Handful
of Gimme
 There's
been a lot of unhappy noise along the inter-tubes
lately as various ISP's have announced they're
instituting data caps as a way of penalizing
the rowdy 20% of users who hog most of the
available bandwidth. If you happen to go over
your allotted amount you can be charged about
$10 or so for each additional 50 gigabytes.
People are outraged.
They're also stupid.
The biggest scam in the digital world, which
no one seems to care about, is phone
texting. As you already know,
if you don't have an unlimited plan the telcos
will
charge
you 10-20
cents to send a text message and 10-20 cents
to receive one. Know how much it costs them
to
manage this
flow of data?
Nothing. Or
as close to nothing as you can statistically
get.
You see, the text message you've so tastefully
crafted for a loved one, such as "Ur da
bmb! LOLROTFL", travels along a sort of
buffer called the control channel. This is
normal chatter
between your phone company and your cell phone
and it occurs regularly throughout the day.
(It
probably includes the GPS data that tracks
your location,
but that's another rant.)
Years ago some bright spark
in the technical department figured
out
a way
to send text messages in this buffer and some
even brighter spark in Marketing figured out
a way to make money off of it. Lots of money.
My math here is going to be a bit inexact but
50 gigabytes of texting will cost you about
$1.3 million dollars at 20 cents per text.
Your thumbs would have fallen off long before
you
reached
50
megabytes
but you get the picture.
In an ideal world the telephone companies should
have said "Hey, here's a free texting
service. Knock yourselves out. Just remember
who makes
it all possible at the end of every month when
you write the check. Capiche?"
As I'm unabashedly misanthropic you probably
won't be surprised to learn that I don't text,
and
I
nicely tell everyone
that
sends
them
to
me to
knock
it
off. The
telephone is a technological marvel and it
works perfectly
fine as a communication
device, much better than a glorified telegraph
machine. So do us all a favor and quit lining
the pockets of these greedy telco
scum,
unless
you happen
to be
as ignorant as they think you are.
BTW, you might think I'm being a bit harsh,
and I am, but consider this... for the past
fifteen
years you've
been donating
a
tidy
little
stipend
to
the telcos every time you pay your phone
bill, money that was supposed to go towards
building a
national, high-capacity
fiber-optic
system. It's billions of dollars later and
all we got for our money is data caps. Can
you hear me now?
=Lefty=
------------
 February
10, 2011: "We're going to have a relentless focus on creating jobs." -
John Boehner.
So far the list of Republican accomplishments for 2011 is:
(1) Attempted curtailing of abortion rights.
(2) Attempted defunding of Planned Parenthood.
(3) Attempted defunding of NPR.
(4) Investigating Muslims.
(5) Declaring English as America's Official Language.
(6) Reaffirming "In God We Trust".
(7) Challenging AARP's tax-exempt status.
(8) Approved defunct funding for failed
religious schools.
(9) Attempt to destroy Medicaid.
Nope. No job creation here. Move along. Move along.
------------
 And
what lies is Fox News spewing lately? How about misrepesenting Martin
Luther King, Jr.'s support
for labor rights.
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