Sigh, replying to an AC, but...

It is the land of laws indeed, except the court in this case ruled against those laws, not in favor or "according" to them. Had you actually RTFA'd, you'd have seen that California has consumer protection laws that ban this sort of practice. All the lower court rulings upheld California's state laws. AT&T continued to push it higher and higher to get their favored ruling. The Supreme Court most certainly did have plenty of latitude in the law's interpretation, as their ruling was that the Federal Arbitration Act takes precedence over California's own state laws.

Yes, this is yet another ruling that very explicitly overrides the sovereignty of states' rights in favor of federal. In fact, quoted right there in TFA, is Justice Breyer's dissenting opinion that, quote "[R]ecognition of that federalist ideal, embodied in specific language in this particular statute, should lead us to uphold California's law, not to strike it down."

But the erosion of states' rights and sovereignty is certainly nothing new, particularly to California itself. The application of federal interstate trafficking laws to medicinal marijuana grown and sold entirely within the state of California was another huge example of the Supreme Court's willingness to trample state sovereignty.

Actually I use no data, and have no data plan at all. I certainly wouldn't be on PAYG if I needed lots of data, I'd just be screwing myself over going that route.

And people who simply use a phone so rarely (but need the available-anywhere nature of cellular when they do need to make that phone call) that PAYG is as much as ten times cheaper than post-pay. I pay less than $100 per year for my PAYG service, which gets used mostly when I travel (hence being cellular comes in handy), but I like maintaining service so I have a fixed phone number.

It is not only still in effect, it applies to bring-your-own phones as well, not just the ones they sell you. You can buy your own unlocked smartphone and if they detect it as a smartphone (they do this by IMEI database last I heard, so not all smartphones will get detected) on their network, they will force a data plan on you. They will literally just add the "service" to your account and begin billing you.

Pre-pay customers will be forced into monthly data packages too, or in some cases certain smartphones are blocked from pre-pay entirely and can only be used post-pay.

I would actually like to live without it. I'm one of those rare, freakish people (at least, that seems to be how I'm regarded based on how the plans seem to work..) who would actually like to have a smartphone for local use (to use basically as a PDA as well as a normal phone) but don't need, want, nor care about always-on data access. What data I might use I can already achieve with available wifi networks (like at home), which 99.9% of the smartphones on the market now can utilize.

The problem? I CAN'T choose of my own volition not to pay the exorbitant fee. The big boys (and many of the smaller carriers too) require a data plan if you have a smartphone. AT&T and Verizon will flat out force one on you if you don't sign up for one yourself, and will just begin charging you (how this is legal is beyond me). This applies to both post- and pre-pay customers alike. In fact AT&T will just outright block some smartphones from being on pre-pay at all, period. They require them as post-pay only, with the high-cost data plan attached.

Some of us might actually like to live without a data plan; we just aren't allowed to have what we desire. Do I consider a smartphone a human right? No, of course not. However, I do think it ought to be MY choice to own one without using cellular data on it, if I want to use it that way. Unfortunately that is not a choice readily on offer in this closed "market".

As already pointed out in other comments Wal-Mart just resells T-Mobile network access.

As for MetroPCS, it has already been reported that their "unlimited" internet is actually a subset of Internet access. They actively block streaming sites, VoIP, and other things. In their base plans they even block IM networks and the like. They use a tiered pricing system. Base for SMS, talk, some web and YouTube. Next tier, IMs and e-mails. Next tier, audio downloading/streaming, etc.

The reality is the "deal" is no better than what the big boys are offering, and in some cases significantly worse.

Though unfortunately for many customers (the majority I'm sure), "who they want" is a choice between that ISP or nothing, so it doesn't help them too much to simply tell them hey, they're getting screwed.

However, I would like to see this broken down into smaller areas. By region, or even by city, rather than just the ISP as an overall average. I'd be very, VERY curious to see if the very same ISP performs significantly better in areas where there's some actual competition going on.

That would be nice to wave around "look here, here's measured evidence of what they're doing in areas they don't have to compete".

As an aside, I already kind of see this in my area. I have Time Warner broadband. In my personal location, they're the only choice; even DSL is not available to me. The highest service available is 15Mbps and I average 5-8 most of the time. However, in the sections where Verizon FiOS is also available and competing? Why, suddenly Time Warner's got a 50Mbps service available which averages 35-40! Imagine that..

The worst part of all is she doesn't even have to lose her "experience" to get off dial-up.

AOL has a FREE level of service under their "AOL for Broadband" setup, and you can convert existing dial-up accounts to it. I did this for my grandmother. She was on AOL Dial-up for years and years (she actually used it though, because in her area broadband was unavailable until late 2008). Finally DSL became available and she was happy to jump onto it (finally she could watch those videos the younger grandkids send). So I helped her convert her AOL Dial-up to a free AOL for Broadband account. She kept her e-mail address (and all the remotely stored e-mails), kept her links and shortcuts.

In fact, she kept everything, because you can still use the AOL Client to connect to a AfB account. It just doesn't dial anymore, it merely connects to the account over your existing broadband.

In effect, her "experience" literally did not change. She still loads up the AOL Client, and accesses everything through it. She lost nothing (the free AfB accounts do lose some services compared to paid, but nothing she used or was even aware of). The only difference is now she has 15x the speed of dial-up, and she pays $15/mo for it instead of $25.

Plus I got her a wireless router so she can use her laptop away from the phone line, which to her was probably the most glorious thing of the whole change. :)

Starting to wander a little off-topic here but I couldn't resist one more answer. :) I wasn't aware of the lack of timing requirement, hmm. Certainly our company didn't interpret it that way, so we're actively implementing patches on the month-behind schedule, and this includes our control systems too. We can do this because every server type (data ack, database, human interface server, etc) we have operates in tandem with an identical twin, in standard failover configuration. So we patch the backup, and initiate a controlled failover to it. Problem? Fail back. Works? Patch the other side now. This is how most every SCADA control system I've worked with has operated, even the old 1970s paired-mainframe-based system we had at the company when I first started here.

We are a central control center though, the HQ for utility company as a whole, not an individual generation plant. So our system setup may indeed be very different from the individual plants we operate, so I can't speak for how the plants manage their DCS control systems directly. Our major SCADA upgrades though are on a yearly basis, unlike OS patches.

I see a few people all replied to my air-gap comment, but I'm lazy and don't need to make three replies! ;) I didn't mean to imply it operated in a vaccuum, totally networkless. I merely meant air-gapped away from the Internet specifically. Communications between facilities is indeed vital, it's just that going the Internet route to achieve that is flat out "wrong" and really, I think should be completely banned, by regulation or otherwise.

We do indeed have inter-facility communications all over the place, to all of our various power plants we operate and control, to all our individual substations, all that stuff. However, it's done via private networks. We have our own microwave communications system licensed throughout the state and probably 90% of our communications to our assets is via this. The rest is through dedicated leased lines. We also communicate realtime with the state's central control authority, and that's done via a private frame relay circuit that THEY actually had installed at our facility (along with their equipment) because they actually require this from all utilities under their authority, to communicate to them. They did it right, basically.

Security and vulnerability assessment used to be this poor, but that has undergone significant changes, particularly in this decade. I can't speak for all vendors, but the one we use has security testing, vulnerability assessment, and full patch updates implemented as a standard part of their maintenance contract with their customers.

They have an internal process to verify all patches on the systems they support their software on (RHEL, SuSE, Windows Server 2003, 2008, Windows XP and Vista, with Windows 7 certification coming) and ensure they do not break the SCADA servers or clients, and they release this information to their customers relatively quickly (we usually are about one month behind, implementing patches that've been vouched safe within about 30 days of the patch release, but this process is faster for zero-day and other such critical things).

They do not "assume" anything for their customers. However they do strongly encourage air-gap, and frankly so would I. A SCADA system controlling the power grid should never have an Internet connection. It should never need one. If it must have this, you have something seriously wrong with your design.

Furthermore, I would add that recent (within the last two to three years) updates to CIP and NERC compliance specifications actually require patches to be kept up to date, and also require you to full document the fact that you have patched your servers and workstations. If you have not applied a patch, you must have documentation explaining why (this is why our vendor has their patch vouching program, so you have documentation on why they said don't install something). There are very heavy fines for not implementing this, and can even lead to certification revocation, which means you can't do business.

They're talking about the master/control side of things, the main servers and the operator consoles that people sit at and view indications, and control things. That is where Windows is often run. Embedded devices to this day remain highly proprietary in SCADA systems, though we are seeing more Linux-based embedded devices now.

The server end though is very often a Windows shop. However, forms of *nix are not uncommon at all either and in fact UNIX types used to be the norm for servers in SCADA, but that's been going away for quite a while now. I'd say it's about 50/50 these days between Windows and *nix. Most of the *nix stuff is now AIX or some flavor of Linux (RHEL being the big one). That's on the server side. The actual consoles where the operators sit are about 90% Windows though, if not higher, and that's most likely where you're going to see this virus come into play in the first place because of some stupid user plugging in an infected USB device.

Though a proper SCADA shop should have their SCADA system locked down. We certainly do. All USB ports are secured and thumbdrives are not allowed, and disabled from being attached. An operator that can just walk up and stick a USB drive onto a console is a big, big no-no.

It really depends on where you look, to be honest, and surprisingly the state of New York isn't necessarily all that huge as you might think. It's not even ranked second or third in energy usage.

To add to your perspective, the state of Texas produces and consumes--by a wide margin for both--far more electrity than any other state or territory in the United States. Full summer peaks can reach average state-wide usages of around 97GW.

That's especially impressive to me considering the Texas grid is almost isolated, so it can't easily call in outside power from other states like New York can.

I'm sorry if my being financially responsible is offensive "cheapass" to you. Though I guess you missed the part where I said "PAYG works well for me" because I actually can perform simple math and figure costs.

No, as a matter of fact I'm paying vastly less now (and I'm paying quarterly, I might add, not monthly) than I ever was on a monthly service. There is no monthly service currently offered to me that is less than, or even equal to, what I pay right now.

I don't even have a shitty phone, either. I bought my own, unbranded retail handset with the features and things I wanted.

Some of us just happen to have different needs, that don't always include using a phone much. I use may 20, 25 minutes of airtime per month. However I have found it useful to at least have a cell phone available to me, so PAYG works just fine, and I'm not "getting raped" by the cell company. At least, not any more than I would be if I were on their monthly service.

Less, in my case, in fact.

On most networks, if you're using prepay or pay-as-you-go, ANY airtime costs you money. Including checking your own voicemail.

I very rarely get calls or use my phone, so PAYG works well for me; however, in the rare instances I have a voicemail I'll actually use a landline phone if one is available to call my number and check my messages, rather than spend money calling voicemail from my phone.

Hell, some people were lucky if they even got shitty service. My grandmother's really getting into the whole technology thing with gusto, and was after HDTV and high-speed internet. Guess what? Charter did not offer either option to her entire town (a close-in, well-established suburb of Dallas). In fact, they had no plans to EVER offer either one in "that market" as they put it. Suddenly I realized why so very, very many houses around there had sprung up satellite dishes.

She even went up to the Charter office, and the girl that she talked to there actually said she was telling customers to get satellite. So that's what my grandmother did. She'd been a Charter customer literally since they became available in her area, even before they ever went public. Decades. Not anymore. She's a happy DirecTV customer now, with all her HDTV and her DVR. Loving it.

She got AT&T DSL too, not the greatest choice but it's pleased her.

Looking around at all the other dishes in the area (a lot of them are DISH network, I notice, which is owned by AT&T, so probably a lot of DSL customers too), it's not at all hard to see that Charter is hemorrhaging customers in that market, and I have little doubt that it is by far not the only place where they're making such stupid, asinine decisions that are forcing customers to leave them in order to get the service they clearly want.