Cha-Ching

I know I crap on cable internet a lot... now I have more ammunition. However, DSL will probably follow cable's lead.

I've been metered from day one with my DSL, 5Gb down 1Gb up per month, then I get charged for going over. Only hit it twice for about $2 each time...

!!%#$@)#$&*@#$*&(@#$*(

There, I got it off my chest...what a bunch of money-grubbing aholes...if they aren't getting enough of my cash already. I didn't have a phone in Germany for the same stinkin' reason...

I've been metered from day one with my DSL, 5Gb down 1Gb up per month

How much do you pay for that crappy DSL service?

The one thing that occurs to me after reading this is:

How much bandwidth is wasted on things like pop-up ads and banners? Okay, not much when compared to people downloading warez and MP3s and stuff, but for "joe blow surfer"...

Seems to me that something like this could be the first domino in the death of internet advertising. Software like AdSubtract would see a surge in popularity, I think.

How much do you pay for that crappy DSL service? ]

$69.99/mo yeah I'm getting ripped off, (384/128 line) at first it was a good deal back in 1999 when it first rolled out around here. Now, no one really offers DSL that is worth a [censored] in Austin and when I checked with Speakeasy they said SBC doesn't make it easy to switch without either
A) having downtime of up to 6 weeks or
B) getting a new phone line and get it qualified for service through Speakeasy

So I haven't done anything about it. My connection just works and my bill is auto debited so I don't think about it much...
Cable is not an option, we agreed to hate each other with a passion...

Speaking of ads and warez sites.... The newest version of the Google Toolbar (something I use anyway) has an "experimental" setting for disabling popups that occur when unloading a page. It is fantastic.

I would take the downtime and get better service. Not only are you paying $20 more than me, but you're getting metered. Just my $0.02.

Hmm. how long until the first law-suits start appearing for unsolicited IP packets? I've denied 43000 packets in 3 days. Are these going to count on my bill?

I got my DSL hooked up last year in March when Verizon first rolled into town with it. A local ISP had already offered it, but I was willing to take a slight speed sacrifice to get a better price. Since I jumped on the boat right away last year, and committed for a year, I think I have a reasonable price ($39.99/month - 600/90). They have even changed the available speed options & pricing (mine doesn't exist anymore), but I still get what I ordered last year.

If they change things such that I can't continue on this way, I will be severely ticked off. I'm already mad about another dilemma with my damned Dell.

Comparing DSL to Cable really isn't fair as a general statement. For example, nowhere does that article talk about my cable provider, and I have heard no rumors of them moving to metered service any time soon. (I know a few install techs). DSL here is decent, but price gouging and oudated technology thanks to Qwest make it one of the worst choices here. They still can't figure out how to send digital internet signals over digital phone line networks.

Not to mention Scott Adams' adage: Remember that the people who work for the cable companies are the people who couldn't get jobs at the phone company.

Don't buy a dell. I am a certified Dell Tech for the military and they are crap. Maybe it as something to do with the fact they they were never meant for use such as what the military uses and abuses them for, but nonetheless there is an extremely high failure rate among the laptops especially. Dells only saving grace is that they overnight parts to us.

I've certainly had my run-ins with Dell problems since our company uses them exclusively.

I had DSL at an old Army base in Winnipeg last summer and was perfectly satisfied with it. I hate cable companies with a passion so it was an obvious choice. When I moved here to Windsor last fall, lo and behold DSL wasn't available in my area (I live downtown!) so I was forced to go with cable. I pay $45 a month plus $10 to "rent" the modem, since I am not a cable subscriber...I think I may have to look at other options if these new charges creep in...

I'm still angry from reading that story BTW

I've been metered here too from day one. : 10gig DL, 1.5 gig UL. I've got a cable connection now, but it was the same with my ADSL connection.
AND, though the cable provided 4Mbit DL, 128Kbit UL (effective speeds : +500 Kbps, and 15 Kbps UL), I think I'll go back to my ADSL.

See, the service of this cable just plain sucks. Sure, it's about 4-5 times faster (in optimal conditions) than my former DSL account, BUT :
Their mailserver is down a couple of times per week ;

their phone support is practically non-existant (I once couldn't get to my mail for THREE WEEKS because it was too hard for them to provide me with a new password - the old password just stopped working one day. No explanation, no apologies, no nothing. Luckily my DSL mail account still worked) ;

they raised their prices by 20% last month, just like that ("sorry sir, there's a crisis in the IT sector") ;

they force you to pay auto debited (well, force...If you don't then you can add another $15 to the bill) ;

they insist on using a proxy on which some sites choke ;

they canned their telephony service (since it's not profitable enough for them - but this was the MAIN reason why I switched, 'cause I was happy with my DSL account) ;

they block the ports on which most file sharing utilities work. (I don't mind that facs per se, I DO mind the fact that they try to hide the fact that they do. I has cost me a lot of phone calls to actually get somebody on the line who admitted to it).

The more I think about it, the more pissed I become. I believe I'll give my old DSL provider a call tomorrow. I still got my DSL modem and filter, so the switch should be smooth.

Hmm. how long until the first law-suits start appearing for unsolicited IP packets?

Hmmm, that's interesting.
Playing devil's advocate for a moment.... Are they really unsolicited or did you do something (like open a web page) that made your PC request those packets?

Where I am in OR I get Verizon DSL 768/128 for right at $35(tax included) + $20 for my ISP. Gotten great service (knock on wood) and been very happy with that--once they got me hooked up, which took close to two months. ymmv.

Good thing I've already downloaded about as much porn as I could ever want

In reply to:

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I've been metered from day one with my DSL, 5Gb down 1Gb up per month, then I get charged for going over. Only hit it twice for about $2 each time...

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Great Ceasers ghost...I pull down more than 5Gb a month with 28.8! And here I've been cursing the lack of high speed access in the area - my luck, we'll finally get something here and it'll be metered.

Is there some kind of software that can track you much I upload and download over a period of time. I am curious as to what I am using. 5G sounds like alot to me but I really have no idea what I actually use.

You want NetStat Live from AnalogX.com. Check out the rest of the stuff on this site. Way cool, and FREE.

I'm sure that works well for a single machine, but I use MRTG to monitor that sort of thing. Of course, that assumes that your gateway has an SNMP agent on it capable of returning data about the amount of traffic sent over its interfaces. Most real operating systems do. Don't know about MSWindows, though.

hey, anybody want to guess what I pay for my cable internet each month???

anyone??

$ 0.00. yep, that's right. And no I am not stealing and I would be more than happy to pay the bill.

If only AT&T would get their crap together and remember to bill me.

If only AT&T would get their crap together and remember to bill me.

Hey, I've had that too! First my cable company decided not to bill me for 6 months. Then they came up with the total amount the seventh month.

Great fun!

I signed up with Comcast three months ago and have yet to receive a bill. I fully expect to receive a massive bill in a few months, but I'm hoping they kinda forget... This never happens though.

Actually, this is very interesting. Let's say I run a Google search for, say, "Jessica Alba." I click on the first link, which opens up a page with sixteen pop-up ads. I didn't actually request those popup ads, they were forced upon me by some jackoff who wants to make money from advertisers. However, it's costing ME bandwidth, which, under this draconian metering policy, will end up costing me more money.

Looks like bullshit, smells like bullshit... Hey, whaddya know, it IS bullshit!

Granted, it's quite hard to fill up a large bandwidth cap with just popup ads, and it's more likely that Usenet/IRC/KaZaA traffic is going to be the real culprit... But I can see room for disputes over who's responsible for my bandwidth being used. People can send me email attachments of any size and because of how POP3 works, I have no way to know I do or don't want the file until after it's downloaded... Then you get all these programs with advertising windows and phoning home to check for updates, automatically download new versions, whatever... There's a lot of bandwidth that gets used without your express knowledge...

Yes... MSWindows has an SNMP agent... you have to install it though... Just curious, have ever used Cricket?

I know it's not cable, but my phone company hasn't charged me a dime for long distance calls for the last two years. We're fearing that as well.

And this is in a house with three college students who have plenty of phone calls back home to make

This whole thing with AT&T not billing us has turned into a real joke at my house. Here is the story...(like you care)

1. Decided to get "digital phone" and cable internet in one.
2. One week into the service and I said to myself "I wonder what would happen if I plugged the cable into the TV?"
3. Free Cable TV. (didn't ask for it, order it, or want it for that matter)
4. Realized that we are not recieving bills for local phone service provided by AT&T, but we are recieving bills for internet access.
5. 6 months pass.
6. Local phone service dies in my house for 3 days. (for those interrested, in order for a company to be called a "local phone service provider", the phone service must be up for 99.9% of the time)
7. Local phone service fixed, after many issues which will not be discussed here, accept to say that they thought we were just signing up for service even though we had been at the house for about 8 months.
8. A month passes
9. Started recieving local phone service bill. (never had to pay the previous 9 months)
10. Stopped recieving cable internet bill.
11. A year passes.
12. Still enjoying our free cable and internet.

for those interrested, in order for a company to be called a "local phone service provider", the phone service must be up for 99.9% of the time

I am very interested in this statement. Is that per customer or per area? Verizon disconnected my line (no dialtone) for 2 days last month. What is the penalty to them?

People can send me email attachments of any size and because of how POP3 works, I have no way to know I do or don't want the file until after it's downloaded.

I agree with everything you said, Tony, but I wanted to point out that POP3 isn't the culprit in that case, it's your mail client software.

I use a program called PopTray to check my mail, and it will show me the message headers (and also indicate whether or not the message has a file attachment) without downloading the whole message. Most of the time, I can tell if the messages contain desirable content just from a quick scan of the from/to/subject fields. I can then delete any of the messages from the server before launching my e-mail client and actually starting a download.

Isn't bureaucracy grand? (for those who benefit from it!)

I'm sure for every one of you, there's three schmucks who are overpaying due to screwed up billing or bait-and-switch tactics. So enjoy it while it lasts!

Yeah I know of such programs, but the POP3 spec doesn't really let you grab just the header. I think the LIST command just lists message #'s and sizes, I think your program needs to at least begin message retrieval to see the headers, at which point it can always close the socket once the message data starts coming over. But most clients don't support anything like this.

IMAP is a different story, of course.

How do you turn it on ? (I can't find an option for that in the toolbar options)

Are you sure you have the latest version? I think it might be a beta...not sure though...

I went to Google and tried to download the latest version, it said I already had it.

Megan on The Screen Savers says:

Get the Google Toolbar's new features

• If you already have the Google Toolbar, you'll have to uninstall and reinstall to get these extra features.
• After you've reinstalled, click the Google icon on your toolbar and choose Toolbar Options.
• Scroll down to the heading "Experimental Features" at the bottom of the page.
• Click the Experimental Features link.
• Select the features you'd like to add.
• Click OK.

Ha, that's exactly where I heard about it too, Rob

Yeah, that show is not half bad...

Too bad Comcast doesn't give the Philly area TechTV.

Yeah, I'm at the folks' house right now with sattelite. I severely doubt that the Williamsburg area Cox Cable will carry TechTV on their basic package. Hell, the people around here hardly know what a computer is.

And yeah, the Screen Savers isn't half bad. Sometimes I wonder who it's aimed at, though. I mean, at one point they're giving their little tips like "you can delete that icon with the arrow on it, because it's just a shortcut", then Leo shows you how to make your own Perl script. Huh?

Sometimes I wonder who it's aimed at, though. I mean, at one point they're giving their little tips like "you can delete that icon with the arrow on it, because it's just a shortcut", then Leo shows you how to make your own Perl script. Huh?

Good point. I think that's part of the show's charm, it runs the gamut. And they handle the softball topics with the same style and ease as they handle the hardcore stuff.