I was a customer of AT&T when they were a cable company (which they do their best to distance themselves from now) and they provided the @Home service. @Home went bust, leaving us without service for a couple of weeks, so we switched to DSL.
Then we moved to an area with a different phone provider, and tried "the new AT&T" formerly SBC. They botched the installation, and after selling me a $11/month service billed me $25 per month including "fees". After months of complaining about this I talked them out of a single penny for phone service, leaving just the DSL charges on the bill. They then offered to credit the entire bill which they did to the wrong account - somehow we had 2 accounts active, no idea how we got the other one. So they sent us a check for $148 which we cashed, while still demanding payment for the $148 debt. A year later they have not been paid.
Needless to say when I was looking for a new cellphone company I did not even half consider "the new AT&T". It's the same old behemoth. It's time David shot down Goliath. Who's got the slingshot?
it's:
"The best tech you can get elsewhere, and no 'service provider' corporation has stripped down to a mere 10% of its actual capability by installing its own firmware"
I used to swear by Mapquest. But then they took away their services, and they also reduced the size of the available map.
Since then I think both have returned, but too late. I like Google Maps above all, and will only switch to Microsoft's maps when I need some better imaging (for example the town I live in has aerial shots whereas Google only has very low detailed satellite images), or Mapquest when I want county lines. Or Multimap when I want actual maps from the UK.
When I got broadband from Charter they changed my 404 settings to go to some Charter-specific search page and I had to go through some hyperlinked hoops to change it back to just plain old 404. I didn't look to see if they were earning from the pages.
But was he "accessing their network"? I mean, by most people's definitions, accessing the network means gaining access to computers on some kind of internal network. If a PC at work obtains an internal IP but fails to connect to the network drives, I get a phone call "I can't connect to the network".
He didn't exactly walk in an unlocked house and eat lunch out of the fridge. He sat in the hammock on the porch and enjoyed the view.
It's a sign of the sad state of Michigan's economy when the county has to earn its budget deficit by resorting to prosecuting people when it's the fools who buy wireless routers who need telling off.
A local car mechanic was provided a router by the phone company when he set up DSL service. He had no idea it was wireless! A friend told him he was accessing the internet with the laptop he brought in while waiting for his oil change, and he then found out he had a wireless router in his back room.
If only the phone company hadn't deregulated, then it really would be entrapment, as it would have been provided by an agent of the state;o)
Sometimes you haven't got much option but to "take it". I only got the refund from AT&T after mentioning "bait and switch" and a possible FCC report. Until that point they were quite happy to "do me the favour" of "waiving" the $99 breach of contract fee and insisted on the rest of the payment.
Have you ever heard a radio commercial from the US? There's about 10 lines of big claims spoken in the normal voice, then at the end 5 seconds of "audio fine print" that would normally take 30-60 seconds to read off, but is digitally shrunk into something which sounds like words but there's no way the human ear can make all of it out. It's almost like the "fine print" is in txtese.
Whereas if you are AT&T they expect you to use their email service. While I have about 6 or 7 domains and an account at each of GMail, Yahoo and Hotmail, I thought I would not need to use the free email account they provided me.
During a dispute over billing, they implemented a "soft shutoff" which involved nothing more than blocking the email account. As I was oblivious to this move I had no idea they had given us the soft shutoff so when they pulled the plug, it came as a surprise. Idiots.
Even more idiotic, after crediting me the $99 breach of contract charge (even though I didn't sign a contract) and the remainder of my bill for the aggro, they realised they had over-credited me and sent me a check for $0.09.
The whole billing argument was about the so-called $11 per month landline service which cost me $25. As a foreign national, US resident, they couldn't say I knew or expected the bill to be that much higher including all the taxes. Or it might have been my first phone bill after leaving home. It's crap like this that needs to be clamped down on in this country, not the illegal (or legal!) downloading of movies, music and software.
GUH!
Yeah cos we do it with other humans, of the opposite sex, in the appropriate orifice, hence allowing us to replenish the earth, one of the first commandments from God.
Anything with animals, an exit door, or with the wrong sex is not going to replenish the earth. The meek shall inherit the earth. So shall those who know how to make babies rather than just putting their baby juice in places it don't belong.
Umm no!
You're talking about what shows your TiVo is recording, including its "Suggestions". That has nothing to do with your viewing habits.
If it records Gilmore Girls and you delete it before you watch it, it will note that you did not watch it! Meanwhile that episode of Star Trek Enterprise with T'Pol in her undies in the detox chamber, you keep watching that piece over and over and it hasn't been broadcast in a week...
Get it now?
Adobe gets enough K$ or even M$ off its middle-to-high end artwork and video products without worrying about losing the market for sorting out the mess that is Brittni's memory stick from the grad party.
666 = DCLXVI
616 = DCXVI
It's just the two lines that form the L making the difference, possible I guess.
On an interesting note, 616 is the area code where Slashdot was born.
I am a Christian, and one that avoids being associated with the "fundamentalists" and "right", having more of a left-middle political standpoint.
I will avoid commenting on some of the drivel that has been posted on this thread in intolerance of Christians masquerading as "tolerance of all cultures". As a group we are tolerated as poorly as telemarketers. But that is understandable given the influences that people have today. A Christian has to be tolerant of the rest of the world, but the rest of the world is intolerant by default to a Christian.
The game sounds out of order from the description. Killing a non-Christian is wrong if the only reason for killing them is their faith. I fully support Walmart's decision to not sell it, although I doubt it's for the violence factor (seeing as many other violent games are sold without a problem), but more likely for its weird interpretation of one of the books of the Bible.
German web law is different. They have some very weird laws when it comes to publishing a link to another site, from what I understand of it, if you do it without their permission you can be in trouble.
It is bloody ridiculously obvious that someone that needs a job also has bad credit.
Like that smart-arse just-out-of-college twonk that advertises a credit report on some of the cable channels. "This is my credit score, aren't I great?"
Yeah sure, your daddy paid for you to go through college and you have a great job now. Your credit score is fantastic.
Let's see you get laid off the Friday before you were to close on buying your first home, having sunk all your savings into the preliminary costs.
Let's see you out of work for a year, unable to make catchup payments on your mortgage because the last mortgage company screwed up your escrow when they refinanced you and just sold it on with an empty balance and your taxes are due. And now the mortgage company offers you this fine and dandy repayment plan to help you catch up $1000 which just so happens to go on your credit report as three late payments. And they didn't tell you that little snippet of information.
Everyone is so quick to use the credit report AGAINST you when they want an excuse to not hire you, or can't be bothered to hire someone to actually READ the hundreds of resumes every decent job attracts these days. Maybe if every company had someone read all these resumes or meet most of them for a preliminary interview to get a "feel" for the person, or even cared about anything else but numbers, half the companies in this world would not be in the crap state they are in.
If a company was hiring me but didn't hire me because of a bad credit check, I would be happy. Cos I don't want to work for a company that only looks at the numbers. I want to work for a company that looks at ME.
There's no border between Austria and the Oktoberfest. It's not exactly a lifetime pilgrimage to hit the Hacker Pschorr tent for the average Kärntner or wherever the heck this guy was from.
That, and there's a Bierfest in every town at this time of year. So the point was valid.
Which is more than can be said for the Sound of Music reference. The film was never dubbed into German, so it is almost unknown in the German speaking world, including the country it was filmed in.
Also its strong Nazi theme would make about 1/4 of the movie censored under current German law. Not sure if the Austrians have the same law, but without the Germans it's like trying to sell a Region 1 DVD English version of a movie banned in the US.
I agree. I have no problem with commercials for products I can use or want to use. If they build a market research module into new TiVo firmware updates that allows me to check yes to beer commercials, fast food, movies, etc., and to say no to dieting, financial services, and feminine hygiene products - perhaps with a limit of a percentage of commercials I MUST say yes to - I think we will see a decline in the "WHY DID YOUR LAST DIET FAIL" TV advertising market and everyone else will be happy.
The poster is obviously basing his opinion on the so-called "BBC America". A channel owned and operated by Discovery with rights to use the BBC label. Benny Hill and Cash in the Attic fills about half the schedule. Check it out.
Sadly the Beeb does nothing to stop its name from being tarnished in this way. Just like Hershey's selling its own chocolate in a Cadbury's wrapper.
It's not what it says on the tin!
Ditto to those who said they would stop watching ABC or any channel that force feeds commercials. I still have the OFF button.
Slashdot Mirror
Amen to that!
I was a customer of AT&T when they were a cable company (which they do their best to distance themselves from now) and they provided the @Home service. @Home went bust, leaving us without service for a couple of weeks, so we switched to DSL.
Then we moved to an area with a different phone provider, and tried "the new AT&T" formerly SBC. They botched the installation, and after selling me a $11/month service billed me $25 per month including "fees". After months of complaining about this I talked them out of a single penny for phone service, leaving just the DSL charges on the bill. They then offered to credit the entire bill which they did to the wrong account - somehow we had 2 accounts active, no idea how we got the other one. So they sent us a check for $148 which we cashed, while still demanding payment for the $148 debt. A year later they have not been paid.
Needless to say when I was looking for a new cellphone company I did not even half consider "the new AT&T". It's the same old behemoth. It's time David shot down Goliath. Who's got the slingshot?
It's not:
"The best tech you can't get in the US"
it's:
"The best tech you can get elsewhere, and no 'service provider' corporation has stripped down to a mere 10% of its actual capability by installing its own firmware"
Give me the import gadget any day.
I used to swear by Mapquest. But then they took away their services, and they also reduced the size of the available map. Since then I think both have returned, but too late. I like Google Maps above all, and will only switch to Microsoft's maps when I need some better imaging (for example the town I live in has aerial shots whereas Google only has very low detailed satellite images), or Mapquest when I want county lines. Or Multimap when I want actual maps from the UK.
...mojo-rific Italian Job with Quincy Jones producing it, or the lame up-to-date any-excuse-to-sell-a-video-game version?
Did they permit you to use their WiFi?
If not, you may end up in jail...
Oh wait, that was yesterday's news.
When I got broadband from Charter they changed my 404 settings to go to some Charter-specific search page and I had to go through some hyperlinked hoops to change it back to just plain old 404. I didn't look to see if they were earning from the pages.
But was he "accessing their network"? I mean, by most people's definitions, accessing the network means gaining access to computers on some kind of internal network. If a PC at work obtains an internal IP but fails to connect to the network drives, I get a phone call "I can't connect to the network". He didn't exactly walk in an unlocked house and eat lunch out of the fridge. He sat in the hammock on the porch and enjoyed the view. It's a sign of the sad state of Michigan's economy when the county has to earn its budget deficit by resorting to prosecuting people when it's the fools who buy wireless routers who need telling off. A local car mechanic was provided a router by the phone company when he set up DSL service. He had no idea it was wireless! A friend told him he was accessing the internet with the laptop he brought in while waiting for his oil change, and he then found out he had a wireless router in his back room. If only the phone company hadn't deregulated, then it really would be entrapment, as it would have been provided by an agent of the state ;o)
Sometimes you haven't got much option but to "take it". I only got the refund from AT&T after mentioning "bait and switch" and a possible FCC report. Until that point they were quite happy to "do me the favour" of "waiving" the $99 breach of contract fee and insisted on the rest of the payment. Have you ever heard a radio commercial from the US? There's about 10 lines of big claims spoken in the normal voice, then at the end 5 seconds of "audio fine print" that would normally take 30-60 seconds to read off, but is digitally shrunk into something which sounds like words but there's no way the human ear can make all of it out. It's almost like the "fine print" is in txtese.
Whereas if you are AT&T they expect you to use their email service. While I have about 6 or 7 domains and an account at each of GMail, Yahoo and Hotmail, I thought I would not need to use the free email account they provided me. During a dispute over billing, they implemented a "soft shutoff" which involved nothing more than blocking the email account. As I was oblivious to this move I had no idea they had given us the soft shutoff so when they pulled the plug, it came as a surprise. Idiots. Even more idiotic, after crediting me the $99 breach of contract charge (even though I didn't sign a contract) and the remainder of my bill for the aggro, they realised they had over-credited me and sent me a check for $0.09. The whole billing argument was about the so-called $11 per month landline service which cost me $25. As a foreign national, US resident, they couldn't say I knew or expected the bill to be that much higher including all the taxes. Or it might have been my first phone bill after leaving home. It's crap like this that needs to be clamped down on in this country, not the illegal (or legal!) downloading of movies, music and software.
GUH! Yeah cos we do it with other humans, of the opposite sex, in the appropriate orifice, hence allowing us to replenish the earth, one of the first commandments from God. Anything with animals, an exit door, or with the wrong sex is not going to replenish the earth. The meek shall inherit the earth. So shall those who know how to make babies rather than just putting their baby juice in places it don't belong.
I rarely watch my DVR live. Not enough to affect the stats.
Umm no! You're talking about what shows your TiVo is recording, including its "Suggestions". That has nothing to do with your viewing habits. If it records Gilmore Girls and you delete it before you watch it, it will note that you did not watch it! Meanwhile that episode of Star Trek Enterprise with T'Pol in her undies in the detox chamber, you keep watching that piece over and over and it hasn't been broadcast in a week... Get it now?
If we did what you suggest, that would mean far less coverage.
...or way more taxes, which as a privacy proponent you are probably also against.
Adobe gets enough K$ or even M$ off its middle-to-high end artwork and video products without worrying about losing the market for sorting out the mess that is Brittni's memory stick from the grad party.
666 = DCLXVI 616 = DCXVI It's just the two lines that form the L making the difference, possible I guess. On an interesting note, 616 is the area code where Slashdot was born.
I am a Christian, and one that avoids being associated with the "fundamentalists" and "right", having more of a left-middle political standpoint. I will avoid commenting on some of the drivel that has been posted on this thread in intolerance of Christians masquerading as "tolerance of all cultures". As a group we are tolerated as poorly as telemarketers. But that is understandable given the influences that people have today. A Christian has to be tolerant of the rest of the world, but the rest of the world is intolerant by default to a Christian. The game sounds out of order from the description. Killing a non-Christian is wrong if the only reason for killing them is their faith. I fully support Walmart's decision to not sell it, although I doubt it's for the violence factor (seeing as many other violent games are sold without a problem), but more likely for its weird interpretation of one of the books of the Bible.
German web law is different. They have some very weird laws when it comes to publishing a link to another site, from what I understand of it, if you do it without their permission you can be in trouble.
Hat trick isn't really the same. But close enough for anyone that hasn't a clue about baseball. Go Tigers!
UK expat in Michigan regards.
It is bloody ridiculously obvious that someone that needs a job also has bad credit. Like that smart-arse just-out-of-college twonk that advertises a credit report on some of the cable channels. "This is my credit score, aren't I great?" Yeah sure, your daddy paid for you to go through college and you have a great job now. Your credit score is fantastic. Let's see you get laid off the Friday before you were to close on buying your first home, having sunk all your savings into the preliminary costs. Let's see you out of work for a year, unable to make catchup payments on your mortgage because the last mortgage company screwed up your escrow when they refinanced you and just sold it on with an empty balance and your taxes are due. And now the mortgage company offers you this fine and dandy repayment plan to help you catch up $1000 which just so happens to go on your credit report as three late payments. And they didn't tell you that little snippet of information. Everyone is so quick to use the credit report AGAINST you when they want an excuse to not hire you, or can't be bothered to hire someone to actually READ the hundreds of resumes every decent job attracts these days. Maybe if every company had someone read all these resumes or meet most of them for a preliminary interview to get a "feel" for the person, or even cared about anything else but numbers, half the companies in this world would not be in the crap state they are in. If a company was hiring me but didn't hire me because of a bad credit check, I would be happy. Cos I don't want to work for a company that only looks at the numbers. I want to work for a company that looks at ME.
There's no border between Austria and the Oktoberfest. It's not exactly a lifetime pilgrimage to hit the Hacker Pschorr tent for the average Kärntner or wherever the heck this guy was from. That, and there's a Bierfest in every town at this time of year. So the point was valid. Which is more than can be said for the Sound of Music reference. The film was never dubbed into German, so it is almost unknown in the German speaking world, including the country it was filmed in. Also its strong Nazi theme would make about 1/4 of the movie censored under current German law. Not sure if the Austrians have the same law, but without the Germans it's like trying to sell a Region 1 DVD English version of a movie banned in the US.
I agree. I have no problem with commercials for products I can use or want to use. If they build a market research module into new TiVo firmware updates that allows me to check yes to beer commercials, fast food, movies, etc., and to say no to dieting, financial services, and feminine hygiene products - perhaps with a limit of a percentage of commercials I MUST say yes to - I think we will see a decline in the "WHY DID YOUR LAST DIET FAIL" TV advertising market and everyone else will be happy.
The poster is obviously basing his opinion on the so-called "BBC America". A channel owned and operated by Discovery with rights to use the BBC label. Benny Hill and Cash in the Attic fills about half the schedule. Check it out. Sadly the Beeb does nothing to stop its name from being tarnished in this way. Just like Hershey's selling its own chocolate in a Cadbury's wrapper. It's not what it says on the tin! Ditto to those who said they would stop watching ABC or any channel that force feeds commercials. I still have the OFF button.
Meh.
He and I differ on a lot of issues.
Sorry that should read (Christian!=Geek) above. Should use "Preview" more.