Really Misleading Ads From Broadband Providers 256
Bourdain writes "Gizmodo has put together a good compilation of the — seemingly almost criminally — misleading (largely plain wrong) advertising from our favorite local monopolies. My personal favorite is from AT&T which states you need 3mbps to use social networking sites like Facebook."
Totally misleading (Score:3, Informative)
My personal favorite is from AT&T which states you need 3mbps to use social networking sites like Facebook
That would be pretty funny if it were true, but no, it doesn't actually say that.
Try writing a real article instead of just completely making shit up.
The little chats even say "good for:" or "ideal for:".
The checkboxes clearly mean "if you want to do these sorts of things you probably want this amount of bandwidth", not "lesser connections are incapable of this".
It doesn't take a genius.
Re:No kidding! (Score:3, Informative)
Any slower and it'll take forever for the four videos, two slideshows, background music, and flash animation to load.
Thats myspace your thinking of.
Remember when a T1 was broadband? (Score:3, Informative)
When I got started, 20+ years ago, a few large universities had T1's. That was by definition broadband - 1.5 mbps. Smaller schools often only had 2400 baud or in some cases faster telebit modems to hook up to the backbones.
In the 90's things started taking off and it was expected that every institution, except the very smallest, would have a T1. The biggest ones were hooked up by a T3. By the late 90's a few wealthy, well-connected individuals had their own private T1 at home.
And today? 1.5mbps does not meet most definitions of broadband. It's the backwaters. Isn't that amazing?
crimnals (Score:3, Informative)
[...] — seemingly almost criminally — [...]
If not misinterpreting in Canada it is criminal offence. To quote competitionbureau [competitionbureau.gc.ca] :
The false or misleading representations and deceptive marketing practices provisions of the Competition Act contain a general prohibition against all materially false or misleading representations. They also prohibit making performance representations which are not based on adequate and proper tests, misleading warranties and guarantees, false or misleading ordinary selling price representations, untrue, misleading or unauthorized use of tests and testimonials, bait and switch selling, double ticketing and the sale of a product above its advertised price. Further, the promotional contest provisions prohibit contests that do not disclose required information.
[...]
The Competition Act provides criminal and civil regimes to address false or misleading representations. Under both regimes, the Act prohibits the making, or the permitting of the making, of a representation to the public, in any form whatever, that is false or misleading in a material respect.
Re:Facebook really should sue them (Score:3, Informative)
An example would be you accidentally hit the 'Save' button for a document after making a major error such as blowing away important text..
I know for a fact that ctrl+Z still works in Kate, and I've not yet run into a limit with how far back it will go -- but I assume you're talking about office documents. Just tried it in OpenOffice, and it works the same way -- "save" in no way clears the "undo" chain.
Then you panic and exit the program... go back to My Documents, to re-open the file, only to find the file is still blank.
Why would you do that? The kind of users I'm talking about would most likely look for a way to fix it inside the editor itself.
Accidentally dragging files to some folder, and forgetting about them.. accidentally dragging folders to the trash...
On KDE, this is mitigated by the fact that the drag and drop pops up a menu asking whether you want to move, copy, or cancel. But I don't think that qualifies -- the damage isn't irreversible until you empty the trash, which will give you a very definite "are you sure" message.
But may favorite is... acidentally visiting a website with a drive-by malware downloader, or downloading and trying to install a file with malware undetectable by any common antimalware.
That's fair -- though most malware does show a popup. So, most of these can be mitigated with, again, "read popups".
Cox Powerboost (Score:1, Informative)
Re:12 mpbs for online games!!! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:BT (Score:3, Informative)
For any fixed location computer there is no reason not to use Ethernet, it is faster and more reliable[1]. The only reasons to ever use Wifi are for portable devices, such as laptops, where the cords would be problematic, or if you are not able to run cable a fixed device in an acceptable fashion.
[1] Especially if you have separated your router (which is probably also your DHCP server) from the AP, as that keeps the wired computers running when the AP decides to crash, as all home APs have a tendency to do, since they are badly memory constrained. Consumer wired-only routers tend to have similar RAM, but don't need to deal with quite a bit of the overhead of managing wireless connection, so they should be more stable.
Perfectly reasonable (Score:3, Informative)
Most of those suggestions are perfectly reasonable if you want an optimal online experience. If you can't tolerate hiccups when streaming HD video, something that many consumers would call their ISPs to complain about, then yes, you are going to pay an arm and a leg for that convenience. The same goes for uploading albums of high megapixel images from your cameras - sharing pictures. You are going to pay an arm and a leg for that upload bandwidth.
It's not as though we're talking about medications here. It's not as though this is predatory. Anyone with this kind of money to dump just to avoid hiccups when streaming HD video of Dances with Douches from Hulu.com, but can't be bothered to do even minimal consumer research, is going to get exactly what they deserve. Consider it a tax on ignorance. It's a public good.
Re:Facebook bloat (Score:4, Informative)
Http://lite.Facebook.com
Re:I love some of their plans (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I love some of their plans (Score:2, Informative)
"Max"
"Max Plus"
"Max Turbo"
Do these people even know what the word "maximum" means?
THe same marketing genuses that think that "small" doesnt exist anymore:
Me: "... and a small fry."
McWorker: "I'm sorry, we dont have small. Only Medium, Large, and Extra Large."
Me:"um, you cant technincally have a medium without a small as medium generally means 'in the middle'. Since there is nothing smaller than a medium, medium cant really be a medium size and is really a small."
McWorker: *confused look*
Me: "fine, gimme a goddamned "medium" then!
(And of course when I get my order, the paper envelope that is holding my fry is the same size it was 20 years ago when it was a small.)
Re:I love some of their plans (Score:2, Informative)
They do the same thing here in the US. It's pretty ridiculous.
Related: (NSFW) http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/Extreme_Advertising [encycloped...matica.com]
Re:No kidding! (Score:3, Informative)
Out of curiosity, have you ever actually visited Facebook? It's actually very bandwidth-conservative as far as sites go. You'll never see more than one video per-page, nor will you ever encounter background music, and I have no idea if it can even do Slideshows, but if it can you have to click-through to them.
In short, you're full of crap.
Re:0_0 (Score:2, Informative)
I see two main culprits these days similar to what you mention:
1: A lot of web pages are brimming with ads, usually Flash based stuff, which can make a page go from a few kilobytes into the megabytes. Since pages tend to render only after the ads are slung, the whole page ends up dependant on the ad servers, which are usually at the absolutely lowest bandwidth possible, so even though a site may have a fast connection, connections are dependant on a third party server.
2: The shell games with throttling some ISPs do.
So, what is a good solution? The first can be done on a single platform using Privoxy or a similar ad-dropping proxy for general use. Browsers can also have AdBlock or a similar add-on installed which can dynamically update from a service like EasyList. You can also block at the router (Tomato has functionality for this) ad sites so every machine on your LAN benefits.
Dealing with the second is harder. You will need to find a decent VPN service that has encrypted tunneling (PPTP, OpenVPN, SOCKS, PPP over ssh, pick your poison), and go with that. Another advantage is that if the ISP is using Phorm or some MITM software to inject ads, they are completely locked out, so your web pages won't be tampered with. Of course you can use TOR, but the question is about bandwidth performance, not security, and even though TOR provides good security, a commercial VPN provider provides decent [1] security, and good performance.
[1]: Check your VPN provider out closely. It is better to find they do have a logging policy of a few days for security reasons than find they don't have a policy at all (thus can keep permanent records of what customers do), or that they keep records a lot longer than they really should. You are buying service from them to protect your privacy, not to have another party able to make a behavioral profile on you. Also, it tends to be better to find a VPN provider closer to you net-wise, than one in another country, just to reduce latency.
Re:QWEST where 3 = 2.66 (Score:3, Informative)
You're seeing a 20% ATM cell tax. Because they use ATM to transfer your connection from the DSLAM to the routers. This will happen anytime you use ATM and IP.