checked they aren't the only outfits in the US licensed to issue credit cards. Get a credit card from a local bank, or (even better) a small local credit union and be done with it. They'll be ten times as responsive to your needs and you'll actually get something resembling customer service.
I conduct 85% of my banking business with a local credit union valued at less then $140 million. I've never had a customer service issue with them. Contrast that to my favorite credit card bank (Shitty) that I'm no longer doing business with. When a merchant degaussed my credit card, they wanted to charge me $15 for a new one. Yeah, you fuckers make money every single time I swipe this card, send me a new one for free or enjoy mailing me statements every month for a lousy $13.99 (autopay for TiVo bill) for the next two years until the card expires and I get a new one anyway.
And if you wait more than a few months your chances of accomplishing anything vanish or dwindle to nothingness.
This part is true. I think you have 60 days from the date of the statement where the charge appeared. I waited until day 59 to dispute my Verizon charge because I was hoping they'd resolve it in-house.
They should be unenforceable. An unsigned "contract" that you supposedly had to agree to in order to legally use a product you already purchased before even getting to read the terms?
Actually, I wouldn't be as phiospically opposed to EULAs if there was actually a fucking way to return the shit if you don't agree to the terms.
Cell phones ordered online all have shrink wrap contracts and nobody around here is complaining about those. Why? Because if you don't agree to the contract you can usually return the thing within X number of days for a refund. Which store allows you to return software that's been opened? None that I'm aware of...... so if you buy it, read the EULA and disagree with it, your basically SOL.
I occasionally use a certain closed-source GIS application that has constant version compatibility problems. The company line is "Upgrade." "Buy more." Isn't that about control?
Uhh, do I have the right to demand that Ford come and install automatic wipers on my car for free because they weren't offered as an option when I bought it back in the day?
You can't really complain about them wanting you to upgrade to a new version just because of problems with the old one, unless the old one never worked as intended.
Makes one wonder what might happen if Steam happened to burn one of the major Storm botnet owners/controllers in this manner. I wonder if they'd think region locking/game deactivation was still worth it after their whole network was down for a week or more a multiple number of times over a long enough period that their sales tanked.
An interesting observation. I can't help but think of the classic "public enemy" criminals from the 20s and 30s that were actually respected by a large part of the public. Like Bonnie and Clyde because they robbed banks in a day when the perception was that banks were screwing the average person (by being overly eager to foreclose during the Great Depression).
Wonder if we'd see something similar if the botnet owners decided to stick it to a few of these outfits that are screwing over the consumer?
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Hey, as someone who used to work for a small local ISP I'm in 100% agreement with you. Now find me a small local ISP. Because to a tee, every single one of them in my area went out of business :(
It's not that they can't figure it out, it's that they aren't even bothering to try and shape traffic. They'd rather interfere with it.
Back in my ISP days we ran our entire operation (400 dial-in lines and about 60 WISP clients) off two un-bonded T-1s (they went to different POPs for redundancy). We couldn't afford to add more bandwidth at the edge, so I hacked together a traffic shaping setup using Linux. It prioritized ssh, telnet, TCP ACKs, icmp packets, and the VPNs of our business clients. VoIP wasn't a big concern in those days but had it been I would have prioritized it as well. When online gaming started becoming big we started giving that traffic priority over bulk transfers as well.
The bulk downloaders/p2p'ers didn't notice or complain. They still got the lions share of the bandwidth -- and are you really going to notice if your transfer gets 139KB/s instead of 140KB/s due to that ssh packet moving ahead of you in the queue? During peak hours my T-1s were running at 90-95% of capacity but my users were all still humming along quite nicely, none the wiser. There was more to this then just traffic shaping (we also had a pretty slick squid setup), but the point is we got along just fine with our limited resources.
If we could fucking do it, then sure as hell Comcast could. They have apparently decided that it's better to block/drop the traffic then shape it. If they had real competition they'd probably pay for this over the long run.
That's not quite true. My electric company won't cut off my service if I use more electric this month then I did at the same time last year.
Metered service could work in one of two ways. They provide you with X gigabytes of bandwidth and charge you an overage rate for each gigabyte over that (or cut you off for the rest of the month), or they just charge you X dollars per gigabyte and maybe a small monthly fee. That's how electric or gas works.
That said, I don't think metered service would play very well. What happens when someone gets a huge bill because of their PC being owned? It'd be a PR nightmare for them and their competitors would doubtless use it against them (our service is unlimited!). So they'd have little choice but to invest in their network.
I actually have some sympathy for them. But it only goes so far. They shouldn't have the right to sell something as "unlimited" when it's really not. Plain and simple.
That's an interesting take on it. And as far as I'm aware there is no DSL provider in the United States doing anything like this. It certainly seems to be the case in the wireless world. The carriers removing or blocking features that may compete with their own content offerings.
One wonders what the solution to this is. Prohibit someone from being in the content business AND the delivery business at the same time? They'd fight you tooth and nail on that -- and you'd have the "free market" types after you as well.
In any case I think they will shoot themselves in the foot in the long run. What happens when all P2P traffic is encrypted and looks like any other encrypted protocol (ssh, ssl, etc)? At that point you may be able to identify WHICH subscriber is using p2p (bittorrent stands out like a sore thumb for the sheer volume of connections it establishes) but how will you identify which individual packet is p2p and shape it? Or will they just start sending random RST packets to ALL your connections, including (as TFA suggests) Google?
If bandwidth IS the issue then in the long run they only have two options. Invest in some upgrades or stop selling "unlimited" service. Personally I'd take the best of both worlds. I'd offer a "premium" package aimed at p2p users (no monthly bandwidth limit and/or higher speeds) and use the money from that to expand my network.
I fail to see how they think these types of "traffic management" tools will work in the long run. It's only going to encourage the P2P users to adopt more protocol masking/encryption techniques to hide from these devices. And then what are you left with? Blocking encrypted traffic? Breaking the internet by refusing to route packets directly between end-users and only routing them to major sites?
In a fair world with a fair marketplace they'd have two options. They could choose either one and the market would decide which was best: 1) Stop selling unlimited service and switch to a metered model. 2) Upgrade their friggen network to support it.
-1, Troll? This should have been modded funny. Or ignored. Or overated if it bothers you that much. But troll? I hope you pay in meta-mod.....
I've always been able to get them to to knock Roadrunner back down to the promotional price ($29.95) every 12 months when it expires by quoting whatever DSL offer Verizon has at the current moment. I'd swear they have a database of who can and who can't get DSL though, because I've tried to bluff this a few times from friends houses and they've never been willing to give the same price.
That said, I fucking hate them. Despise them. Loathe them. They bought out all of the local cable co's around here over the years. Somehow basic cable went from $22.95 to $50/mo. I refuse to pay for it. Rabbit ears and coat hangers get me the network shows. The Daily Show and Colbert can be watched from their website. Any other cable shows (South Park and Mythbusters come to mind) are easily bittorrent'able.
There is no reason to give the cable co a dime of your money for anything beyond internet access. I don't miss it at all.
As with everything, it's dangerous to make black and white statements. If this person is telling the truth and if he winds up being stuck with the charge (not likely as your credit card company will side with you 99% of the time) then I would personally have no problems with him taking a five finger discount from Best Buy.
That's probably not the PC thing to suggest, but oh well.
I stopped at a local computer shop once upon a time to buy a network card. Got carried away, wound up buying a NIC, new video card, and a hard drive. Came to about $350. Paid with my credit card and left.
Few days later I notice a $350 credit on my card. I go back and look at the receipt and realize that the guy processed it as a CREDIT instead of a CHARGE. So I'm gonna do the right thing and tell him about it. Stop in his store a little while later:
Me: Hey, I was in here the other day. I think you messed up the charge for my credit card.
Him: I didn't OVERCHARGE you sir, and I'm getting sick of people nickel and diming me.
Me: Yeah, you didn't overcharge me, I was looking at this receipt and....
Him: Read the sign. NO REFUNDS, NO RETURNS
Me: Your right, what was I thinking?
Went in to do the right thing and got attitude for it. So fuck 'em. They never did catch it. They PAID ME $350 to take their stuff. For some reason they went out of business a few months later..... ;)
I have to say, and this will probably sound heartless, but there is zero chance of me doing that for my kids even if by some fluke I become a billionaire. I'm not even inclined to pay their expenses while they go to school, because it's been my experience that the kids going to college whose parents have paid for 100% of their expenses don't have a whole lot of respect for education or the process. I will pay for their tuition, books, etc during undergrad, but none of their other expenses and they are on their own for their graduate degrees should they decide to get them.
The fact of the matter is that the estate tax actually increases the establishment of an aristocracy. If it wasn't for the estate tax, fewer wealthy parents would set up trust funds for their wealth.
Well, the sad reality is that no matter what tax scheme you come up with, the rich will find ways around it. I was just saying that I find it funny to hear people bitch about it and call it the "death tax". During the original tax debates there was even an amendment introduced to provide an exemption for the first ONE HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS of an estate. This was voted down because the Republicans wouldn't settle for anything less then a complete elimination. Yeah, I feel real bad for people who stand to inherit estates that are valued high enough to be subject to the tax in the first place (generally over four million bucks). That tax burden must be crushing them.....
I'd have to disagree with you here. I've previously worked for an insurance agency. Not all companies are "complete and utter bastards" looking to deny claims. My personal experience is limited to a collision loss. Never had to fight them on that. None of the companies that my agency sold ever gave insureds a hard time with claims either. I even got to see a fire loss in my time in the business. The company wrote a $300,000 check on the spot like you or I would write a $20 check at the grocery store. The insured didn't have to do anything more then file her claim. I've also seen flood losses that were handled as quickly as, "Here's your check".
It would be more fair to some outfits are complete and utter bastards. All evidence I've seen suggests that GEICO (owned by Berkshire Hathaway, whose majority shareholder is Buffett) is one of these. Rate-jacked premiums after they buy because the company "missed" things on the quote, denied claims or non-existent claims service, fees for mid-term cancellation, etc, etc.
Yeah, they're not exactly a tobacco company, but they're not really far off in my mind. To me, the Coca-Cola corporation exemplifies everything that is bad about American culture - fantastic marketing, no nutritional value.They aren't even remotely close to a tobacco company. Come back to mind when we find scientific evidence that Coca-Cola has deliberately engineered their product to be addictive. I find soda disgusting and refuse to drink it, but many people enjoy it and I don't see a problem with that. Then again, I'm Libertarian-minded with these things and I don't even see a problem with people who enjoy tobacco as long as they are educated as to the risks of doing so.
Buffet is one of the better ones, by far. I admire much about him, but let's not quite give him sainthood yetEh, I didn't advocate sainthood. I just needed to throw out the name of a well known philanthropist and this being /. I couldn't very well use Bill Gates as my example of someone who isn't evil ;)
I'd bet a kidney that Colbert would beat Dubya on a teast covering basic knowledge of current events. Colbert a really sharp guy. Bush is not. So who is qualified?The whole thing about "qualifications" is just a smoke screen to scare people away from voting for candidates (republican, democrat or third-party) who aren't establishment and mainstream. What does "qualify" you for President? I'd make the argument anyone smart enough to listen to others for advice and surround themselves with intelligent people in the right positions (State, Treasury and Defense come to mind as the most important ones) is qualified to be President. Lincoln went from a seat in the House (where he made quite a few glaring mistakes in retrospect), to being a lawyer, to being President of the United States. Think that would happen in this day and age with the focus on "experience" and "qualifications"?
One thing I could respect about Clinton was that whatever you could say about him, good or bad, he wasn't born with silver spoon in hand... he wasn't no Senator's son, no, no...My problem with Bush lies less with the silver spoon and more with the way he does business. A better comparison would be that Clinton was smart enough to surround himself with the right people and wasn't afraid of listening to dissenting opinions in his administration. He even had a Republican has his Secretary of Defence. Contrast that to the insulated world of the Bush administration, the paranoid secrecy, people chosen more for loyalty and/or kickbacks then competence (your doing a heck of a job Brownie.....), etc, etc, etc. I miss Bill Clinton :(
I'm kinda with the parent on this one. I have zero respect for GWB but being rich and/or powerful does not automatically make one evil. Is Warren Buffett evil?
I'll grant you that GWB wouldn't have made it past college without his family connections. To me that's somewhat anti-American. Americans aren't supposed to condone or support the concept of a permanent nobility. We fought a revolution to free ourselves from it. That's one of the reasons why I'm always amused when people whine about the estate tax.
People like Paris Hilton are rightfully despised because they've never accomplished anything on their own and the only reason they are famous is because of their parents. I doubt I'll ever be rich but should I happen to make the right choices in life and wind up rich and/or powerful I won't be leaving millions of dollars to my kids. They should find success on their own.
Uhh, I worked at an ISP and I assure you that I had better things to do then start snooping into packets to steal website passwords.
nd of course if you're browsing over public wifi and you don't encrypt your passwords then you're just asking for it.Good point there.
I'm all about security and paranoia, but do you really think there is somebody sitting on a router or network between you and /. with nothing better to do then steal your /. pw?
Granted, I'll be using https the next time I get some spare cash to subscribe, now that I know it exists.... but not because I'm worried about somebody sniffing my pw.
Wow, them's fighting words ;)
Eh, to each their own I guess. I don't think the combination of storyline and score can be beaten though. That's just MHO.
I looked at GnuCash quite awhile ago and to be honest I wasn't very impressed with it. I should probably give it another look because that was quite some time ago and as you pointed out they've made a lot of improvements. Having a Windows version would be helpful too -- I could keep the data files on a drive that both Windows and Linux can see and not worry about which OS I'm using when I enter transactions.
I was also considering a product called Moneydance once upon a time. It's closed-source but it's written in Java and would also run in Windows and Linux. Other then games (and work), Quicken is really the only thing forcing me to retain Windows on my system.
I must have missed your sig before. That's awesome!
Yes, I was talking about the fingerprinting, fuck that, I would refuse at the airport, send me back to the UKIt's a bunch of bullshit. I've written my Federal legislators about this. It would absolutely 100% not be acceptable if they were demanding this of American citizens, so why the hell are we imposing it on non-citizens?
Eh, I can think of a few smaller ones that measure up in every arena save cost. But you won't get any argument from me on open-source generally being the better solution.
The one that comes to mind personally is a Personal Accounting Package. Both Money and Quicken have their drawbacks for me. If I had the source I could have them tweaked in short order. One of these days I'll either go through the hassle of converting my Quicken file to something else or just writing my own damn accounting suite.
So, what your saying is, you wanna play the Final Fantasy series on Wii?
Course, this post started out as me being a wise ass, but wouldn't that actually be kind of cool?
Well, upon re-reading your original post I'm somewhat confused. Have you always had these problems or did they start recently? If you always had them then the recall analogy with Ford is apt -- they should MAKE it work. But if it's something that you changed (Operating System upgrade or new hardware perhaps?) then I think my analogy holds true and they don't owe you anything.
If it is broken, what did I pay for?Might be a time to consider seeking a legal solution to the problem if the product never worked as advertised to begin with?
That would be AT&T, followed by Verizon.
Boycott themYou can boycott them at one level but you can't escape the fact that sooner or later your money (however indirectly) will end up in their hands. I ditched Verizon POTS service for Verizon Wireless and later ditched them for T-Mobile. Now my money is going to little pink instead of big red, right?
Of course T-Mobile has to purchase their connections to the PSTN from someone...... gee, I wonder who that is in New York State?
Granted, it's still somewhat effective, and I'm much happier for not giving them any money, but don't think that Verizon and AT&T don't have a death-grip on all of our collective balls, regardless of whether or not you do business with them directly.
I can't believe I used to defend these scumbags. Using the courts to kill competitive upstarts, hogging all of the wireless spectrum to prevent newcomers (did you know that in some markets AT&T owns 75% of the available Cellular and PCS bands?), removing the copper from your house to prevent you from switching to a CLEC, etc, etc, etc.
I know Communism has been tried before and doesn't work, but it's business practices like these that start to make me wonder if Karl Marx didn't have an idea or two......
Uhh, says who? Most of the stuff I've read about it has been merchants bitching that it gives too much power to consumers.
They make you jump through thousands of hoops and may cancel your credit cardI charged-back my last payment to Verizon Online for their DSL service, because they owed me $25 out of a final bill of $39 (they bill a month ahead) and refused to refund my money in a timely manner. The "thousands of hoops" I had to jump though was a phone call to my credit card company, a letter to put the dispute in writing and photocopies of the invoices from Verizon. It didn't even cost me a stamp to send that stuff in because they let me fax it to them. Two weeks later I got a letter saying they reversed the transaction.
Some car rental companies won't even accept a debit (vs. a credit) card because your bank (vs. CitiCorp or MBNA) *actually might* give you the chargeback powerThen don't fucking do business with Shitty or MBNA! Last time I checked they aren't the only outfits in the US licensed to issue credit cards. Get a credit card from a local bank, or (even better) a small local credit union and be done with it. They'll be ten times as responsive to your needs and you'll actually get something resembling customer service.
I conduct 85% of my banking business with a local credit union valued at less then $140 million. I've never had a customer service issue with them. Contrast that to my favorite credit card bank (Shitty) that I'm no longer doing business with. When a merchant degaussed my credit card, they wanted to charge me $15 for a new one. Yeah, you fuckers make money every single time I swipe this card, send me a new one for free or enjoy mailing me statements every month for a lousy $13.99 (autopay for TiVo bill) for the next two years until the card expires and I get a new one anyway.
And if you wait more than a few months your chances of accomplishing anything vanish or dwindle to nothingness.This part is true. I think you have 60 days from the date of the statement where the charge appeared. I waited until day 59 to dispute my Verizon charge because I was hoping they'd resolve it in-house.
Actually, I wouldn't be as phiospically opposed to EULAs if there was actually a fucking way to return the shit if you don't agree to the terms.
Cell phones ordered online all have shrink wrap contracts and nobody around here is complaining about those. Why? Because if you don't agree to the contract you can usually return the thing within X number of days for a refund. Which store allows you to return software that's been opened? None that I'm aware of...... so if you buy it, read the EULA and disagree with it, your basically SOL.
Uhh, do I have the right to demand that Ford come and install automatic wipers on my car for free because they weren't offered as an option when I bought it back in the day?
You can't really complain about them wanting you to upgrade to a new version just because of problems with the old one, unless the old one never worked as intended.
An interesting observation. I can't help but think of the classic "public enemy" criminals from the 20s and 30s that were actually respected by a large part of the public. Like Bonnie and Clyde because they robbed banks in a day when the perception was that banks were screwing the average person (by being overly eager to foreclose during the Great Depression).
Wonder if we'd see something similar if the botnet owners decided to stick it to a few of these outfits that are screwing over the consumer?