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Why I switched from Comcast to AT&T U-Verse

Why I switched from Comcast to AT&T U-Verse

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I’m not a big fan of the politics of the telecommunications companies (particularly with regard to the issue of net neutrality) but I’ve got to have connectivity. Since the days of slow dial-up, I’ve tried them all. I was hopeful about Comcast, but it was nothing but trouble from the start. The experience at the Comcast store yesterday (see the bottom of the post) only cemented my judgment.

  • In my area, Comcast pretty much had a monopoly for broadband services. That made me uncomfortable right away.
  • The service was rather expensive – even bundled – for the value of the features received.
  • The shared neighborhood connection was insufficient.
  • There were often so many errors on the line that service was significantly degraded.
  • My house was wired a long time ago, and there were problems with the setup that Comcast refused to address. I paid several times for their service people to come out and address these problems, but they wouldn’t deal with the root issues.
  • They sent some subcontractor in an unmarked vehicle out in the middle of the night to “upgrade” the street-level connection. Whatever it was, it made things worse. Yet another service call.
  • Suggestions made for improvement were ignored (as far as I can tell).

U-Verse just recently became available in my neighborhood. I must have grilled the salesperson for two hours or more on all the packages, features, possibilities. We are at the very end of the coverage area, so I had concerns about connection speed and reliability. The salesperson was a former real estate developer who had lost the business in the housing crash and was more intelligent and relaxed than is the norm for folks that end up going door to door. I enjoyed the conversation. He did say that I probably wouldn’t be able to get the highest speed, but I was happy with the next level down (12 MB), especially since it wouldn’t be a shared connection as with Comcast.

The technician that came to my house was very professional, and also flexible with regard to what needed to be done. Within a few minutes, he had established that there were several wiring problems, including the fact that there was a splitter on top of another splitter. We came to an agreement about what he would do to address that. He rewired part of the house (and he had the drill as well as all the other equipment on hand). He also set up the upstairs office with two boxes that would talk through the electrical wiring, allowing an ethernet cord to be used. This is great because it would have been difficult to pull another wire up there, and the wireless seems to have trouble reaching up reliably and at top speed. He could tell that I was savvy enough not to need the full technican setup on everything, so we took that charge off to help pay for the other things he was doing. He also made sure that we were actually *receiving* HD.

At the end of his time here, I had three tvs hooked up with their own individual boxes, two desktop computers hooked up, and a notebook computer set up on wireless. The phone was working fine, and I had set up my online options for everything.

Some things I particularly like:

  • The connection is faster, and I don’t have to reload pages in my browser anymore.
  • Each television has its own options settings, including dvr with lots of space to record, and personal channel favorites.
  • When the phone rings, it shows caller ids on the screen. No more getting up to answer robocalls or alumni donation requests.
  • I can set the phone up to ring on my cellphone at the same time (not just call forwarding).
  • I’ve got some 400 channels. I don’t have to pay extra for MSNBC or the Tennis Channel. And sooo many great movie channels! I never had Biography or History or National Geographic before. Yay!
  • I like the feature where it grabs your favorite channels and scrolls little screens on the right. It’s a lot easier than trying to find something through all those channels.
  • Lots of foreign stations to explore.
  • My voicemails can be emailed to me – a service that would only work once in a while with Comcast.

I’m very very happy with the services so far. We’ll see how it goes. There is no contract, and AT&T has good customer service, so it’s not a difficult decision.

The nail on the coffin? I drove to the nearest Comcast location after work yesterday to drop off my modem and box. I arrived at the door, carrying this equipment, at three minutes until six. A man came to the door and told me they were closed. I pointed out that it wasn’t yet six o’clock, and he repeated that they were closed. How rude! Of course, it might not have helped that it was Halloween Friday, and I was dressed as an old, tired poet (complete with deep blue velvet hat), but I drove all the way over there, lugged this equipment to the door before their closing time, and was met with a response that made me verrrrrry angry!!! Whatever you want to say about AT&T, they do have a better sense of customer service than that.

So, bye bye Comcast! I’ll be watching your migrating client base with a big smile on my face. You don’t care – and it shows!

News that Caught My Eye

News that Caught My Eye

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But eventually let it go….

A child diagnosed with autism every 20 minutes? I have to wonder at what point and for what reasons doctors started giving so many vaccines at once anyway. How would they be able to determine which of the vaccines caused a negative reaction if there was a problem? And parents – are adults so cowed by physician authority that that would so easily allow so many shots at one visit? I refused that plan for psychological reasons. One, two – that’s fine. But three, four, five, six? That’s too much for a baby or little child. Ben never had more than two vaccines in a single visit. It’s just too much. I always suspected that so many vaccines at once might have created immune-system overload, too – just too much information at once. The question of preservatives (possibly with mercury?) raised the bar – all the more reason not to create a toxic load.

Here’s an interesting interview about one of my pet peeves. Doesn’t it just make sense that our diet ought not to rely so heavily upon foods that never rot? What about moderation in all things? I favor a varied diet. I tend to use olive oil or butter, not margarine or sprays. I prefer whole milk, and I use real unbleached sugar. I’m not an earthy-crunchy fanatic – I also eat some junk food and some fake food. But don’t offer me any of that non-dairy cream or no-calorie candy. I’ll drink a Coke – but not a diet Coke. I eat what I want – in moderation. I have deep suspicions about what some of the chemicals do to our bodies.

So, President Bush is going to veto the anti-torture bill that has passed both the Senate and the House? I don’t know how Republicans maintain this mythology about how they are the patriotic party…

Job Loss for February Much Higher than the 63,000: The actual employment report suggests “a comprehensive job loss of 113,000 and in terms of dollars earned, a whole lot more.” They’ve been misrepresenting these numbers for a while now. If you lose a professional job and take a part-time position at Walmart or Home Depot, you don’t affect the job numbers at all as far as I can see…

Defense contractor United Technologies has made a sudden buyout offer for the Diebold company, at 66% more than the current stock value. In the face of Diebold’s refusal, United is insisting that the deal will go through in 60 days. “Hmmm. Defense contractor attempts a takeover of the major manufacturer of hackable voting machines with the stated plan of closing the deal before the November national elections. What could their intention possibly be?”

On December 20, 2007, President Bush signed routine postal legislation. In a “Signing Statement”, the President claims Executive Power to search the mail of U.S. citizens inside the United States without a warrant, in direct contradiction of the bill he had just signed. As a people, we seem beyond twitching an eyelash over items like these. Sigh.

Some people are starting to do more than twitch, however. The military recruiting station in Times Square was bombed. The news reports say that the bomber was on a blue 10-speed bike, wearing a hooded sweatshirt and dark pants. I’ve read a lot of theories, but personally I’ve been wondering about whether it might have been an Iraq veteran – no-one else would have more reason, or more skill. The target was pretty specific, with only property damage; in other words, it was a statement, not an attack. There are some efforts to tie the event with Canada border crossing incident in which a backpack containing a picture of Times Square was left behind. I think that’s pushing it… I would be very surprised if it wasn’t an American, but we’ll see how the investigation goes. Meanwhile, start rolling your eyes now. On Fox News (where else?) the infamous Oliver North was given a forum for his opinion on the matter. It’s all Pelosi’s fault. Uh-huh…

Right-wing misogyny is raising its head evident in the latest attempt to control the sexuality of the American female. Amanda Marcotte’s post on The Great Texas Dildo Wars is a must-read. “So this is completely, 100 percent about babies. No misogyny, control issues or wariness of female sexuality has any part to play in this.”

Don’t miss Colbert video on the AT&Treason immunity deal. It’s deliciously fun.

Last, there is the latest Iraq cost sheet:

U.S. military killed in Iraq: 3,973
Number of U.S. troops wounded in combat since the war began: 29,203
Iraqi Security Force deaths: 7,924
Iraqi civilians killed: Estimates range from 81,632-1,120,000

Internally displaced refugees in Iraq: 3.4 million
Iraqi refugees living abroad: 2.2-2.4 million
Iraqi refugees admitted to the U.S.: 3,222

Number of U.S. soldiers in Iraq: 155,000
Number of “Coalition of the Willing” soldiers in Iraq:
February 2008: 9,895
September 2006: 18,000
November 2004: 25,595

Army soldiers in Iraq who have served two or more tours: 74%
Number of Private Military Contractors in Iraq: 180,000
Number of Private Military Contractors criminally prosecuted by the U.S. government for violence or abuse in Iraq: 1
Number of contract workers killed: 917

What the Iraq war has created, according to the U.S. National Intelligence Council: “A training and recruitment ground (for terrorists), and an opportunity for terrorists to enhance their technical skills.”

Effect on al Qaeda of the Iraq War, according to International Institute for Strategic Studies: “Accelerated recruitment”

The bill so far: $526 billion
Cost per day: $275 million
Cost per household: $4,100
The estimated long-term bill: $3 trillion

What $526 billion could have paid for in the U.S. in one year:
Children with health care: 223 million or
Scholarships for university students: 86 million or
Head Start places for children: 72 million

Cost of 22 days in Iraq could safeguard our nation’s ports from attack for ten years.
Cost of 18 hours in Iraq could secure U.S. chemical plants for five years.

Iraqi Unemployment level: 25-40%
*U.S. unemployment during the Great Depression: 25%
70% of the Iraqi population is without access to clean water.
80% is without sanitation.
90% of Iraq’s 180 hospitals lack basic medical and surgical supplies.

79% of Iraqis oppose the presence of Coalition Forces.
78% of Iraqis believe things are going badly in Iraq overall.
64% of Americans oppose the war in Iraq.

No Amnesty for Telecom, Uphold Constitutional Rights

No Amnesty for Telecom, Uphold Constitutional Rights

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“The legislation directly conflicts with the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution, requiring the government to obtain a warrant before reading the e-mail messages or listening to the telephone calls of its citizens, and to state with particularity where it intends to search and what it expects to find. Compounding these wrongs, Congress is moving in a haphazard fashion to provide a “get out of jail free card” to the telephone companies that violated the rights of their subscribers. Some in Congress argue that this law-breaking is forgivable because it was done to help the government in a time of crisis. But it’s impossible for Congress to know the motivations of these companies or to know how the government will use the private information it received from them. And it is not as though the telecommunications companies did not know that their actions were illegal.” – Studs Terkel, New York Times

Tell Congress: No Amnesty for Verizon and AT&T
Bush wants retroactive immunity for the telecom companies to thwart civil liberties lawsuits that threaten to expose his own lawbreaking. If these lawsuits aren’t allowed to go forward, we may never know the extent of the Bush administration’s illegal efforts to spy on American citizens without the required warrants.

“Why is the president of the United States trying to get the telecommunications companies off the hook for their illegal activity? He is supposed to be upholding laws, not encouraging companies to break them. Businesses that break the law should be held accountable. We expect these companies to keep our personal information private, and if they break the law, there should be consequences – not a re-write of the rule book. The House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees wisely rejected the president’s efforts to carry the water for the telecom companies and voted down an amendment that would add telecom amnesty to the bill. Members of Congress should not re-write laws just to get giant companies off the hook. They were elected to represent the American people, not big business.” – Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office

Tell your representatives to only pass a FISA modernization bill that has individualized warrants for people in the United States and NOT to provide telecom companies with immunity for breaking the law.

H.R. 3773, the “RESTORE Act of 2007,” currently being considered by the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees allows blanket, basket or program “warrants.” This means the government can vacuum up the international telephone calls and emails of Americans. Blanket, basket, program, no matter what these “warrants” are called, they aren’t really warrants at all, and they aren’t constitutional.

No More Network TV

No More Network TV

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I’m really thinking about getting cable or satellite. I can’t believe I’m still only on network television. It’s getting to be a drag just finding clips on the internet. I feel like I’m missing out on too much.

I’d like the History channel, and Comedy Central, and CSPAN… I want to watch politics and political comedy. Frontline was great last night, and we have two public television stations, but I want more.

Here in Ted Turner media home Atlanta, we don’t get the Cartoon Network or CNN on network television.

Here’s what we’ve got on network TV, the way I break it down:

  • 8 – WGTV – Athens-Atlanta, PBS Public Broadcasting
  • 30 – WPBA – PBA/PBS Atlanta Public Broadcasting
  • 2 – WSB – ABC
  • 46 – WGCL – CBS
  • 11 – WXIA “11 Alive” – NBC, good weather
  • 5 – WAGA “Fox 5” – Um, FOX
  • 36 – WATL “The New WB” – Formerly Fox, now the top Warner Bros. affiliate
  • 17 – WTBS – Atlanta Turner Broadcasting (sitcom reruns, movies, Atlanta Braves games)
  • 69 – WUPA – CW network Atlanta?? Weird history. Owned and operated by CBS, I remembered it as UPN.
  • 4 – WUVM – Low-powered – Azteca America
  • 26 – WANX – Low-powered – Prism Broadcasting Network – ACN Jewelry sales
  • 14 – WPXA – Ion (formerly PAX tv) – also weird history – everything from paid tv to Christian Religious.
  • 57 – WATC – Various Christian networks – Christian Religious
  • 63 – WHSG – TBN (Trinity Broadcasting Network) / JCTV – Christian Religious

It looks like I could get Comcast cable tv and internet and phone for the same price I’m currently paying for BellSouth “Now the New AT&T” (arrgh) phone and DSL.

Or may DirectTV would be better? Or DISH Network? Please comment if you have recommendations or warnings.

Daily Activism

Daily Activism

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The House will vote once again this week to hand the Arctic Refuge over to Big Oil.
Tell your Representative to vote NO!
(League of Conservation Voters)

Say NO to Drilling in the Arctic Refuge Before It’s Too Late – The House Votes Tomorrow
(Save Our Environment.org)

Block Bush’s Radical-Right Judges
(Act for Change)

Act now to stop phone companies from abusing your privacy. Join in the nationwide demand that the FCC and state utility commissions investigate reports of unlawful sharing of consumers’ call records with the National Security Agency, and issue cease-and-desist orders to any phone companies that are found to have been engaging in such practices.
(American Civil Liberties Union)

Stop Fueling Exxon Mobil’s Anti-Wildlife Agenda
(Defenders of Wildlife)

Sign the Pro-Choice Pledge, promising to vote pro-choice in November.
(NARAL – Pro-Choice America)

Tell the FCC to stop merger mania
The largest telecommunications and cable companies are fighting to shut down a free and open Internet. They keep raising prices while making empty promises about serving all Americans. They’ve even illegally handed over your personal information to government eavesdroppers. Now they want the government to help them get even bigger. AT&T is trying to buy BellSouth, which would make it the largest telecom company in the world. Comcast and Time Warner — the country’s two largest cable and Internet companies — are trying to wrap up their purchase of Adelphia, the nation’s fifth-largest cable company. If these deals go through, Comcast, Time Warner, and AT&T will control over half of all the high-speed Internet connections in the United States. The Federal Communications Commission is in the final stages of deciding whether these deals should go through. Your voice can make all the difference in stopping them.
(Free Press.net)

Illegal domestic spying is BIG, BIGGER, BIGGEST

Illegal domestic spying is BIG, BIGGER, BIGGEST

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George Bush has overturned the United States Signals Intelligence Directive 18, which prohibits domestic spying by NSA. He has violated the federal act which created the FISA court to oversee covert domestic investigations. He has disregarded the Fourth Amendment guarantee against warrantless searches.

Now, the story continues… Just yesterday, in a galaxy right here, it was reported in USA Today that the National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth in the largest database ever created. This includes all calls that originate and terminate within U.S. borders – except for the lucky customers of Qwest (Qwest said no to the NSA, fearing legal problems if sanity ever returns to this country). For how long? Since at least 2001, under secrecy and then under the lies Bush and others were telling about the extent of the spying.

The NSA’s domestic program, as described by sources, is far more expansive than what the White House has acknowledged. Last year, Bush said he had authorized the NSA to eavesdrop — without warrants — on international calls and international e-mails of people suspected of having links to terrorists when one party to the communication is in the USA. Warrants have also not been used in the NSA’s efforts to create a national call database.

In defending the previously disclosed program, Bush insisted that the NSA was focused exclusively on international calls. “In other words,” Bush explained, “one end of the communication must be outside the United States.”

As a result, domestic call records — those of calls that originate and terminate within U.S. borders — were believed to be private.

Sources, however, say that is not the case.

Lies lies and more lies.

Please join me and call on the House and Senate today to issue subpoenas and expose the extent of this intrusion.

Although Bush said today that our government was “not mining or trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans,” I’m not sure what else you could possible call a huge secret database of domestic telephone calls, especially when considered along with the “vacuum cleaner surveillance” of e-mail messages and Internet traffic being done by NSA personnel in at least one AT&T building.
(San Francisco – anyone gonna go check? You’d think they’d do it in Texas…)

They’ve also managed to kill the investigation into the illegal spying – smells like coverup to me:

The government has abruptly ended an inquiry into the warrantless eavesdropping program because the National Security Agency refused to grant Justice Department lawyers the necessary security clearance to probe the matter.

Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden headed the NSA from March 1999 to April 2005 – yup, he’s the very guy who directed warrantless surveillance of American citizens. Now, he will head the CIA unless some congresspeople actually care about our constitutional rights, not to mention the takeover of a civilian institution by military interests. Block this guy, wouldja? Having himrun the CIA is almost as much of an insult as tolerating “Death-Squad” Negroponte as Director of National Intelligence. I never thought I’d find myself defending the CIA, but they have been trashed by Porter Goss under Bush’s direction. Now we are to approve a military takeover of this civilian institution? When will we stand up for our own freedom, democracy, and civil rights? Who will stand up for the interests of all Americans in these dark days? Here are some of Hayden’s comments on the matter, although he’s dodging the issue as much as he can. (It’ll be a little harder now to dodge, I hope).

It is not a driftnet over Dearborn or Lackawanna or Freemont grabbing conversations that we then sort out by these alleged keyword searches or data-mining tools or other devices that so-called experts keep talking about.

This is targeted and focused. This is not about intercepting conversations between people in the United States. This is hot pursuit of communications entering or leaving America involving someone we believe is associated with al Qaeda. We bring to bear all the technology we can to ensure that this is so. And if there were ever an anomaly, and we discovered that there had been an inadvertent intercept of a domestic-to-domestic call, that intercept would be destroyed and not reported.

Yeah, right.

So, let’s have it:

The BUSH LIE LINEUP in the “Official Response from the White House” today- all in one place!

First, our intelligence activities strictly target al Qaeda and their known affiliates. Al Qaeda is our enemy, and we want to know their plans.

Collecting all possible domestic communications with a dragnet is not “targeted” to al Qaeda, nor to their “known affiliates.”

Second, the government does not listen to domestic phone calls without court approval.

He has already admitted that if one party is outside the US, there has been no oversight. I would even speculate that with the sound-compression technology available today, all of our conversations could actually be in the process of being stored in their entirety – why else create the largest database in the world? It could be done, and I’ll wager that it is being done. The NSA’s secret domestic eavesdropping program was not reported under the requirements of either Title III or FISA – the agency’s budget is unknown.

Third, the intelligence activities I authorized are lawful and have been briefed to appropriate members of Congress, both Republican and Democrat.

They are not lawful just because he wants to make us think they are lawful, nor have all appropriate members been briefed. Moreover, Congress needs more than selective “briefing” – they need to vote to approve any such actions because NO domestic surveillance is lawful outside of what Congress has specifically approved.

Fourth, the privacy of ordinary Americans is fiercely protected in all our activities. We’re not mining or trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans. Our efforts are focused on links to al Qaeda and their known affiliates.

Then why do they need a database of DOMESTIC calls? How does that “fiercely protect” our privacy? Their efforts are clearly directed at us, you and me, Americans.

This is not a kindly Empire, this country that was formerly a beacon of freedom and democracy, and we seem to be missing some essential Jedi knights. You laugh at the metaphor, perhaps, but you know what is meant. The metaphor collapses, of course, since there seem to be quite a few Sith roaming about (not just the master and his apprentice). Go back and look at the arguments for the illegal spying – now try to fit in the idea we are all under surveillance by our own government. This is profoundly anti-American.

It is not targeted only for known al Qaeda terrorists and their associates. It is not limited by location. There is no Congressional or Judicial (or even economic?) oversight. There has been no vote by Congress or by the American people to allow this overturning of our system.

The so-called right is so very wrong.

I have some hope that the upcoming elections may put some into the position of actually having to think about what they can say to their constituents. They seem to think we’re very very stupid.

Personally, I’d like to see most of Congress thrown out on their butts. I have confidence in only a handful of them. Any who have allowed these things without public protest need to go, too.

Put the voting apparatus back into the hands of the people.

“If this government ever became a tyranny, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back, because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. I don’t want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency [NSA] and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.”
Senator Frank Church, 1975

Congress needs to investigate this government intrusion — immediately. Please demand that the House and Senate issue subpoenas and expose the full extent of this program against the citizens of the United States of America.