A Culture of Greed

I'm extremely disturbed by recent articles I've read about cable providers. Verizon and bellsouth want to double charge for internet. They already charge the user and now they want companies like google to pay also. They say in return they will give preferential treatment to the big companies that are paying. I have no idea what that means and I don't care. Internet access is already ridiculously expensive for what we get in this country. Our broadband is utter crap when compared to certain other countries and we pay through the nose for it. Why on earth should ISPs get to charge twice?

I just finished an extraordinarily annoying article at the New York Times about how Yahoo (reviled for ratting out a Chinese blogger whose currently rotting behind bars) and AOL (reviled for, well being AOL) are going to start charging companies to deliver email. That's right, instead of stripping the email and sending it to the junk mail or eating it completely, for a fee they'll make sure they deliver the mail, something they're supposed to do already! UGH.

All right, so again, AOL already charges for the access in the first place and Yahoo has ads everywhere so what the hell?

And in another twist Comcast, my own ISP and cable TV provider, is inserting ads in their on demand program. Some bigwig was whinging because he gave away millions of dollars of on demand films and programs last year and had no ads in any of it. HELLOOOOOO! I pay for cable to avoid advertisements. And I pay a pretty premium for on demand. I am currently paying $125 a month for my cable, internet and TV and film channels. That's a huge amount of money. How dare he say he gave away anything at all?

Now he's going to collect for ads for something I'm paying an arm and a leg for. I keep thinking it's time to stop being so attached to my comcast email address and look for another company.

The thing is I figure it's sort of okay for me to pay that much for my cable since I was paying to commute and now I telecommute so I'm not so upset about the bills, it's the sheer greed and effentry of acting like we're getting something for nothing when we're paying enough to feed an entire family in certain countries. Seriously, too damn annoyed to make any more sense. Hopefully you get the gist.

On the good news front Cullen fixed my w and Crystal Steel started a quote of the day program at agentoasis. W00t!