Category Archives: Jeers

Last month, Ars Technica wondered aloud why it is that you can't get a CableCARD device very easily. After all, the FCC mandated that cable companies start supporting "digital cable-ready" television sets way back in July. Despite this, both of the major cable box manufacturers don't sell at retail, cable companies haven't trained their staff on CableCARD and digital TV sets with a CableCARD slot are very, very pricey.  The conclusion is that CableCARD's technical limitations mean that cable operators would rather skip it for the Next Big Thing™ to support SDV and 2-way communication right out of the box.

Further confirmation of this comes as TiVo offers up an adapter to allow their CableCARD-ready units to tune in SDV channels, something that they haven't been able to do. Given that most cable providers will be moving to some form of SDV to conserve bandwidth and offer up nearly limitless programming, it seems that CableCARD is a technology headed for the dustbin before it even becomes available.

My personal advice would be to not get too heavily invested in CableCARD unless you get a unit that it specifically upgradeable to support SDV. Even then, it might be worth it to play a game of "wait and see" until the next technology, DCAS, becomes widely available.

The bad news for Vonage just keeps on rolling in. The face of VoIP providers everywhere has reportedly coughed up $80M to make Verizon leave them alone. That's almost a third of their cash on hand, not a pretty picture for a company with high churn rates due to some lacking customer service.

It's only downhill from there. According to a security firm, Vonage could be wide open to line hijacking. Among the key elements cited is a lack of encryption used between their telephone adapter hardware and their VoIP gateways. Combined with weak authentication, it could take as little as a phone number and a name to make Bob Jones of Virgina have his calls ring in Moscow with little indication that anything is wrong.

I've been using Vonage for over three years myself and I can attest to their kind of crappy service. It took me over 4 months to get a simple e-mail problem fixed and about 2 months to get them to swap my primary and secondary numbers (after which they forgot to activate my voice mail box). Despite that, I've been pleased with the service. I am, however, worried that I'll wake up one morning and find I no longer have a dial tone. 

It broke earlier this week that a reporter from the Associated Press had confirmed what we all knew, that Comcast has been blocking people from seeding torrent files. How do they do it? By illegally impersonating your computer to reset the connection, that's how. It's the same method used in China to block websites the government doesn't want you to see.

It gets worse, though. Further testing shows that Comcast is also blocking Gnutella traffic as well as interrupting connections to Lotus Notes. What? How does an e-mail groupware package constitute a threat to the network? The consequences of this have been felt far and wide as telecommuters have become unable to send large attachments, World of Warcraft players can't get necessary software patches and Linux junkies everywhere have to resort to slower methods of getting their ISO files.

Meanwhile, they continue to be Really Evil™  by charging upwards of $1,000 for government wiretaps. Is it any wonder that some folks are so upset that Comcast complain sites (like ComcastMustDie.com) are popping up all over the place?

I'm thinking I might need to change my home phone provider in the not too distant future. Following up on the expensive litigation brought by Sprint and Verizon, Vonage now has to go to court to defend itself against AT&T for alleged patent infringement. It's too early to tell if AT&T's patents are along the lines of Verizon's "we own the Interweb" patent, but my bets are that the prior art defense would play well if Vonage actually has to stones to defend itself instead of rolling over. Then again, history has shown us that Vonage just wants to cough up its lunch money so that the bullies leave it alone.

Seems like Comcast is bumping up rates all over the nation. Chicago, Houston, Seattle, San Francisco and Lancaster, PA have all seen big bumps in pricing from 6.9% to as high as 12.5%. This is on top of a 4.1% increase foisted upon us in January. The company is blaming increased customer service costs; they've hired about 400 more techs and customer service staff. I call it a shameless attempt to use TV revenues to further subsidize their other offerings. How long until the Wasatch Front sees yet another pricing jump?

(Hat tip: The Consumerist)

AT&T wants to turn off your broadband if you say something too mean about them. Just check out the draconian legalese in their ToS:

AT&T may immediately terminate or suspend all or a portion of your Service, any Member ID, electronic mail address, IP address, Universal Resource Locator or domain name used by you, without notice, for conduct that AT&T believes (a) violates the Acceptable Use Policy; (b) constitutes a violation of any law, regulation or tariff (including, without limitation, copyright and intellectual property laws) or a violation of these TOS, or any applicable policies or guidelines, or (c) tends to damage the name or reputation of AT&T, or its parents, affiliates and subsidiaries. (emphasis added)

Wow. So what qualifies? Blogging about an inept customer service agent? A nasty letter to the Better Business Bureau? Perhaps calling their CEO a doody-head? AT&T promised that they wouldn't actually enforce the clause, but that wasn't nearly enough. After heaps of extra criticism for remaining so vague, AT&T said they're in the process of revising the language to remove that threat. We'll see on that one.