When did I say that we should continue with the flat-rate for unlimited usage model? I never did, and I wish you people would stop assuming that because I think the "surprise overage charge" solution is a stupid idea, that therefore I think we should just leave things as they are.
Jeez, I'm getting deja vu from posting this exact same thing over and over. There are other solutions besides massive overage fees.
Well, yeah, obviously we should do SOMETHING to try and reduce the amount of spam and viruses and zombies out there; bandwidth caps based on certain actions (or going past a certain amount of usage per month/week) are a better idea than the "surprise overage charge" that so many people incorrectly think is a good idea:) And there are a lot of other possibilities, too.
Did I, like, unconsciously post that we shouldn't do ANYTHING about people overusing bandwidth? Why does everyone keep assuming that because I don't like the overage charge idea, that therefore I don't like ANY solution and should just let people run rampant with whatever behavior they want?
Car maintenance is not analogous to computer maintenance, especially insofar as improperly maintained PCs have no chance of killing anyone. Your joke fails, try again.
Why should computer/internet use be any different?
It's not that it should be different, it's that it is different. The Internet is fundamentally different from the water system. The water system provides you with clean water and removes dirty water; the Internet is a two-way communications system. Customers in the water system only send their water to the water treatment plant, they don't send water to other customers.
I've already posted fairly detailed explanations of why the "surprise overage charge" is a bad idea in other responses in this thread, I'm not gonna rehash 'em here, but I really don't understand why so many people seem to think that the Internet should operate exactly like another system which is works differently and is for a completely different purpose. The water system and the Internet are not remotely analogous, despite being large networks.
Don't think I want to keep things exactly the way they are now, but also don't be dense and think that the "surprise overage charge" solution is the only other choice besides leaving things alone.
That's a nice shade of disingenuous you're wearing. Unsurprisingly, your car analogy fails; driving an automobile has a significant potential to result in physical harm or fatalities; using your computer incorrectly does not. Spam and viruses are a far, far cry from running someone over.
1) The proportion of leaky toilets is tiny; the proportion of bandwidth-leaky PCs is *enormous*. The amount of money it would cost Time-Warner to fix all their customers' virus-laden computers would be gargantuan. Charging users huge fees to compensate for this when they DO go over the limit would likely result in a class-action deceptive practices lawsuit. (See my other post.) 2) Fixing a leaky toilet is a much simpler problem than fixing a virus-laden computer, and takes less time (there are a lot less ways for a toilet to leak than there are for a computer to be infected with viruses). 3) The plumber *HAS* to go to the toilet to fix it; the tech is going to be operating over the phone. 4) Bandwidth can be trivially artificially restricted when you go over a limit; water supply cannot (at least, not without a large amount of equipment that virtually no building has installed). 5) Even if you could easily restrict water supply once you go over a limit, it's a public-health issue; bandwidth is not.
especially one with with a viable solution to an onerous problem.
Your solution is, um, not viable.:) See below.
and helps the user fix the problem.
Do you have any concept of how expensive that would be to TW? First, you have to have a veritable army of highly-trained support personnel who are 1) good with customers and 2) good with tech -- people like that are rare enough to begin with, and cost a fortune (unless you want crappy tech personnel, in which case how good are they going to be with helping people clean up their computers?).
Second, it's going to take quite a while to do this "help" over the phone, since they're going to have to walk the user through a whole variety of steps just to figure out which trojan[s] or virus[es] the user has, nevermind the actual process of getting the computer cleaned and patched -- and of course, some users will spend all this time only to discover that in order to fix the problem, they have to uninstall whatever spyware or Bonzi Buddy or whatever that they really like, and will refuse to do it -- so the tech will have spent an hour or two on this user, with the end result of nothing, because the user refuses to change. And some users will just install some other random thing soon after, negating the entire point of the exercise. And some will think they've done it right, and not done so; yadda yadda yadda. Doing this would cost TW way, way more than the bandwidth that is otherwise used up (which can be limited via a sensible application of bandwidth caps).
In reality, you'd have thousands of people suddenly hit with huge fees, and then TW would in short order have a class-action lawsuit on their hands, that would very likely be justifiable. (When that many people all get surprised by a huge fee, the courts tend to assume that the company was being deceptive.)
Did I say "lusers" out loud? Sorry - my bastard was showing.
Yeah, and the whole BOFH attitude has done so much good for the world.
Anyway, anyone should be savvy enough with their kit that they don't ruin things for others - the Internet is a commons (at present, anyway) after all.
What? No it isn't. A commons is something collectively owned by the populace; the Internet is no such thing. All the backbones are privately-owned, and all the servers (except government networks, which are tiny compared to the overall size of the Internet) are too. The only reason this is remotely similar to a "commons" is because of ISPs' long-standing policy to claim "unlimited access" by overleasing their lines. And that's the fault of the ISPs; it's not the user's responsibility to not use up the bandwidth that the company said they'd provide. If they say "unlimited bandwidth" and don't stipulate any limits, then I'm justified by contract in using up the bandwidth 24/7. Punishing your customers will just make them go somewhere else.
As far as the spammer angle goes, this would have minimal impact on the spammers; you seem to believe that users' computers would get made permanently clean and safe by the "TW helps you clean up" process, whereas in reality, (for example) a month or two down the line there'd be another botnet virus that used some OTHER Windows (e.g.) security hole to reinfect the user's computer, because even though the tech on the phone explained about updating and patching their computer, the user's eyes glazed over and they kinda lost track, and two months later had forgotten about the whole thing. At best, your idea might slow down the spammers a little bit, but TW would never, ever go for it, considering the huge damage it would do to them.
Thanks, I was hoping someone would post this typical elitist BS. Your attitude is that users who aren't tech-savvy enough to prevent things like this from happening deserve to suffer -- and like it's going to help TW's bottom line if they lose a customer permanently because he's outraged that they charged him $300 without (from his perspective) warning, and possibly lose some other customers because this one guy convinces them TW sucks, and engender loads of ill will.
The fact is there are a lot of people who are intelligent and not tech-savvy, either because they grew up too late and are stuck in a pre-Internet mindset, or just don't have the aptitude for tech; but these people still have plenty to contribute online, and cutting them off just because you think they're "lusers" is foolish and short-sighted.
It's also telling that your primary interest is in the experience of "we admin types" rather than wanting the Internet to be a vast, diverse place; and you didn't even consider the possibility of other capping schemes that don't just kick people off because they're not as geeky as you.
Yeah, it took me a few chapters to get used to the second-person thing, but then it felt natural after that and I stopped noticing it.
I've noticed that he tends to write almost all of his books in third-person present tense, though, instead of past tense. And I like it, it gives the story more immediacy, like I'm watching it happening.
...when artificial insemination was first used for cattle, there was the same "moral panic" because, y'know, it was new and different and therefore SPOOOKY, and the same Usual Suspects were all up in arms over it, and, of course, it is now so accepted and commonplace no one even remembers there was an outrage.
Hell, when the first smallpox vaccine was invented, there were very similair panics to what we see today over genetic engineering.
Your logic is basically that because in the past, something was introduced, and people freaked out, but it turned out okay; so therefore when something vaguely similar is introduced today, it's irrational for people to question it? That's bogus; cloned meat is fundamentally different from artificial insemination and smallpox vaccines. I have no idea how safe cloned meat will turn out to be[1], but trying to pretend like we shouldn't seriously consider possible health issues is irresponsible.
I'm not in favor of EVERYBODY PANICKING either, but let's not pretend we shouldn't exercise due diligence.
[1] I almost wrote "I have no idea whether or not cloned meat will be safe," but food safety isn't a true/false proposition.
Why can't I put a $20 bill into a gas pump and then have it dispense $20 worth of unleaded gasoline?
A variety of reasons, I'd guess:
1. Someone has to go out and collect the cash; this would probably be the attendant, who would then be even more vulnerable than usual to armed robbery. 2. The machines have to be big enough to store a goodly number of paper bills. 3. The machines are vulnerable to people breaking them open to steal the cash directly. 4. If the machines give change, they have to be even *bigger*.
All of this increases costs, and it (apparently) isn't worth it to the oil companies to gain the business of people who can only pay cash but for whom it is too much trouble to pay the attendant.
it always cheap to share it after someone's produced it.
Yes, but physical distribution of the bits isn't the only cost to the consumer. The time it takes to find a good-quality version is a cost, too, and if a person knows that they can get New Album X from legit-music.com for $5, they'll be more likely to just go there and spend the $5 and have the album quickly rather than try to hunt for a torrent. But if it's $15 or $20 for the same album, well... maybe they'll buy a few albums, and then torrent the ones that they aren't that excited about, rather than just picking them all up for a few bucks each.
Also keep in mind that there's a lot of different segments of the potential customer base, and some of these segments want to have lots of music but can't afford it. High school and college students, for example, have a lot more desire for music than they have money, so they're the bulk of those who copy without buying. Older folks have more disposable income (and less free time) and are more likely to buy instead of copy.
However, that doesn't pay the rent for everyone who produced it in the first place, nor reward investors who supported the guys who made it but also supported many other who didn't.
No shit! I think we're all pretty clear on the idea that if you copy content instead of paying for it, no one gets paid. I'm not trying to justify copyright infringement, I'm just trying to explain it.
They assume that when they rip things off it's just big business that loses out, or see copyright infringement as a victimless crime because "no-one lost anything". Once these people start to consider the many smaller players in the system who personally lose out as well, or someone points out that "big business" is what's supporting their pensions (or not), only a minority of people seem to look at things the same way.
I haven't found this to be the case, but then I suspect neither of us has done any legitimate scientific research on what people perceive as fair.
The fact does remain that nobody loses anything when casual copyright infringement occurs; I'm sure you're as familiar as anyone with the idea that if I have an apple, and you take my apple, I no longer have an apple; but if I have a book, and you copy my book, I still have my book. Now, if you had to choose between copying and paying, and chose copying, then conceptually someone's losing out on income they might have gotten; but those are not the only two choices. The choices are actually:
- copy without paying: Everyone has what they had before, except now I have a copy - pay: I have a copy and less money, and you have more money - neither pay nor copy: everyone has what they had before
For some people, "pay" is not an option, so if you remove "copy without paying" as an option, then the only remaining option is "neither pay nor copy". While that may seem fair, it's not ever going to happen.
The best we can do is:
- Encourage people to support those who actually play a valid role in creating copyrighted works. If there's no way to pay for the content and only support those who deserve it, then encourage people not to acquire the content. - Try to take the middlemen out of the equation; this will lower prices since you're not having to pay as many people (many of whom are useless) - Get rid of DRM schemes, which are all doomed to fail
Another thought: Railing about the unethicality of CCI (casual copyright infringement) basically does no good, except maybe to convince a few people who might copy to buy instead. But for a lot of people, if the price is $15 for an album, it's not worth it to buy it, but it's worth it to copy it. Well, you might also convince those people to not copy it, but they're still not going to buy it, which accomplishes nothing. At least if they copied it, they'd be exposed to it more and might be more willing to buy that band's albums in the future, or see their live performances.
the vast number of albums that i can get off of emule 24/7
...and then...
i hope people who use bullshit arguments like the one above to justify their theft choke on their stolen goods.
So, are you one of those people?:)
Besides, you forgot the "inexpensive" part. $20 for an album can't compete with free (but inconvenient and illegal) nearly as well as $10 or $5 can. This isn't justifying piracy, this is explaining it. Whine all you want about how greedy people are, it isn't going to change how much piracy happens.
and that we should be 'identify workable, flexible and effective approaches that reduce piracy without being intrusive and that fully respect other interests such as privacy and fair use.'
Sorry to be the one to break this to you, Mr. Cotton, but the only approach you're going to find that works is making your product inexpensive and easy to use. If it's easier for people to pirate it than it is for them to buy it legally and play it (thanks to defective-by-design DRM schemes), they're going to pirate it. We've said it a million times: treating your customers like criminals is just going to make them act like criminals.
I've sent such letters to companies numerous times, and they nearly always get a response (a physical letter response). The letter usually says something along the lines of "thank you for your feedback, we're trying hard to meet our customers' needs" without committing to changing anything (because, as you say, a single letter won't change anything by itself), and sometimes including coupons or, a few times, a package of free product.
But this still doesn't mean it's not worth the effort, or that no change is effected; I'm not the only one writing letters, and the more I do it, the more probable it is that some positive change will be effected. Every letter doesn't have to have a huge impact; like everything, it operates on probability.
Prepay (pay inside, then pump) at gas stations was not instituted because a few jerk-offs gas-n-go. They want those cash customers in the selling environment!
What about pay-at-the-pump? I haven't gone inside to pay for gas more than three or four times in the last eight years (usually because the pay-at-the-pump terminal was broken). Seems like that would undercut the strategy.
Naturally, if they think they're getting more business from it than they're losing, then your letter won't thwart them, but that doesn't mean it's not worth it to send a letter explaining why you're shopping elsewhere. Depending on the situation, sometimes they'll try to do something to accommodate the departed customers without having to completely undo what annoyed them in the first place; it's not always a "You do X, so I'm leaving" situation. Maybe a store that you like because they have a good selection, good prices, and good customer service is undermined by their short hours, and you send them a letter saying that you'd like to shop there more but it's hard to get there after work by the time they close. Maybe they get half a dozen of these letters in a couple-month period, and figure that this might represent a few thousand people who actually believe this (but only a few actually take the time to write), and so decide to stay open an hour later.
Situations vary, of course, but the fact remains that companies aren't psychic and won't know why you stopped shopping there unless you tell them.
I do my part by avoiding these establishments, but I'm afraid it's not doing a damn bit of good.
The "damn bit of good" that you can do (and is easy) is to write pen-and-paper letters to those establishments explaining why you will not shop there. One person's letter usually won't thwart a multi-million dollar campaign, but it could be the straw that breaks the camel's back; and simply avoiding the establishment doesn't tell them why. That's the critical thing; avoiding a store for reasons you haven't explained to them doesn't help them change.
The best thing to do in such a letter is to be polite, precise, and calm. Insulting them or railing at them will just make them throw your letter away. Here's a sample letter, feel free to mangle it to your needs:
"I'm a long-time customer at Shell, and I almost always get my gas there (at your Main Street location in Los Santos) because it's so convenient for my drive to work. But ever since those flat-panel TVs have been installed out in the pump area, it's nearly unbearable to pump gas. Not only is the audio loud and distracting, but the TVs seem to cause people to take significantly longer to pump their gas (they just stand around staring at the TVs), meaning I end up waiting to get gas. As a result I've decided to start getting my gas at [insert local independent gas station here]. Maybe if the TVs are removed I might come back to Shell, but for now it's just not worth it.
Sincerely, Soandso"
And be sure you do this on PAPER, signed in pen, and mailed to their corporate headquarters. From a customer-service standpoint, this is the kind of letter companies tend to love, because 1) it's not insulting, rude, demanding, or insane; and 2) it provides actual useful feedback from actual customers. As a bonus, sometimes companies will send you free stuff, or gift certificates, or coupons, or whatever, usually worth more than the letter cost you to write and mail;)
Vinyl? Reel-to-reel? Wax cylinders? HA! For real fidelity, when I want to listen to "Stairway to Heaven" while driving to work, I simply have Led Zeppelin perform it for me live in my car. Yes, even Bonzo. Resurrecting him was a bitch, but you can really feel the warm nuances of the sound when his zombified corpse is drumming in the back seat.
In fact, here's an even more depressing parting thought: the more blatantly absurd and provably wrong something is, the more vehemently its advocates will defend it.
"Aren't fucking possible"? Perhaps you've conducted a scientific study which proves this, and can provide us with info? Otherwise, I'm not going to trust the words of an anonymous cocksucker like yourself.
So one of the replies I always see on discussions like this is that it's about "parental responsibility". The parents aren't taking responsibility, so we don't need to do anything as a society -- let's just blame bad parents.
Well, blaming bad parents and exhorting them in Slashdot posts to do better isn't going to make a damn bit of difference, except maybe to the small percentage of the overall population who are 1) parents and 2) read Slashdot. But having parents take better care of their kids probably is the result we want, rather than relying on laws or litigation to do the parts of the job that parents should be doing themselves.
So how do we get our parents to be better parents? That's the real question.
Slashdot Mirror
When did I say that we should continue with the flat-rate for unlimited usage model? I never did, and I wish you people would stop assuming that because I think the "surprise overage charge" solution is a stupid idea, that therefore I think we should just leave things as they are.
Jeez, I'm getting deja vu from posting this exact same thing over and over. There are other solutions besides massive overage fees.
Well, yeah, obviously we should do SOMETHING to try and reduce the amount of spam and viruses and zombies out there; bandwidth caps based on certain actions (or going past a certain amount of usage per month/week) are a better idea than the "surprise overage charge" that so many people incorrectly think is a good idea :) And there are a lot of other possibilities, too.
Did I, like, unconsciously post that we shouldn't do ANYTHING about people overusing bandwidth? Why does everyone keep assuming that because I don't like the overage charge idea, that therefore I don't like ANY solution and should just let people run rampant with whatever behavior they want?
Car maintenance is not analogous to computer maintenance, especially insofar as improperly maintained PCs have no chance of killing anyone. Your joke fails, try again.
I've already posted fairly detailed explanations of why the "surprise overage charge" is a bad idea in other responses in this thread, I'm not gonna rehash 'em here, but I really don't understand why so many people seem to think that the Internet should operate exactly like another system which is works differently and is for a completely different purpose. The water system and the Internet are not remotely analogous, despite being large networks.
Don't think I want to keep things exactly the way they are now, but also don't be dense and think that the "surprise overage charge" solution is the only other choice besides leaving things alone.
That's a nice shade of disingenuous you're wearing. Unsurprisingly, your car analogy fails; driving an automobile has a significant potential to result in physical harm or fatalities; using your computer incorrectly does not. Spam and viruses are a far, far cry from running someone over.
Alas, some factors sink your toilet analogy:
1) The proportion of leaky toilets is tiny; the proportion of bandwidth-leaky PCs is *enormous*. The amount of money it would cost Time-Warner to fix all their customers' virus-laden computers would be gargantuan. Charging users huge fees to compensate for this when they DO go over the limit would likely result in a class-action deceptive practices lawsuit. (See my other post.)
2) Fixing a leaky toilet is a much simpler problem than fixing a virus-laden computer, and takes less time (there are a lot less ways for a toilet to leak than there are for a computer to be infected with viruses).
3) The plumber *HAS* to go to the toilet to fix it; the tech is going to be operating over the phone.
4) Bandwidth can be trivially artificially restricted when you go over a limit; water supply cannot (at least, not without a large amount of equipment that virtually no building has installed).
5) Even if you could easily restrict water supply once you go over a limit, it's a public-health issue; bandwidth is not.
Second, it's going to take quite a while to do this "help" over the phone, since they're going to have to walk the user through a whole variety of steps just to figure out which trojan[s] or virus[es] the user has, nevermind the actual process of getting the computer cleaned and patched -- and of course, some users will spend all this time only to discover that in order to fix the problem, they have to uninstall whatever spyware or Bonzi Buddy or whatever that they really like, and will refuse to do it -- so the tech will have spent an hour or two on this user, with the end result of nothing, because the user refuses to change. And some users will just install some other random thing soon after, negating the entire point of the exercise. And some will think they've done it right, and not done so; yadda yadda yadda. Doing this would cost TW way, way more than the bandwidth that is otherwise used up (which can be limited via a sensible application of bandwidth caps).
In reality, you'd have thousands of people suddenly hit with huge fees, and then TW would in short order have a class-action lawsuit on their hands, that would very likely be justifiable. (When that many people all get surprised by a huge fee, the courts tend to assume that the company was being deceptive.)Yeah, and the whole BOFH attitude has done so much good for the world.What? No it isn't. A commons is something collectively owned by the populace; the Internet is no such thing. All the backbones are privately-owned, and all the servers (except government networks, which are tiny compared to the overall size of the Internet) are too. The only reason this is remotely similar to a "commons" is because of ISPs' long-standing policy to claim "unlimited access" by overleasing their lines. And that's the fault of the ISPs; it's not the user's responsibility to not use up the bandwidth that the company said they'd provide. If they say "unlimited bandwidth" and don't stipulate any limits, then I'm justified by contract in using up the bandwidth 24/7. Punishing your customers will just make them go somewhere else.
As far as the spammer angle goes, this would have minimal impact on the spammers; you seem to believe that users' computers would get made permanently clean and safe by the "TW helps you clean up" process, whereas in reality, (for example) a month or two down the line there'd be another botnet virus that used some OTHER Windows (e.g.) security hole to reinfect the user's computer, because even though the tech on the phone explained about updating and patching their computer, the user's eyes glazed over and they kinda lost track, and two months later had forgotten about the whole thing. At best, your idea might slow down the spammers a little bit, but TW would never, ever go for it, considering the huge damage it would do to them.
Thanks, I was hoping someone would post this typical elitist BS. Your attitude is that users who aren't tech-savvy enough to prevent things like this from happening deserve to suffer -- and like it's going to help TW's bottom line if they lose a customer permanently because he's outraged that they charged him $300 without (from his perspective) warning, and possibly lose some other customers because this one guy convinces them TW sucks, and engender loads of ill will.
The fact is there are a lot of people who are intelligent and not tech-savvy, either because they grew up too late and are stuck in a pre-Internet mindset, or just don't have the aptitude for tech; but these people still have plenty to contribute online, and cutting them off just because you think they're "lusers" is foolish and short-sighted.
It's also telling that your primary interest is in the experience of "we admin types" rather than wanting the Internet to be a vast, diverse place; and you didn't even consider the possibility of other capping schemes that don't just kick people off because they're not as geeky as you.
Yeah, it took me a few chapters to get used to the second-person thing, but then it felt natural after that and I stopped noticing it.
I've noticed that he tends to write almost all of his books in third-person present tense, though, instead of past tense. And I like it, it gives the story more immediacy, like I'm watching it happening.
For a well-written novel on this exact topic, check out Halting State by Charles Stross.
I'm not in favor of EVERYBODY PANICKING either, but let's not pretend we shouldn't exercise due diligence.
[1] I almost wrote "I have no idea whether or not cloned meat will be safe," but food safety isn't a true/false proposition.
1. Someone has to go out and collect the cash; this would probably be the attendant, who would then be even more vulnerable than usual to armed robbery.
2. The machines have to be big enough to store a goodly number of paper bills.
3. The machines are vulnerable to people breaking them open to steal the cash directly.
4. If the machines give change, they have to be even *bigger*.
All of this increases costs, and it (apparently) isn't worth it to the oil companies to gain the business of people who can only pay cash but for whom it is too much trouble to pay the attendant.
Also keep in mind that there's a lot of different segments of the potential customer base, and some of these segments want to have lots of music but can't afford it. High school and college students, for example, have a lot more desire for music than they have money, so they're the bulk of those who copy without buying. Older folks have more disposable income (and less free time) and are more likely to buy instead of copy.No shit! I think we're all pretty clear on the idea that if you copy content instead of paying for it, no one gets paid. I'm not trying to justify copyright infringement, I'm just trying to explain it.I haven't found this to be the case, but then I suspect neither of us has done any legitimate scientific research on what people perceive as fair.
The fact does remain that nobody loses anything when casual copyright infringement occurs; I'm sure you're as familiar as anyone with the idea that if I have an apple, and you take my apple, I no longer have an apple; but if I have a book, and you copy my book, I still have my book. Now, if you had to choose between copying and paying, and chose copying, then conceptually someone's losing out on income they might have gotten; but those are not the only two choices. The choices are actually:
- copy without paying: Everyone has what they had before, except now I have a copy
- pay: I have a copy and less money, and you have more money
- neither pay nor copy: everyone has what they had before
For some people, "pay" is not an option, so if you remove "copy without paying" as an option, then the only remaining option is "neither pay nor copy". While that may seem fair, it's not ever going to happen.
The best we can do is:
- Encourage people to support those who actually play a valid role in creating copyrighted works. If there's no way to pay for the content and only support those who deserve it, then encourage people not to acquire the content.
- Try to take the middlemen out of the equation; this will lower prices since you're not having to pay as many people (many of whom are useless)
- Get rid of DRM schemes, which are all doomed to fail
Another thought: Railing about the unethicality of CCI (casual copyright infringement) basically does no good, except maybe to convince a few people who might copy to buy instead. But for a lot of people, if the price is $15 for an album, it's not worth it to buy it, but it's worth it to copy it. Well, you might also convince those people to not copy it, but they're still not going to buy it, which accomplishes nothing. At least if they copied it, they'd be exposed to it more and might be more willing to buy that band's albums in the future, or see their live performances.
Besides, you forgot the "inexpensive" part. $20 for an album can't compete with free (but inconvenient and illegal) nearly as well as $10 or $5 can. This isn't justifying piracy, this is explaining it. Whine all you want about how greedy people are, it isn't going to change how much piracy happens.
I've sent such letters to companies numerous times, and they nearly always get a response (a physical letter response). The letter usually says something along the lines of "thank you for your feedback, we're trying hard to meet our customers' needs" without committing to changing anything (because, as you say, a single letter won't change anything by itself), and sometimes including coupons or, a few times, a package of free product.
But this still doesn't mean it's not worth the effort, or that no change is effected; I'm not the only one writing letters, and the more I do it, the more probable it is that some positive change will be effected. Every letter doesn't have to have a huge impact; like everything, it operates on probability.
Naturally, if they think they're getting more business from it than they're losing, then your letter won't thwart them, but that doesn't mean it's not worth it to send a letter explaining why you're shopping elsewhere. Depending on the situation, sometimes they'll try to do something to accommodate the departed customers without having to completely undo what annoyed them in the first place; it's not always a "You do X, so I'm leaving" situation. Maybe a store that you like because they have a good selection, good prices, and good customer service is undermined by their short hours, and you send them a letter saying that you'd like to shop there more but it's hard to get there after work by the time they close. Maybe they get half a dozen of these letters in a couple-month period, and figure that this might represent a few thousand people who actually believe this (but only a few actually take the time to write), and so decide to stay open an hour later.
Situations vary, of course, but the fact remains that companies aren't psychic and won't know why you stopped shopping there unless you tell them.
The best thing to do in such a letter is to be polite, precise, and calm. Insulting them or railing at them will just make them throw your letter away. Here's a sample letter, feel free to mangle it to your needs:
"I'm a long-time customer at Shell, and I almost always get my gas there (at your Main Street location in Los Santos) because it's so convenient for my drive to work. But ever since those flat-panel TVs have been installed out in the pump area, it's nearly unbearable to pump gas. Not only is the audio loud and distracting, but the TVs seem to cause people to take significantly longer to pump their gas (they just stand around staring at the TVs), meaning I end up waiting to get gas. As a result I've decided to start getting my gas at [insert local independent gas station here]. Maybe if the TVs are removed I might come back to Shell, but for now it's just not worth it.
Sincerely, Soandso"
And be sure you do this on PAPER, signed in pen, and mailed to their corporate headquarters. From a customer-service standpoint, this is the kind of letter companies tend to love, because 1) it's not insulting, rude, demanding, or insane; and 2) it provides actual useful feedback from actual customers. As a bonus, sometimes companies will send you free stuff, or gift certificates, or coupons, or whatever, usually worth more than the letter cost you to write and mail
Vinyl? Reel-to-reel? Wax cylinders? HA! For real fidelity, when I want to listen to "Stairway to Heaven" while driving to work, I simply have Led Zeppelin perform it for me live in my car. Yes, even Bonzo. Resurrecting him was a bitch, but you can really feel the warm nuances of the sound when his zombified corpse is drumming in the back seat.
"Aren't fucking possible"? Perhaps you've conducted a scientific study which proves this, and can provide us with info? Otherwise, I'm not going to trust the words of an anonymous cocksucker like yourself.
So one of the replies I always see on discussions like this is that it's about "parental responsibility". The parents aren't taking responsibility, so we don't need to do anything as a society -- let's just blame bad parents.
Well, blaming bad parents and exhorting them in Slashdot posts to do better isn't going to make a damn bit of difference, except maybe to the small percentage of the overall population who are 1) parents and 2) read Slashdot. But having parents take better care of their kids probably is the result we want, rather than relying on laws or litigation to do the parts of the job that parents should be doing themselves.
So how do we get our parents to be better parents? That's the real question.