Richard Bennett - Slashdot User

Comment Wildly exaggerated (Score 1) 77

by Richard Bennett on Sunday October 06, 2019 @04:16PM (#59276396) Attached to: Cable Companies Use Hidden Fees To Raise Prices 24% a Month

The triple play plan I have from Comcast includes gigabit Internet, HBO, and phone with free long distance. It was advertised at $170/month and my bill is $193. The $23 increase is $15 dollars in taxes and franchise fees and $8 added by Comcast to cover the current fees they pay for access to local programming and regional sports networks. The offer price is guaranteed for two years and the programming fees are separated from it because they can vary year-by-year depending on how greedy the content distributors are. This $8 increase raises my bill by 4%, so the Consumer Reports study has some problems. Chiefly, these come from including equipment rental fees that consumers can easily avoid by buying their own modems, routers, and DVRs (as I do.)

The claim that this $8 fee was hidden from me is absurd. When I upgraded to gigabit a few months ago, the agent walked me through every add-on to the quoted $170 price on the web site as well as every discount I get for bundling and owning my own gear.

The purpose of the CR story - and its echo by Brodkin the Troll - is to win support for government-owned networks and random regulations such as net neutrality, and to turn consumer attention away from the privacy abuses Internet users suffer at the hands of monopolists Google, Facebook et al.

You're being played.

Submission + - The Wrong Way to Weaponize Social Media (foreignaffairs.com)

Submitted by BorgiaPope on Saturday December 25, 2010 @06:16PM

BorgiaPope writes: NYU's Clay Shirky, in the new issue of Foreign Affairs, calls the U.S. government's approach to social media "dangerous" and "almost certainly wrong," as in its favoring Haystack over Freegate. The Political Power of Social Media claims that the freedom of online assembly — via texting, photo sharing, Facebook, Twitter, humble email — is more important even than access to information via an uncensored Internet. Countering Malcolm Gladwell in the New Yorker, Shirky looks at recent uprisings in the Philippines, Moldova, and Spain to make his point that, instead of emphasizing anti-censorship tools, the U.S. should be fighting Egypt's recent mandatory licensing of group-oriented text-messaging services.

Submission + - If the FCC had regulated the Internet (slate.com) 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 25, 2010 @05:20PM

An anonymous reader writes: A counterfactual history of the internet, but one that is all too plausible. Unfortunately, I can see this happening under the new "Net Neutrality".

Submission + - UK Banks Attempt to Censor Academic Publication (lightbluetouchpaper.org)

Submitted by on Saturday December 25, 2010 @07:42AM

An anonymous reader writes: Representatives of the UK banking industry have sent a take-down notice (PDF link) to Cambridge University, demanding that they censor a student's webpage as well as his masters thesis. The banks' objection is that the information contained in the report might be used to exploit a vulnerability Chip and PIN system, used throughout Europe and Canada for credit and debit card payments. The system was revealed to be fundamentally flawed earlier this year, as it allowed criminals to use a stolen card with any PIN. Cambridge University has resisted the demands and has sent a response to the bankers explaining why they will keep the page online.

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