I have exactly the opposite experience. I use the fast forward, and I can hit the beginning of the show pretty darn accurately. With 30 second skip, I always had to ff or rew to get where I wanted to go. If I'm doing that, why bother with the skip?
Hey, like you said YMMV. Even my girlfriend has gotten good enough with the 30 second skip button that she can get close enough to the show that it only requires watching 5 seconds of commericals or using the instant replay button once. Now if only she'd use her powers for good (history channel, west wing, etc) instead of evil (Young and the Restless);)
A religous organization that had the ear of George Bush walked into Carl Rove's office. They had a shopping list of three things, 1) stem cell research, 2) same-sex marriages 3).XXX
Oh, give me a damn break! With all the issues that are important to that group of zealots do you really think that.xxx is one of them? It's kind of ironic that you didn't put "abortion" on your list but included.xxx. I doubt most of your religious whack-jobs know enough about the internet to know that.xxx is even being considered.
You still haven't answered my question about why exactly we would need.xxx. I'm not opposed to it's deployment on moral grounds -- I just question what purpose it would serve. The ease of filtering argument is moot unless you suggest forcing every porn site to use it -- see my previous comments about why that would be a bad idea.
Does.xxx serve any purpose other then taking money out of the hands of the adult industry and putting it into the hands of Dotster/Verislime/GoDaddy/ICANN?
If they stopped the ability to fast forward they would have a riot on their hands and would lose a lot of customers. I highly doubt they would slay that goose laying the golden egg.
I find the 30 second skip invaluable. With five or six presses I can jump past the commercials -- it takes about two seconds to completely bypass them. If I try to fast forward it then not only will it take more time, but TiVo has that really annoying feature where it backtracks a few seconds after you come out of fast forwarding/rewinding. I've never quite got the hang of the timing on that and if I try to use FF or RW I usually wind up watching the last 10 seconds of a commercial.
It's been my experience that most commercial breaks mesh very well with the 30 second skip button. You get a feel for the channel and show you are watching and can usually predict how many 30 second skips you'll need. The few times that you go past your show you can get back to it with the 8 second replay feature.
3) TiVo built the entire model of PVR around the ability to skip ads and record shows more simply than on a VCR. They could do serious damage to their brand image if they embrace advertising after professing to help people avoid it.
They could even more serious damage if they incurred the anger of *AAs by openly attacking the ad based model of TV as you are doing now. I don't think they built the PVR around the ability to skip ads. It was built around the ability to time shift and learn your preferences and automatically record them. Hell, TiVo's big patent (as I understand it) is on the whole thumbs up/down thing. The skipping ads part is a wink and a nudge rather then an advertised ability though. Especially the 30 second skip easter egg.
Mind you, I'm not saying that I didn't buy a TiVo to skip ads. Just that I can appreciate the tight rope they have to walk. If an opt-in service can make them more money AND give the *AAs the impression that they aren't anti-advertisement, then what's the problem?
I had/have no problem with Roadrunners policies. I did get a bit annoyed that they kept scanning me on various ports looking for running services and/or open proxies -- but a few iptables rules took care of that.
I used Roadrunner for over two years with no problems or gripes. Then it stopped working reliably. There was some sort of random interference in my neighborhood (bad enough that it shows as lines through channels two and three on regular cable) that was killing my upstream channel.
Time Warner couldn't (or wouldn't) get somebody out to my location in time to track this problem down. It was always gone by the time they made it out there. Often times it would start back up ten minutes after they left (want to talk about frustrating!) We tried _everything_ -- new drop from the street, signal lowering devices on the line, new modems, etc, etc, etc. It was never solved. At one point they tried to blame my TiVo and suggested that I get a Time Warner DVR! (Just for kicks I did disconnect my TiVo, VCR and TV to see if they were the source of the interference -- they weren't)
To add insult to injury this was in the middle of being unemployed. You try finding a job in the IT field without access to the internet -- thank god for dialup and public libraries. To add further salt to the wound they deleted all of my sub e-mail accounts in the process of switching the modem on my account. Care to guess how much more it would have sucked if I had their digital phone product?
So, no, I don't have any gripes about Roadrunner's policies towards internet access. It's nice to just have a raw internet connection. But I'll maintain that cable last mile technology is inherently more vulnerable to this kind of nonsense then DSL is. I'll take a dedicated pair of copper over a shared RF medium any day of the week. My DSL is slower (3.0/768 vs 5.0/384) but it is bulletproof compared to Roadrunner. It even survives power outages (modem is on a UPS) -- Roadrunner never did -- presumably because the RF amplifiers on the line require power?
Even if the US were to attempt to limit the distribution of such material, there would be many in foreign countries who would help fill the void.
Who said the US was attempting to do any such thing? Because the US Commence Department asked for more time to hear objections? I'm not a prude but I'm still not entirely sure what the whole point of this TLD is supposed to be. The ease of filtering is a BS argument unless porn sites are forced into the domain -- which I would not want to see happen just because that would imply putting a Governmental or regulatory agency in charge of what's considered "porn". So what exactly is the whole point except to generate fees for ICANN and the registers as everybody rushes to buy domain names?
It's also kind of funny that everybody always mentions the US when it comes to censorship about pornography. I could think of at least one other nanny state that completely puts to shame anything the United States has ever done
Give them time. I know that sucks if you are suck with only one choice but they can't roll out DSL or FioS to the entire country at the same time. I'd be saying the same thing if you were stuck with Verizon as the only choice and were waiting for Comcast to roll out service.
are comcast or 28.8Kb dial-up because the copper is that crappy
Actually, as much as everybody around here would knock on it, I seriously considered dialup as a connectivity option when I canceled Roadrunner (due to the aforementioned problems). Given the fact that most people have access to broadband at work and could (in theory -- YMMV if your boss is a dick) download huge files (Slackware/Fedora) at work, dialup would still be decent enough for most people. The only thing that stopped me from going down the dialup route instead of DSL was the fact that I don't have a cell phone -- so I'd need to get another phone line to use dialup (or forget about people calling me) -- and by the time you pay for that second line + the dialup account you are paying more then DSL costs -- for worse service.
Still, dialup has a place and if my choice was between dialup service and shitty cable service (YMMV -- Roadrunner worked great for me for 2 years and then hit the shitter) I would probably go with dialup. Fortunately for me I have DSL as an option.
The person who owns the lines can't sell directly to the consumer, however anyone else can act as an intermediary.
That's a good theory on paper -- but they tried something similar with utilities and it has been a miserable failure in my humble opinion.
In NYS when they deregulated the electric industry they forced all of the utilities to sell off their generators and to become "distributors" of electricity. The net result you ask? All of the power plants were bought up by out of state interests and now they have the public and the distribution utilities by the balls.
In a telecommunications scenario I fail to see how having a single monopoly that owns the fiber/copper but doesn't deal directly with consumers would be any better then having a regulated utility that owns the fiber and deals with the consumer. I know a lot of people don't like regulation because it doesn't mesh with their idea of the "free market" but I don't see any other choice for a life essential service -- unless new technology charges the paradigm.
They never showed up to my condo and the never fixed the cabling in there. There were NO PHONE LINEs in the condo. (They were all ripped out.) They just threw a switch somewhere and figured that if they never got a call to complain, they were okay.
With all due respect, how the hell is the inside wiring their problem? Virtually every phone company and CLEC in the world tells you that their responsibility ends at the D-MARK/Network Interface Device. You should have gone after your landlord for the problems with the inside wiring or paid Verizon to fix it for you.
Don't blame them just because you couldn't be bothered to read your bill, page 2 of the phone or your state regulations.
DSL and Cable internet are both broadband. What that means is, the bandwith is shared by all customers connected to that area router using that particular service at that point in time. So if you were to pop on with no one else on that edge(area) router, you would get the best speed possible. But of course, the amount of neighbors on at a time shouldn't bring your net to a screeching halt or anything.
It isn't about speed. It's about the fact that the last mile in cable is inherently more vulnerable to problems then DSL is. The last mile in cable consists of a shared RF network. In theory I can bring down my entire neighborhood merely by hooking up an RF jammer to my cable line. That won't work on DSL or POTS -- each house has it's own pair of wires going to the central office.
Of course I'm not worried about some asshole with a jammer. But read about the problems I was having and tell me that it wasn't caused by some buggy TV or VCR leaking RF onto the lines. With all the nonsense that I went through with Time Warner we ruled every other possibility out.
Sure they would. Just not on a female mother of five. If she were a male, they definitely would screw him over.
<cynic mode>You mean a white female, mother of five.</cynic mode>
Actually, the corruption of the justice system has more to do with money then race. But even given that disadvantage I have a hard time buying that a jury would stick it to an individual who downloaded/shared a few songs. And isn't the burden of proof on RIAA to prove that it was actually her that did it? How the hell are they going to do that based on an IP address?
Kudos to her for fighting them. It's easy for us/.'ers to say that we would do the same -- think of the money she is spending and the nonsense she is going through.
As a BellSouth "customer", Saying that BellSouth has the best customer service of the Baby Bells isn't much of a complement. Thank god for cable internet, or we would still be waiting for DSL.
*Shrug* YMMV. Personally, I've never had a problem with Verizon or any of it's predecessors. The biggest problem with the telco customer service department is that the CSRs don't usually know what the repair people are doing.
With Time Warner I had an interference problem that was killing Roadrunner. The interference would come and go -- bad enough that channels 2 and 3 showed it -- and they could never bother to dispatch anybody when it was actually ongoing. They tried any number of things to fix my line -- ran a new drop off the street -- temporally removed the traps on my line (then forgot to reconnect them -- I have 80 channels and pay for 6 -- suckers), put signal suppressors on my cable modem, etc, etc. They could never nail down the problem. At one point they tried to blame it on my TiVo and suggested I get their DVR product instead!
To this day I think the problem was probably something as simple and mundane as a bad TV or VCR in a neighbors house that was leaking RF onto the cable lines. Perhaps if they bothered to dispatch somebody with haste they could track this down. In any case I'm not very fond of a technology that can neutralized by "interference" that can't be tracked down. At least with POTS and DSL I have my own dedicated pair of wires and don't need to worry about what's going on in my neighbors house.
I worked at a telco as well, and left on good terms. Indeed, my post was simply an observation on the state of telcos (and what inspires things like this PHBs ridiculous suggestion) - I'm not rooting for anything (apart from good competition).
No, you didn't seem to be:) That was just a statement meant for general consumption.
I want to see good and fair competition. I've heard of various townships and cities blocking Verizon from moving forward with FiOS TV service because they want to force them to get a franchise agreement like the cable companies have.
That's all well and good until you realize that the cable companies didn't need to get franchise agreements before they started pushing voice down their pipe and selling their VoIP product as a "replacement" for the "hassles" of POTS service.
So how about a level playing field? I would purpose one citywide franchising agreement for all providers of telecommunications and entertainment services. I wouldn't want to see the franchise agreements disposed of entirely (they do give the people -- through their elected officials -- a last resort if they are being screwed by a monopoly) but they should be applied fairly.
I'm not blaming an industry, but it is invariably an industry that is subsidized by voice subscribers. A few of the Bells have credibly supplanted that with a good wireless cash flow, but for most there are some scary times ahead (as most have shown a tremendous inability to operate in any other market successfully).
Well any business that is branching off into new endeavors is going to be subsidized by existing customers. I can't speak for Bell South (although, historically, they were considered to have the best customer service of the Baby Bells -- WTF happened???) but in my area Verizon seems to be doing very well at branching off into non-voice endeavors. It's more impressive in my area where they barely advertise their DSL product (other then fliers with your bill) -- Roadrunner has a friggen commercial in every single commercial break.
I have a telco background so I'm understandably biased when it comes to defending them -- but no matter how much people hate the phone company I wish they would stop rooting for it's downfall. Do you really think it would be any better to have the cable company completely control your internet/voice/TV? Voice I suppose you could replace with a cell phone and TV with a dish (sucks for local channels though) -- but you'd be hosed on the internet.
I can't wait for FIOS to come to my town. It will be very interesting to see how the cable company holds up when the telcos have the ability to go after the people subsidizing their internet and voice ventures (the TV viewers).
so this is just another desperate attempt at doing something before that money trough is removed (it's rapidly disappearing)
Hey, don't blame the whole industry for the actions of one dumbass PHB. I happen to have a lot of friends working for various telcos that are doubtless rolling their eyes at this bullshit.
Maybe WiMax will change the landscape a bit.
That's a nice thought -- but I'm afraid that at one point your WiMax is going to need an uplink to the internet:(
Of all the low-down dirty extortionist ideas ever hatched.
I bet he'd stop thinking it was such a great idea the minute he realizes that it would also allow Verizon/Quest/other LECs to "prioritize" his marketing calls to Google and Yahoo into oblivion. Hey, it's not their fault that BellSouth didn't ante up for the "prioritized" voice package.
Hell, I'm the biggest defender of the traditional POTS/Baby Bells companies around these parts -- and I think this is complete bullshit!
Assuming it is as usable (for users and administrators) as the current MS Outlook system is.
I was with you until you said "and administrators". I have more Exchange administration nightmare stories then I can count. Granted, most of those relate to migration/upgrade scenarios and not day to day management, but I don't see why Microsoft should get a free pass just for that.
I can't think of any piece of software under Unix that has the room for headache in the process of a version upgrade as Exchange does. It either goes very smoothly or very, very badly.
How is not enough life insurance NOT a controllable factor?
The last time I checked life insurance costs money. All it takes is a little bit of family medical history (hardly something you can control) to inflate the premiums to the point that they aren't affordable.
You wind up with less coverage then you need or no coverage at all. I'll grant you this is one factor that you'd have some amount of control over -- but don't pretend that you can completely control it.
I guess you've never been screwed over by someone not paying back money you loaned them.
Actually, yes I have. Who hasn't been? But I still don't think it would be fair of me to seize an asset they have and then sell it for less then it's worth. If I loan you $500 to buy a $5,000 PC and you default, then I should have the right to take that PC and sell it for $500? Of course in the ideal world you would sell that PC yourself and pay me back -- but it still doesn't give me the right to steal your equity in a possession.
Even if you file bankruptcy the Trustee has to make every effort to sell your property at market value. If the bankruptcy estate has any cash left over by the time that all the creditors are paid (I'm sure this is very rare) then it gets returned to you.
You can't carry your end of the deal, too bad for you.
I hope you never fall on hard times. It would be quite an awaking for you. For every asshole out there screwing people on purpose I could name two people that fell on hard times through no fault of their own.
France is big on nuclear (although Finland is building more nuclear power as well). Norway is big on hydroelectric. Danes are ramping up their wind-generators. USA seems to generate their energy with mostly coal, and that's just about the worst possible way of generating energy.
The United States isn't blessed with the hydro resources of Norway. The state that I live in (New York) is has a lot of hydro resources -- but they are all maxed out (unless you purpose shutting off Niagara Falls to generate power). In our case we also have to share about 50% of those resources with our friends in Ontario because most of them are international water ways.
Nuclear power (which I personally would love to see replace coal and gas) runs into the NIMBY problem. Unless you purpose trashing the concept of democracy and forcing it on people then I don't see how you solve that problem in the short term. In the long term it should solve itself because we will eventually hit peak oil and gas -- and I don't see any renewable that will be nearly as cost effective as nuclear. People will get over their fears about nuclear power when they face the threat of paying $0.40/kWh for power.
So what? Does your observations somehow dispute what I said? While there are some SUV's in Europe, they are nowhere near as popular as they are in USA. And if you have been in Europe, you have propably seen those subcompacts (Smart, Peugeot C1, C2, C3, VW Polo, Renault Clio etc.) which are practically unheard of in USA. And then we have the question of engines. While Europeans seems to do just fine with around 2-liter engines or even smaller, Americans seems to absolutely need some 3-liter V6 even in regular family-cars. And those large engines consume more fuel and pollute more. And then we have the ultra-efficient diesel-cars in Europe, which are very rare in USA.
So Americans should have to accept smaller cars, because, why exactly? We don't have the European knack for legislating what people can do. If you'd read my comments in the past you've probably heard me lamenting the fact that nobody will build the type of car I want -- a small compact 100% electric vehicle. But nowhere in those comments will you see me suggesting that the government should step in and prohibit people from buying SUVs.
And your ideas about American "family-cars" seems to be a bit of a stereotype. Most of the people I know that have families drive minivans with 2-liter I4 engines.
Are you saying that there are no cities in USA? Why is it that everyone living in LA insist on driving to the city, instead of taking the bus?
Why is it that everyone living in Europe insists on telling Americans how to live? And if you going to point out an American city, then why not New York? All of the friends I know in NYC don't even own cars.
77% of Americans live in cities. That percentage is higher than in France (76%), Norway (75%), Switzerland (67%) and Italy (67%). With 77% of people living in urban areas, you seriously claim that mass-transit would not work in USA? It works wonderfully well in Finland, and only 59%& of Finns live in cities. Of course you can't have mass-transit system in every small village, but it would work just fine in cities.
You don't seem to grasp the distances involved and the (lack of) population density in the rural areas of the United States. I grew up a rather small town in upstate New York. If you needed anything besides food it meant a 30 mile trip to the nearest moderately sized city (Binghamton). The town that I grew up in had a population of less then 800.
Why don't you explain to me exactly what kind of mass transportion system would be economically feasible in such an environment? And that example is nothing compared to the low population and distances in the American west.
Why is it that everybody gets all offended when they perceive the United States to be forcing our way of life on other cultures but they turn around and try to do the same thing to us?
*Shrug* I was being blackmailed illegally. If I had another key for my vehicle (this was a car I just purchased) I would have just driven it off his lot after business hours.
Alright. Now he can report you for writing bad checks
How? Chexsystems only takes reports from banks and credit unions. And even if they took consumer reports directly, they focus on NSFs (bounced checks) -- not stop payment orders. Knowingly writing a check that you don't have the funds to pay is a crime in most states -- putting a stop payment order on a check because you are in the middle of a dispute with a vendor is not a crime. Show me a section of the Fair Credit Reporting Act that would allow you to report somebody for a stop payment order.
I'd have to question (as a seller) doing business with you if I heard this story.
Then you could either lose my business or hear my side of the story. Unless you plan on breaking my property and then extorting me to pay for it to be fixed at the threat of illegally selling it then I don't think you have much to worry about doing business with me.
As far as the checks vs. debit card thing -- I try to make a point to pay local vendors/small businesses in cash if possible. If not then I'd rather write them a check (usually free for them or a small deposit fee -- $0.10) then have them eat 0.5% - 2.0% merchant fees on the transaction just so I can use my debit card.
Of course if I'm at Target, or K-Mart then not only do I use my debit card but I make them run it as credit. Then my credit union gets most of that fee (Visa get's the rest). I suppose it's all in how much you like the vendor;)
And people say the US medical system is better than the NHS !
Despite my experience I would still argue that it is. It's probably not as user friendly -- but the US has the best medical schools and hospitals for a reason.
If you know how the system works then in the United States you will not be turned away because of an inability to pay. I didn't have any way to pay them and I still got everything I needed. It was only because of my good nature that I decided to stick the debt to Capital One rather then the hospital. Had I left owing the hospital ~$25k and filed bankruptcy I'd be no better or worse off then I am right now. It's not like they can repossess surgery if you don't pay;)
I've heard that NHS has problems of it's own. Wait times are one of the oft mentioned ones. I guess if it works for the UK then it works for the UK -- I don't think it would work over here though.
Who cares about the loan provider as long as they offer good service and give the best rate
Somebody who cares about doing business locally? Would you rather see your interest go to your neighbors (via the credit union that you all own) or to some rich shareholders that you've never met?
I'll grant you that if I was buying a new car that I wouldn't completely rule out dealing with their finance people. Especially when they offer stuff like 0% APR loans -- you'd be an idiot to turn that down. But if comes down to a matter of them being 0.5% lower then my credit union then my credit union is going to get the business.
Of course I've already established that I won't buy a new car so this is all a moot point for me:)
I drove a cheap car for a long time. It was an 89 Civic that I bought in '96 for $2000. In 2002 (six years and 130,000 miles after I bought it -a total of 250,000 miles on the car) it broke down on me. It was a relatively easy repair which would have cost me $150 in parts, but prior to that incident there were several little things breaking on the car as well as other major components that needed to be replaced soon so I ended up selling it.
Yeah, I'm almost to that point with my '91 right now. Lots of little things that add up. Though I think I'll get another year out of it. I never said that everybody had to drive a ghetto car. Just that it makes financial sense in a lot of scenarios (I would argue in most scenarios). I would rather have money in my savings account/investments then a flashy car sitting in my driveway.
I have never, *ever* gotten a title from the DMV after buying a car via financing (before it's paid off, I mean). Until the loan is paid in full, the lending bank holds the title. The day I drop the final payment in their hands, they send in a title transfer request to the DMV. All I've got is a "pink slip" that merely authorizes me to register and insure the car under my own name for purposes of use as personal transportation.
Well then your state is different then mine. In my state you a get a title that lists one or more lienholders. When you pay them off you don't even get a new title -- in theory you get a letter from the bank saying that you paid off your obligation. When you eventually sell that car you give the title and that letter to the buyer who uses it to get a clean title from DMV.
There is nothing to stop me from selling you my car that I still owe money on. Of course the lienholder still has the right to repossess the car -- and if you buy then you are a moron -- but it is and always has been my property.
Hmm, and he didn't get suspicious at your "split" payment? Especially since the cash portion just happened to match the price of the part?
Actually the cash portion matched the amount of the bill not including anything for the part he broke. I told I'd run out of money and asked if I could write a check for the rest. This is actually standard MO for me -- I make a point of paying small town shops in cash. They usually appreciate that (no CC fees and they have the option of "losing" some when it comes tax time) and sometimes I'll even get a small discount out of it.
If he had declined then I would have just written him a check for the whole amount and stopped that check. When he threatened to sue me I would have sent him a check for the amount not in dispute.
But come to think of it, maybe a similar tactic could work on those stores that force you to buy windows with your PC: pay cash for the PC, write a check for the windows part, then cancel check.
Hmm, you'd probably lose that one though I'm afraid:( That would be considered fraud probably. What I did was well within my rights under the laws of this state. He has no right to demand payment to fix something that he broke due his own negligence. I could have had my car towed, fixed somewhere else and sued him for the damage -- and I would have won. I just figured my solution was either then dealing with all that hassle;)
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I have exactly the opposite experience. I use the fast forward, and I can hit the beginning of the show pretty darn accurately. With 30 second skip, I always had to ff or rew to get where I wanted to go. If I'm doing that, why bother with the skip?
Hey, like you said YMMV. Even my girlfriend has gotten good enough with the 30 second skip button that she can get close enough to the show that it only requires watching 5 seconds of commericals or using the instant replay button once. Now if only she'd use her powers for good (history channel, west wing, etc) instead of evil (Young and the Restless) ;)
A religous organization that had the ear of George Bush walked into Carl Rove's office. They had a shopping list of three things, 1) stem cell research, 2) same-sex marriages 3) .XXX
Oh, give me a damn break! With all the issues that are important to that group of zealots do you really think that .xxx is one of them? It's kind of ironic that you didn't put "abortion" on your list but included .xxx. I doubt most of your religious whack-jobs know enough about the internet to know that .xxx is even being considered.
You still haven't answered my question about why exactly we would need .xxx. I'm not opposed to it's deployment on moral grounds -- I just question what purpose it would serve. The ease of filtering argument is moot unless you suggest forcing every porn site to use it -- see my previous comments about why that would be a bad idea.
Does .xxx serve any purpose other then taking money out of the hands of the adult industry and putting it into the hands of Dotster/Verislime/GoDaddy/ICANN?
If they stopped the ability to fast forward they would have a riot on their hands and would lose a lot of customers. I highly doubt they would slay that goose laying the golden egg.
I find the 30 second skip invaluable. With five or six presses I can jump past the commercials -- it takes about two seconds to completely bypass them. If I try to fast forward it then not only will it take more time, but TiVo has that really annoying feature where it backtracks a few seconds after you come out of fast forwarding/rewinding. I've never quite got the hang of the timing on that and if I try to use FF or RW I usually wind up watching the last 10 seconds of a commercial.
It's been my experience that most commercial breaks mesh very well with the 30 second skip button. You get a feel for the channel and show you are watching and can usually predict how many 30 second skips you'll need. The few times that you go past your show you can get back to it with the 8 second replay feature.
3) TiVo built the entire model of PVR around the ability to skip ads and record shows more simply than on a VCR. They could do serious damage to their brand image if they embrace advertising after professing to help people avoid it.
They could even more serious damage if they incurred the anger of *AAs by openly attacking the ad based model of TV as you are doing now. I don't think they built the PVR around the ability to skip ads. It was built around the ability to time shift and learn your preferences and automatically record them. Hell, TiVo's big patent (as I understand it) is on the whole thumbs up/down thing. The skipping ads part is a wink and a nudge rather then an advertised ability though. Especially the 30 second skip easter egg.
Mind you, I'm not saying that I didn't buy a TiVo to skip ads. Just that I can appreciate the tight rope they have to walk. If an opt-in service can make them more money AND give the *AAs the impression that they aren't anti-advertisement, then what's the problem?
I had/have no problem with Roadrunners policies. I did get a bit annoyed that they kept scanning me on various ports looking for running services and/or open proxies -- but a few iptables rules took care of that.
I used Roadrunner for over two years with no problems or gripes. Then it stopped working reliably. There was some sort of random interference in my neighborhood (bad enough that it shows as lines through channels two and three on regular cable) that was killing my upstream channel.
Time Warner couldn't (or wouldn't) get somebody out to my location in time to track this problem down. It was always gone by the time they made it out there. Often times it would start back up ten minutes after they left (want to talk about frustrating!) We tried _everything_ -- new drop from the street, signal lowering devices on the line, new modems, etc, etc, etc. It was never solved. At one point they tried to blame my TiVo and suggested that I get a Time Warner DVR! (Just for kicks I did disconnect my TiVo, VCR and TV to see if they were the source of the interference -- they weren't)
To add insult to injury this was in the middle of being unemployed. You try finding a job in the IT field without access to the internet -- thank god for dialup and public libraries. To add further salt to the wound they deleted all of my sub e-mail accounts in the process of switching the modem on my account. Care to guess how much more it would have sucked if I had their digital phone product?
So, no, I don't have any gripes about Roadrunner's policies towards internet access. It's nice to just have a raw internet connection. But I'll maintain that cable last mile technology is inherently more vulnerable to this kind of nonsense then DSL is. I'll take a dedicated pair of copper over a shared RF medium any day of the week. My DSL is slower (3.0/768 vs 5.0/384) but it is bulletproof compared to Roadrunner. It even survives power outages (modem is on a UPS) -- Roadrunner never did -- presumably because the RF amplifiers on the line require power?
Even if the US were to attempt to limit the distribution of such material, there would be many in foreign countries who would help fill the void.
Who said the US was attempting to do any such thing? Because the US Commence Department asked for more time to hear objections? I'm not a prude but I'm still not entirely sure what the whole point of this TLD is supposed to be. The ease of filtering is a BS argument unless porn sites are forced into the domain -- which I would not want to see happen just because that would imply putting a Governmental or regulatory agency in charge of what's considered "porn". So what exactly is the whole point except to generate fees for ICANN and the registers as everybody rushes to buy domain names?
It's also kind of funny that everybody always mentions the US when it comes to censorship about pornography. I could think of at least one other nanny state that completely puts to shame anything the United States has ever done
Verizon doesn't seem interest in my area
Give them time. I know that sucks if you are suck with only one choice but they can't roll out DSL or FioS to the entire country at the same time. I'd be saying the same thing if you were stuck with Verizon as the only choice and were waiting for Comcast to roll out service.
are comcast or 28.8Kb dial-up because the copper is that crappy
Actually, as much as everybody around here would knock on it, I seriously considered dialup as a connectivity option when I canceled Roadrunner (due to the aforementioned problems). Given the fact that most people have access to broadband at work and could (in theory -- YMMV if your boss is a dick) download huge files (Slackware/Fedora) at work, dialup would still be decent enough for most people. The only thing that stopped me from going down the dialup route instead of DSL was the fact that I don't have a cell phone -- so I'd need to get another phone line to use dialup (or forget about people calling me) -- and by the time you pay for that second line + the dialup account you are paying more then DSL costs -- for worse service.
Still, dialup has a place and if my choice was between dialup service and shitty cable service (YMMV -- Roadrunner worked great for me for 2 years and then hit the shitter) I would probably go with dialup. Fortunately for me I have DSL as an option.
The person who owns the lines can't sell directly to the consumer, however anyone else can act as an intermediary.
That's a good theory on paper -- but they tried something similar with utilities and it has been a miserable failure in my humble opinion.
In NYS when they deregulated the electric industry they forced all of the utilities to sell off their generators and to become "distributors" of electricity. The net result you ask? All of the power plants were bought up by out of state interests and now they have the public and the distribution utilities by the balls.
In a telecommunications scenario I fail to see how having a single monopoly that owns the fiber/copper but doesn't deal directly with consumers would be any better then having a regulated utility that owns the fiber and deals with the consumer. I know a lot of people don't like regulation because it doesn't mesh with their idea of the "free market" but I don't see any other choice for a life essential service -- unless new technology charges the paradigm.
They never showed up to my condo and the never fixed the cabling in there. There were NO PHONE LINEs in the condo. (They were all ripped out.) They just threw a switch somewhere and figured that if they never got a call to complain, they were okay.
With all due respect, how the hell is the inside wiring their problem? Virtually every phone company and CLEC in the world tells you that their responsibility ends at the D-MARK/Network Interface Device. You should have gone after your landlord for the problems with the inside wiring or paid Verizon to fix it for you.
Don't blame them just because you couldn't be bothered to read your bill, page 2 of the phone or your state regulations.
DSL and Cable internet are both broadband. What that means is, the bandwith is shared by all customers connected to that area router using that particular service at that point in time. So if you were to pop on with no one else on that edge(area) router, you would get the best speed possible. But of course, the amount of neighbors on at a time shouldn't bring your net to a screeching halt or anything.
It isn't about speed. It's about the fact that the last mile in cable is inherently more vulnerable to problems then DSL is. The last mile in cable consists of a shared RF network. In theory I can bring down my entire neighborhood merely by hooking up an RF jammer to my cable line. That won't work on DSL or POTS -- each house has it's own pair of wires going to the central office.
Of course I'm not worried about some asshole with a jammer. But read about the problems I was having and tell me that it wasn't caused by some buggy TV or VCR leaking RF onto the lines. With all the nonsense that I went through with Time Warner we ruled every other possibility out.
Sure they would. Just not on a female mother of five. If she were a male, they definitely would screw him over.
<cynic mode>You mean a white female, mother of five.</cynic mode>
Actually, the corruption of the justice system has more to do with money then race. But even given that disadvantage I have a hard time buying that a jury would stick it to an individual who downloaded/shared a few songs. And isn't the burden of proof on RIAA to prove that it was actually her that did it? How the hell are they going to do that based on an IP address?
Kudos to her for fighting them. It's easy for us /.'ers to say that we would do the same -- think of the money she is spending and the nonsense she is going through.
As a BellSouth "customer", Saying that BellSouth has the best customer service of the Baby Bells isn't much of a complement. Thank god for cable internet, or we would still be waiting for DSL.
*Shrug* YMMV. Personally, I've never had a problem with Verizon or any of it's predecessors. The biggest problem with the telco customer service department is that the CSRs don't usually know what the repair people are doing.
With Time Warner I had an interference problem that was killing Roadrunner. The interference would come and go -- bad enough that channels 2 and 3 showed it -- and they could never bother to dispatch anybody when it was actually ongoing. They tried any number of things to fix my line -- ran a new drop off the street -- temporally removed the traps on my line (then forgot to reconnect them -- I have 80 channels and pay for 6 -- suckers), put signal suppressors on my cable modem, etc, etc. They could never nail down the problem. At one point they tried to blame it on my TiVo and suggested I get their DVR product instead!
To this day I think the problem was probably something as simple and mundane as a bad TV or VCR in a neighbors house that was leaking RF onto the cable lines. Perhaps if they bothered to dispatch somebody with haste they could track this down. In any case I'm not very fond of a technology that can neutralized by "interference" that can't be tracked down. At least with POTS and DSL I have my own dedicated pair of wires and don't need to worry about what's going on in my neighbors house.
I worked at a telco as well, and left on good terms. Indeed, my post was simply an observation on the state of telcos (and what inspires things like this PHBs ridiculous suggestion) - I'm not rooting for anything (apart from good competition).
No, you didn't seem to be :) That was just a statement meant for general consumption.
I want to see good and fair competition. I've heard of various townships and cities blocking Verizon from moving forward with FiOS TV service because they want to force them to get a franchise agreement like the cable companies have.
That's all well and good until you realize that the cable companies didn't need to get franchise agreements before they started pushing voice down their pipe and selling their VoIP product as a "replacement" for the "hassles" of POTS service.
So how about a level playing field? I would purpose one citywide franchising agreement for all providers of telecommunications and entertainment services. I wouldn't want to see the franchise agreements disposed of entirely (they do give the people -- through their elected officials -- a last resort if they are being screwed by a monopoly) but they should be applied fairly.
I'm not blaming an industry, but it is invariably an industry that is subsidized by voice subscribers. A few of the Bells have credibly supplanted that with a good wireless cash flow, but for most there are some scary times ahead (as most have shown a tremendous inability to operate in any other market successfully).
Well any business that is branching off into new endeavors is going to be subsidized by existing customers. I can't speak for Bell South (although, historically, they were considered to have the best customer service of the Baby Bells -- WTF happened???) but in my area Verizon seems to be doing very well at branching off into non-voice endeavors. It's more impressive in my area where they barely advertise their DSL product (other then fliers with your bill) -- Roadrunner has a friggen commercial in every single commercial break.
I have a telco background so I'm understandably biased when it comes to defending them -- but no matter how much people hate the phone company I wish they would stop rooting for it's downfall. Do you really think it would be any better to have the cable company completely control your internet/voice/TV? Voice I suppose you could replace with a cell phone and TV with a dish (sucks for local channels though) -- but you'd be hosed on the internet.
I can't wait for FIOS to come to my town. It will be very interesting to see how the cable company holds up when the telcos have the ability to go after the people subsidizing their internet and voice ventures (the TV viewers).
Hopefully the consumer will win.
so this is just another desperate attempt at doing something before that money trough is removed (it's rapidly disappearing)
Hey, don't blame the whole industry for the actions of one dumbass PHB. I happen to have a lot of friends working for various telcos that are doubtless rolling their eyes at this bullshit.
Maybe WiMax will change the landscape a bit.
That's a nice thought -- but I'm afraid that at one point your WiMax is going to need an uplink to the internet :(
Of all the low-down dirty extortionist ideas ever hatched.
I bet he'd stop thinking it was such a great idea the minute he realizes that it would also allow Verizon/Quest/other LECs to "prioritize" his marketing calls to Google and Yahoo into oblivion. Hey, it's not their fault that BellSouth didn't ante up for the "prioritized" voice package.
Hell, I'm the biggest defender of the traditional POTS/Baby Bells companies around these parts -- and I think this is complete bullshit!
Assuming it is as usable (for users and administrators) as the current MS Outlook system is.
I was with you until you said "and administrators". I have more Exchange administration nightmare stories then I can count. Granted, most of those relate to migration/upgrade scenarios and not day to day management, but I don't see why Microsoft should get a free pass just for that.
I can't think of any piece of software under Unix that has the room for headache in the process of a version upgrade as Exchange does. It either goes very smoothly or very, very badly.
How is not enough life insurance NOT a controllable factor?
The last time I checked life insurance costs money. All it takes is a little bit of family medical history (hardly something you can control) to inflate the premiums to the point that they aren't affordable.
You wind up with less coverage then you need or no coverage at all. I'll grant you this is one factor that you'd have some amount of control over -- but don't pretend that you can completely control it.
I guess you've never been screwed over by someone not paying back money you loaned them.
Actually, yes I have. Who hasn't been? But I still don't think it would be fair of me to seize an asset they have and then sell it for less then it's worth. If I loan you $500 to buy a $5,000 PC and you default, then I should have the right to take that PC and sell it for $500? Of course in the ideal world you would sell that PC yourself and pay me back -- but it still doesn't give me the right to steal your equity in a possession.
Even if you file bankruptcy the Trustee has to make every effort to sell your property at market value. If the bankruptcy estate has any cash left over by the time that all the creditors are paid (I'm sure this is very rare) then it gets returned to you.
You can't carry your end of the deal, too bad for you.
I hope you never fall on hard times. It would be quite an awaking for you. For every asshole out there screwing people on purpose I could name two people that fell on hard times through no fault of their own.
France is big on nuclear (although Finland is building more nuclear power as well). Norway is big on hydroelectric. Danes are ramping up their wind-generators. USA seems to generate their energy with mostly coal, and that's just about the worst possible way of generating energy.
The United States isn't blessed with the hydro resources of Norway. The state that I live in (New York) is has a lot of hydro resources -- but they are all maxed out (unless you purpose shutting off Niagara Falls to generate power). In our case we also have to share about 50% of those resources with our friends in Ontario because most of them are international water ways.
Nuclear power (which I personally would love to see replace coal and gas) runs into the NIMBY problem. Unless you purpose trashing the concept of democracy and forcing it on people then I don't see how you solve that problem in the short term. In the long term it should solve itself because we will eventually hit peak oil and gas -- and I don't see any renewable that will be nearly as cost effective as nuclear. People will get over their fears about nuclear power when they face the threat of paying $0.40/kWh for power.
So what? Does your observations somehow dispute what I said? While there are some SUV's in Europe, they are nowhere near as popular as they are in USA. And if you have been in Europe, you have propably seen those subcompacts (Smart, Peugeot C1, C2, C3, VW Polo, Renault Clio etc.) which are practically unheard of in USA. And then we have the question of engines. While Europeans seems to do just fine with around 2-liter engines or even smaller, Americans seems to absolutely need some 3-liter V6 even in regular family-cars. And those large engines consume more fuel and pollute more. And then we have the ultra-efficient diesel-cars in Europe, which are very rare in USA.
So Americans should have to accept smaller cars, because, why exactly? We don't have the European knack for legislating what people can do. If you'd read my comments in the past you've probably heard me lamenting the fact that nobody will build the type of car I want -- a small compact 100% electric vehicle. But nowhere in those comments will you see me suggesting that the government should step in and prohibit people from buying SUVs.
And your ideas about American "family-cars" seems to be a bit of a stereotype. Most of the people I know that have families drive minivans with 2-liter I4 engines.
Are you saying that there are no cities in USA? Why is it that everyone living in LA insist on driving to the city, instead of taking the bus?
Why is it that everyone living in Europe insists on telling Americans how to live? And if you going to point out an American city, then why not New York? All of the friends I know in NYC don't even own cars.
77% of Americans live in cities. That percentage is higher than in France (76%), Norway (75%), Switzerland (67%) and Italy (67%). With 77% of people living in urban areas, you seriously claim that mass-transit would not work in USA? It works wonderfully well in Finland, and only 59%& of Finns live in cities. Of course you can't have mass-transit system in every small village, but it would work just fine in cities.
You don't seem to grasp the distances involved and the (lack of) population density in the rural areas of the United States. I grew up a rather small town in upstate New York. If you needed anything besides food it meant a 30 mile trip to the nearest moderately sized city (Binghamton). The town that I grew up in had a population of less then 800.
Why don't you explain to me exactly what kind of mass transportion system would be economically feasible in such an environment? And that example is nothing compared to the low population and distances in the American west.
Why is it that everybody gets all offended when they perceive the United States to be forcing our way of life on other cultures but they turn around and try to do the same thing to us?
but you still told him you'd pay for it.
*Shrug* I was being blackmailed illegally. If I had another key for my vehicle (this was a car I just purchased) I would have just driven it off his lot after business hours.
Alright. Now he can report you for writing bad checks
How? Chexsystems only takes reports from banks and credit unions. And even if they took consumer reports directly, they focus on NSFs (bounced checks) -- not stop payment orders. Knowingly writing a check that you don't have the funds to pay is a crime in most states -- putting a stop payment order on a check because you are in the middle of a dispute with a vendor is not a crime. Show me a section of the Fair Credit Reporting Act that would allow you to report somebody for a stop payment order.
I'd have to question (as a seller) doing business with you if I heard this story.
Then you could either lose my business or hear my side of the story. Unless you plan on breaking my property and then extorting me to pay for it to be fixed at the threat of illegally selling it then I don't think you have much to worry about doing business with me.
As far as the checks vs. debit card thing -- I try to make a point to pay local vendors/small businesses in cash if possible. If not then I'd rather write them a check (usually free for them or a small deposit fee -- $0.10) then have them eat 0.5% - 2.0% merchant fees on the transaction just so I can use my debit card.
Of course if I'm at Target, or K-Mart then not only do I use my debit card but I make them run it as credit. Then my credit union gets most of that fee (Visa get's the rest). I suppose it's all in how much you like the vendor ;)
And people say the US medical system is better than the NHS !
Despite my experience I would still argue that it is. It's probably not as user friendly -- but the US has the best medical schools and hospitals for a reason.
If you know how the system works then in the United States you will not be turned away because of an inability to pay. I didn't have any way to pay them and I still got everything I needed. It was only because of my good nature that I decided to stick the debt to Capital One rather then the hospital. Had I left owing the hospital ~$25k and filed bankruptcy I'd be no better or worse off then I am right now. It's not like they can repossess surgery if you don't pay ;)
I've heard that NHS has problems of it's own. Wait times are one of the oft mentioned ones. I guess if it works for the UK then it works for the UK -- I don't think it would work over here though.
Who cares about the loan provider as long as they offer good service and give the best rate
Somebody who cares about doing business locally? Would you rather see your interest go to your neighbors (via the credit union that you all own) or to some rich shareholders that you've never met?
I'll grant you that if I was buying a new car that I wouldn't completely rule out dealing with their finance people. Especially when they offer stuff like 0% APR loans -- you'd be an idiot to turn that down. But if comes down to a matter of them being 0.5% lower then my credit union then my credit union is going to get the business.
Of course I've already established that I won't buy a new car so this is all a moot point for me :)
I drove a cheap car for a long time. It was an 89 Civic that I bought in '96 for $2000. In 2002 (six years and 130,000 miles after I bought it -a total of 250,000 miles on the car) it broke down on me. It was a relatively easy repair which would have cost me $150 in parts, but prior to that incident there were several little things breaking on the car as well as other major components that needed to be replaced soon so I ended up selling it.
Yeah, I'm almost to that point with my '91 right now. Lots of little things that add up. Though I think I'll get another year out of it. I never said that everybody had to drive a ghetto car. Just that it makes financial sense in a lot of scenarios (I would argue in most scenarios). I would rather have money in my savings account/investments then a flashy car sitting in my driveway.
But that's just me. To each their own.
I have never, *ever* gotten a title from the DMV after buying a car via financing (before it's paid off, I mean). Until the loan is paid in full, the lending bank holds the title. The day I drop the final payment in their hands, they send in a title transfer request to the DMV. All I've got is a "pink slip" that merely authorizes me to register and insure the car under my own name for purposes of use as personal transportation.
Well then your state is different then mine. In my state you a get a title that lists one or more lienholders. When you pay them off you don't even get a new title -- in theory you get a letter from the bank saying that you paid off your obligation. When you eventually sell that car you give the title and that letter to the buyer who uses it to get a clean title from DMV.
There is nothing to stop me from selling you my car that I still owe money on. Of course the lienholder still has the right to repossess the car -- and if you buy then you are a moron -- but it is and always has been my property.
Hmm, and he didn't get suspicious at your "split" payment? Especially since the cash portion just happened to match the price of the part?
Actually the cash portion matched the amount of the bill not including anything for the part he broke. I told I'd run out of money and asked if I could write a check for the rest. This is actually standard MO for me -- I make a point of paying small town shops in cash. They usually appreciate that (no CC fees and they have the option of "losing" some when it comes tax time) and sometimes I'll even get a small discount out of it.
If he had declined then I would have just written him a check for the whole amount and stopped that check. When he threatened to sue me I would have sent him a check for the amount not in dispute.
But come to think of it, maybe a similar tactic could work on those stores that force you to buy windows with your PC: pay cash for the PC, write a check for the windows part, then cancel check.
Hmm, you'd probably lose that one though I'm afraid :( That would be considered fraud probably. What I did was well within my rights under the laws of this state. He has no right to demand payment to fix something that he broke due his own negligence. I could have had my car towed, fixed somewhere else and sued him for the damage -- and I would have won. I just figured my solution was either then dealing with all that hassle ;)