Then, I went nuts and nearly beat a man to death with my bare hands for asking me if I'd seen Sopranos that week. Of course not, I had only basic cable. It took three years in prison for an assault charge for me to realize that I'm just not that strong of a person, and that I had NO BUSINESS not subscribing to the premium channels.
I think the main reason people want to not pay their cable bills is because it's so ridiculously expensive and you STILL get grief.
And yet, you still keep the service...
Why should the cable company care about what kind of service they give out or prices they charge when people will keep sending in their $(regular monthly fee) every month despite what happens? If consumers want to prove that prices are too high and poor service deserves appropriate levels of compensation, they need to start walking out on companies that don't perform.
For cable (HD, gajillion channels, etc) and broadband we pay about $150/month for two rooms (each has a DVR). That's a large chunk of change to throw out so, when the DVR launches muted, or the signal gets pixelated, or the sound cuts out, or there's no picture (but the guide works), or god forbid it doesn't record Heroes...
How often did you have these issues with analog cable? Is digital cable really worth this hassle? Also: The equipment you're getting sounds like crap. Get a TiVo that supports CableCard, I'm sure you'll have fewer issues.
and lastly, when you schedule a hookup, and you take 4 hours off from work, and their guy doesn't show up and you have to take ANOTHER 4 hours of work off...I don't feel much like paying anyone for anything.
Try disputing the charges. Many cable companies will at least meet you halfway (take 50% off) if you make a fuss and the tech was really late.
Actually, the parent post is right, they do have the right to refuse service. They can't require that you give SSN, but they have the right to refuse service if you don't. I know that sounds like it contradicts itself. I think of it as a "de facto requirement" instead of a "legal requirement".
And I have printouts of the appropriate AG/consumer websites for the states we service where they say this is legal.
Maybe he's trying to ask how the cable company would know if you gave them a fake SSN. Unless they're running a credit check, they wouldn't.
Some use parts or all of the SSN to verify identity for big PPV orders (think: boxing) or changed to phone services, etc., so if you gave them a fake SSN and didn't keep track of what it was, you would find yourself locked out of the ability to order those events or make those changes.
If people call in and we have this issue, I refer them to visit our local office with their Social Security Card and have the number corrected.
You'll be surprised how many deadbeats are out there when it comes to cable bills.
A household of three people can easy amass a $1000+ debt to a cable company by having someone who lives there sign up for service under their name after someone [i]else[/i] there has been disconnected for non-payment. This is just one address we're talking about here.
People balk at having to give their SSN's to the cable company to get service, but it's information they want so they can send you to a collection collections if you don't pay or run off with digital boxes (those thing can run $300-$500 [i]apiece[/i] depending on the model's capabilities.
The notarized letter sounds like overkill, but they could have chosen to charge you a deposit instead. I know of one cable company that did this if anyone was signing up for service around the time colleges started, because students were especially bad about skipping out at the end of the spring term with unpaid bills.
*Piracy is an excellent example of short-term gain favored over long-term consequences.
Ironically, most corporate management is also an example of this.
Executives for Fortune 500 companies (including entertainment conglomerates) often make management decisions that create short-term profits at the expense of the company's long term benefit, like selling off a division to a competitor or layoffs of experienced employees to "make some quick cash".
Cost cutting boosts profits in the immediate and makes shareholders happy, but in the long term the company has fewer products allowing it to compete in fewer markets and experiences a brain drain in talent from the layoffs. They also kill of research that while it has no immediate marketability, may have led to major breakthroughs and products with patent protection had they let it continue (Bell Labs).
Cell phone company is going to get $600-1000 out of you per year regardless of what phone you own. You might as well own a good one
Looking at the growth of cell phone users of the last few years, two years is a long time in cell phone history terms. A network infrastructure that is adequate at one time may be undersized for a subscriber base a year or so later. Where will you be when your carrier can't handle all its customers and you're stuck in a contract?
...or merging calls (anyone care to tell me if the network operator needs a back-end for this to work, or is it done purely client-side?)
I'm failing to see how merging calls is anything different than 3-way calling on cell networks, I haven't looked up conference calling per se, but It seems like something the phone itself should be able to do without the carrier's help. The ease of use of the iPhone interface just makes it appear like it's something new. I sometimes inadvertently hung up on one caller while trying to juggle two active calls on phones in the past, because the menu options needed to put one call on hold and pick up the other were not easy to access.
In Europe, unlike in the US, Apple has the option of selling the iPhone through its own dealer network without a simlock.
Wouldn't this make AT&T's "exclusive" distribution agreement written on toilet paper? Everyone who didn't want get a long contract or use AT&T would just get the iPhone imported from Europe.
A more interesting question would be what Apple is going to do in those countries where it is illegal to lock a phone to a network or require a contract for it.
If there's going to be any "revolution" in the cell phone industry caused by the iPhone, it's how business is done U.S. cellular industry when the rest of the world is entirely different. I can't believe we still have to pay for incoming calls in the U.S.
What if you were allowed to buy just the channels you wanted, but the overall price of your package was more than you were paying before. Would you be willing to pay more for cable if you could feel good about not paying to support stations you didn't want?
I am now basically convinced that only people from an engineering field should be allowed to draft laws. Why? Things like this. All it will end up doing is driving up the costs of cable service, undermining the buying power of families
Yup everyone who's going "Hooray!" at the thought of a la carte cable is doing the math all wrong. They think after the change their bill become something like this:
(old cable rate) ÷ (old number of stations) x (number of stations now receiving)
and its not going to be anything close to that. I predict that anyone getting more than thirty or so stations under the new plan will be paying more than they did for everything under the old plan.
If you can get any channel you want a la carte, then why do you need to impose indecency regs on channels.
Cable Conglomerates: "Set lobbyists to KILL"
I imagine it wont be full a la carte (pick per channel) if it passes at all. It will be more like the digital "tiers" people already buy from some cable operators, except the groups of channels will be much smaller. And they'll just lump FX and Spike and such into one group, and MTV/VH1/GAC into another, ect. Just watch; if you want SoapNet, they'll force you to get Oxygen and Lifetime.
Bulk distribution is what RSS feeds are for. If people really want your stuff, they'll subscribe to the feed. Then the recipient is in control. I'm not impressed by people who claim that people need to receive their newsletter / e-mail spam.
I like your thinking. Unfortunately, it's not how the world thinks. Thanks to the way some internet providers have promoted email *cough*AOL*cough* people see email as a do everything utility to take the place of several specialized protocols.
"I can't attach a dozen photos to this email I'm sending to my mom!" You should put them up on Imageshack or your own personal webspace in an online album, and just email a link.
"I send and receive files of 25-50MB several times a day with my office and clients." Sounds like an FTP server should be set up.
"I want to send my friend this cool video clip..."
And we've already covered the special interest newsletter with 50 or so subscribers.
And when you tell someone "Email wasn't designed for this..." the first thing they'll say is "well it worked fine with my previous provider (or "last week/month") and see it as some problem with you system that it doesn't work now. Same with providers that respect the case of letters in an email address or allow illegal characters. Standards don't mean squat to the unwashed masses, that's one reason I.E. stays on top. As long as the page loads for them...
I'm not from the States, so I'm genuinely curious; are the troopers empowered to check any vehicle on the road for dyed fuel, at any time?
I'm sure it falls under the same "probable cause" crap that lets them search anybody's vehicle without a warrant.
"Hey there sir, you don't use farm diesel to fuel this RV do you?" "No, officer. I don't. I buy my gas at the pump in town." "So, you wouldn't mind if I checked your gas tank then?" "Yes, I do mind, I don't want you messing with my gas tank." "Oh, really... Can I ask you to step out of the vehicle..."
If you don't want to let them check, you must have something to hide.
approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)
( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses ( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected ( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money ( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks ( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it (X) Users of email will not put up with it ( ) Microsoft will not put up with it ( ) The police will not put up with it ( ) Requires too much cooperation from spammers (X) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once ( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers ( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists ( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business
Specifically, your plan fails to account for
( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it ( ) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email (X) Open relays in foreign countries ( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses ( ) Asshats ( ) Jurisdictional problems (X) Unpopularity of weird new taxes ( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money ( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP ( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack ( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email (X) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes ( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches ( ) Extreme profitability of spam ( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft ( ) Technically illiterate politicians ( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers (X) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves ( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering ( ) Outlook
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
(X) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical ( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable ( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation ( ) Blacklists suck ( ) Whitelists suck ( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored ( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud ( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks ( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually (X) Sending email should be free (X) Why should we have to trust you and your servers? ( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses ( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem ( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome ( ) I don't want the government reading my email ( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
( ) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work. ( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it. (X) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your house down!
Anyone else notice that they stated that there wasn't a windows version of Pidgin?
I noticed it. But they did remember to mention that the Mac installation was "complicated". I also saw them mention that the Yahoo mail checking didn't work. Hmmm, works fine for me.
Things only go downhill from there. One of the cards had been "qualified" by the beast but neither worked. The tech devolves into typing "Microsoft-proprietary information" on a command line, a command so complex it had to be emailed but could not be shared with customer.
This looks like a job for... a keylogger or screen recorder.
Slashdot Mirror
So I guess you missed Oz as well, then?
And yet, you still keep the service...
Why should the cable company care about what kind of service they give out or prices they charge when people will keep sending in their $(regular monthly fee) every month despite what happens? If consumers want to prove that prices are too high and poor service deserves appropriate levels of compensation, they need to start walking out on companies that don't perform.
How often did you have these issues with analog cable? Is digital cable really worth this hassle? Also: The equipment you're getting sounds like crap. Get a TiVo that supports CableCard, I'm sure you'll have fewer issues.
Try disputing the charges. Many cable companies will at least meet you halfway (take 50% off) if you make a fuss and the tech was really late.
Actually, the parent post is right, they do have the right to refuse service. They can't require that you give SSN, but they have the right to refuse service if you don't. I know that sounds like it contradicts itself. I think of it as a "de facto requirement" instead of a "legal requirement".
And I have printouts of the appropriate AG/consumer websites for the states we service where they say this is legal.
Maybe he's trying to ask how the cable company would know if you gave them a fake SSN. Unless they're running a credit check, they wouldn't.
Some use parts or all of the SSN to verify identity for big PPV orders (think: boxing) or changed to phone services, etc., so if you gave them a fake SSN and didn't keep track of what it was, you would find yourself locked out of the ability to order those events or make those changes.
If people call in and we have this issue, I refer them to visit our local office with their Social Security Card and have the number corrected.
You'll be surprised how many deadbeats are out there when it comes to cable bills.
A household of three people can easy amass a $1000+ debt to a cable company by having someone who lives there sign up for service under their name after someone [i]else[/i] there has been disconnected for non-payment. This is just one address we're talking about here.
People balk at having to give their SSN's to the cable company to get service, but it's information they want so they can send you to a collection collections if you don't pay or run off with digital boxes (those thing can run $300-$500 [i]apiece[/i] depending on the model's capabilities.
The notarized letter sounds like overkill, but they could have chosen to charge you a deposit instead. I know of one cable company that did this if anyone was signing up for service around the time colleges started, because students were especially bad about skipping out at the end of the spring term with unpaid bills.
Ironically, most corporate management is also an example of this.
Executives for Fortune 500 companies (including entertainment conglomerates) often make management decisions that create short-term profits at the expense of the company's long term benefit, like selling off a division to a competitor or layoffs of experienced employees to "make some quick cash".
Cost cutting boosts profits in the immediate and makes shareholders happy, but in the long term the company has fewer products allowing it to compete in fewer markets and experiences a brain drain in talent from the layoffs. They also kill of research that while it has no immediate marketability, may have led to major breakthroughs and products with patent protection had they let it continue (Bell Labs).
Looking at the growth of cell phone users of the last few years, two years is a long time in cell phone history terms. A network infrastructure that is adequate at one time may be undersized for a subscriber base a year or so later. Where will you be when your carrier can't handle all its customers and you're stuck in a contract?
I'm failing to see how merging calls is anything different than 3-way calling on cell networks, I haven't looked up conference calling per se, but It seems like something the phone itself should be able to do without the carrier's help. The ease of use of the iPhone interface just makes it appear like it's something new. I sometimes inadvertently hung up on one caller while trying to juggle two active calls on phones in the past, because the menu options needed to put one call on hold and pick up the other were not easy to access.
Nono, you need to do it like this.
Cable Modem: $45/mo.
VoIP service: $25/mo.
iPhone: $3,000 in 24 installments and $600 down.
Cellular service with GSM carrier: $40/mo.
Saying f*** you to AT&T: priceless.
There are some things a free market can't buy. For everything else, there's MasterCard.
Wouldn't this make AT&T's "exclusive" distribution agreement written on toilet paper? Everyone who didn't want get a long contract or use AT&T would just get the iPhone imported from Europe.
A more interesting question would be what Apple is going to do in those countries where it is illegal to lock a phone to a network or require a contract for it.
If there's going to be any "revolution" in the cell phone industry caused by the iPhone, it's how business is done U.S. cellular industry when the rest of the world is entirely different. I can't believe we still have to pay for incoming calls in the U.S.
What if you were allowed to buy just the channels you wanted, but the overall price of your package was more than you were paying before. Would you be willing to pay more for cable if you could feel good about not paying to support stations you didn't want?
Yup everyone who's going "Hooray!" at the thought of a la carte cable is doing the math all wrong. They think after the change their bill become something like this:
(old cable rate) ÷ (old number of stations) x (number of stations now receiving)
and its not going to be anything close to that. I predict that anyone getting more than thirty or so stations under the new plan will be paying more than they did for everything under the old plan.
Cable Conglomerates: "Set lobbyists to KILL"
I imagine it wont be full a la carte (pick per channel) if it passes at all. It will be more like the digital "tiers" people already buy from some cable operators, except the groups of channels will be much smaller. And they'll just lump FX and Spike and such into one group, and MTV/VH1/GAC into another, ect. Just watch; if you want SoapNet, they'll force you to get Oxygen and Lifetime.
I like your thinking. Unfortunately, it's not how the world thinks. Thanks to the way some internet providers have promoted email *cough*AOL*cough* people see email as a do everything utility to take the place of several specialized protocols.
"I can't attach a dozen photos to this email I'm sending to my mom!"
You should put them up on Imageshack or your own personal webspace in an online album, and just email a link.
"I send and receive files of 25-50MB several times a day with my office and clients."
Sounds like an FTP server should be set up.
"I want to send my friend this cool video clip..."
And we've already covered the special interest newsletter with 50 or so subscribers.
And when you tell someone "Email wasn't designed for this..." the first thing they'll say is "well it worked fine with my previous provider (or "last week/month") and see it as some problem with you system that it doesn't work now. Same with providers that respect the case of letters in an email address or allow illegal characters. Standards don't mean squat to the unwashed masses, that's one reason I.E. stays on top. As long as the page loads for them...
I'm sure it falls under the same "probable cause" crap that lets them search anybody's vehicle without a warrant.
"Hey there sir, you don't use farm diesel to fuel this RV do you?"
"No, officer. I don't. I buy my gas at the pump in town."
"So, you wouldn't mind if I checked your gas tank then?"
"Yes, I do mind, I don't want you messing with my gas tank."
"Oh, really... Can I ask you to step out of the vehicle..."
If you don't want to let them check, you must have something to hide.
Is anyone else thinking, Calamari?
I was thinking "The Rodney King Show".
What? Spelled it correctly?
Somewhere, there are lobbyists laughing at this comment.
That was lucky. I'm at work and I googled for "stuff that taco" and had to suddenly switch off my monitor.
I only chose "Nice try, asshole..." instead of "Sorry dude..." because the approach is little more than extortion of companies.
Your post advocates a
(X) technical ( ) legislative (X) market-based ( ) vigilante
approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)
( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
(X) Users of email will not put up with it
( ) Microsoft will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
( ) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
(X) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business
Specifically, your plan fails to account for
( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
( ) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
(X) Open relays in foreign countries
( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
( ) Asshats
( ) Jurisdictional problems
(X) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP
( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
(X) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
( ) Extreme profitability of spam
( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
( ) Technically illiterate politicians
( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
(X) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
( ) Outlook
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
(X) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
( ) Blacklists suck
( ) Whitelists suck
( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
(X) Sending email should be free
(X) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
( ) I don't want the government reading my email
( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
( ) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
(X) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your house down!
I Soviet Russia, the internet radio plays swan song for American internet radio.
I noticed it. But they did remember to mention that the Mac installation was "complicated".
I also saw them mention that the Yahoo mail checking didn't work. Hmmm, works fine for me.
This looks like a job for... a keylogger or screen recorder.