The 16th Minute

Reading a reddit on this article made me want to comment.

“The current data plans are used to help offset the subsidies AT&T pays to keep the iPhone at the $200 level.”
This is my favorite part and is what has really ground my gears about the AT&T/iPhone situation since the 3G came out.

AT&T is charging their users to compensate for the bad deal they got with Apple.

I can’t wait to see the handset expand to multiple wireless providers, hopefully this will be the beginning back to the good old days of wireless. (Oh three years ago, you seem so far away…) When you waited for a particular handset to appear on your provider and got it then. You could pick the handset you wanted and the provider you wanted and the world was wonderful.

The BlackBerry Curve seems to be the last model that was really the same across platforms (GSM/CDMA/iDEN) - now we have this false economy that looks suspiciously like collusion - the cell carriers teaming up with handset manufacturers to make sure we have exclusivity across the board.

• T-Mobile has the G1, that’s it. No other Google phones on any of the major tier-1 carriers.
• Verizon has the BB Storm, that’s it. Same here, no other touch berries on any of the tier-1s.
• Sprint has the Palm Pre, that’s it. Again.
• AT&T has the iPhone, that’s it. etc.

I’m really surprised some legal eagles haven’t gone to town with this yet, but then again collusion is often hard to prove.

Meanwhile the carriers use the provider-handset gimmick to profit profit profit and slap users with DMCA threats if they try to circumvent!

Here is AT&T’s latest service agreement
PDF Version

Update:
Also while looking around on their site I found a few other variants on plan terms.
I will post links here but not comment as it’d probably just make me more angry. Actually I will comment on a few points at the bottom…
Other AT&T Plan Terms
PDF Version

What is really great about this is, when you sign up for service they never even mail you a copy of your terms if you do it online, so who the hell knows what terms your plan falls under?

Excerpts of contention in “Service Agreement”:
In the section “Charges and Disputes”

“To determine your primary place of use (”PPU”) and which jurisdiction’s taxes and assessments to collect, you are required to provide us with your residential or business street address. If you do not provide us with such address, or if it falls outside our licensed service area, we may reasonably designate a PPU within the licensed service area for you. Subscriber must live and have a mailing address within AT&T’s owned network coverage area.”

So they’ll just bill you however they see fit, regardless of where you live? What if that particular “PPU” has higher taxes than your current one?

The section “Unlimited Voice Services”

Unlimited voice services are provided solely for live dialog between two individuals. Unlimited voice services may not be used for conference calling, call forwarding, monitoring services, data transmissions, transmission of broadcasts, transmission of recorded material, or other connections which do not consist of uninterrupted live dialog between two individuals. If AT&T finds that you are using an unlimited voice service offering for other than live dialog between two individuals, AT&T may, at its option terminate your service or change your plan to one with no unlimited usage components. AT&T will provide notice that it intends to take any of the above actions, and you may terminate the agreement.

Gee, so you have unlimited voice UNLESS X, Y, and Z? Doesn’t sound unlimited to me.

The section “Off-Net Usage”

If your minutes of use (including unlimited services) on other carrier networks (”off-net usage”) during any two consecutive months exceed your off-net usage allowance, AT&T may, at its option, terminate your service, deny your continued use of other carriers’ coverage or change your plan to one imposing usage charges for off-net usage. Your off-net usage allowance is equal to the lesser of 750 minutes or 40% of the Anytime Minutes included with your plan. AT&T will provide notice that it intends to take any of the above actions, and you may terminate the agreement.

This point has always ground my gears. AT&T runs a program on their SIM cards that hides what network you’re really on, so you never know if you are roaming or not. How can they bill you for roaming when they won’t even tell you when you are?

In the section “Billing and Payment”

NETWORK OVERHEAD, SOFTWARE UPDATE REQUESTS, AND RESEND REQUESTS CAUSED BY NETWORK ERRORS CAN INCREASE MEASURED KILOBYTES.

Whaaa?? Translation: We bill you for our incompetence, enjoy!

“We may bill you in a format as we determine from time to time.”

Huh??? So they can change the way they round, increment, and otherwise meter your usage whenever they see fit??

“All outgoing calls for which we receive answer supervision or which have at least 30 seconds of Chargeable Time, including ring time, shall incur a minimum of one minute airtime charge. Answer supervision is generally received when a call is answered; however, answer supervision may also be generated by voicemail systems, private branch exchanges, and interexchange switching equipment. Chargeable Time may include time for us to recognize that only one party has disconnected from the call, time to clear the channels in use, and ring time. Chargeable Time may also occur from other uses of our facilities, including by way of example, voicemail deposits and retrievals, and call transfers. Calls that begin in one rate period and end in another rate period may be billed in their entirety at the rates for the period in which the call began.”

Translation: We will bill you for every time you press the Send key, as long as we can figure out you pressed it. Also we’ll charge you for our system not recognizing both parties have hung up, the time it takes our network to reset, apparently also when people leave you voicemail, and we’re also still using the antiquated billing system that keeps you on Anytime even if it’s past 9PM for night and weekend billing.

In section “Device”

“Devices purchased for use on AT&T’s system are designed for use exclusively on AT&T’s system (”Equipment”). You agree that you will not make any modifications to the Equipment or programming to enable the Equipment to operate on any other system.”

Ah ha! They fucked up here! Equipment follows AT&T’s system. So as far as I’m concerned Equipment == AT&T’s system. So of course I can’t modify their system but I can modify my device all I want, which is not referred to as equipment. Jackpot!

In “Service Limitations and Limitation of Liability”

“WE CANNOT ASSURE YOU THAT IF YOU PLACE A 911 CALL YOU WILL BE FOUND.”

Translation: You die Mike Jones, you’re gonna die Mike Jones. This one is funny because they can’t even assure you you’ll get signal for any reason, let alone hoping their LBS system works. Granted, it’s just gloss-over disclaimer fluff, but still kinda funny to see.

In “Voicemail Service”

“We may deactivate your voicemail service if you do not initialize it within a reasonable period after activation. We will reactivate the service upon your request.”

This has always bugged me on several levels. First, if they are going to deactivate your voicemail, you should see a service credit. I know it’s “Included”, but being excluded means you aren’t utilizing it and should not be billed thusly.

The bigger annoyance though, why in God’s green fuck don’t they let voicemail work until you “initialize” it? Every other provider lets you receive voicemail out-of-box, and then runs you through “initialization” once you call in to check said message. Makes a lot more sense and guarantees you don’t miss messages.

In “Dispute Resolution by Binding Arbitration”

In the unlikely event that AT&T’s customer service department is unable to resolve a complaint you may have to your satisfaction (or if AT&T has not been able to resolve a dispute it has with you after attempting to do so informally), we each agree to resolve those disputes through binding arbitration or small claims court instead of in courts of general jurisdiction.

Again, fuck you AT&T, I will take my disputes to a proper court if I want to, this guff shouldn’t be allowed in a service agreement. If a provider fucks a customer the customer should be given the right to fuck back. (In several cases customers have circumvented these arbitration clauses thankfully.)

In “Miscellaneous”

You consent to the use by us or our authorized agents of regular mail, predictive or autodialing equipment, email, text messaging, facsimile or other reasonable means to contact you to advise you about our services or other matters we believe may be of interest to you. In any event, we reserve the right to contact you by any means regarding customer service-related notifications, or other such information.

Translation: We will sell your information and rape you with autodialing telemarketing bullshit even though that’s kinda not kosher to mobile phones - but we don’t care!

The original version of this Agreement is in the English language. Any discrepancy or conflicts between the English version and any other language version will be resolved with reference to and by interpreting the English version.

Translation: Don’t expect us to know your fucking language, we only understand the language of wallet rape. More of Your Money in Our Wallets, welcome to the new AT&T.

Excerpts of contention in “Plan Terms”:
In the section “iPhone Terms and Conditions”

Equipment or Monthly Service discount may not be eligible with the purchase of an iPhone. International messages not included. Charges for international messages sent from the U.S. are 20¢ for Text Messages and 50¢ for Picture/Video Messages. Additional charges for premium messages and content apply. Messages over 300 KBs billed and additional 50¢/message.

Translation: You can’t get discounts and we’re gonna bill you $3 a message. Also they had a grammar goof, “billed and additional” should be “billed AN additional.” That should void the entire agreement IMO.

In “Data Plans”

“If it is determined that you are using an iPhone or other designated smartphone or PDA without an eligible data plan, AT&T reserves the right to add an eligible data plan to your account and bill you the appropriate monthly fee.”

This section completely contradicts
Changes to Terms and Rates

IF WE INCREASE THE PRICE OF ANY OF THE SERVICES TO WHICH YOU SUBSCRIBE, BEYOND THE LIMITS SET FORTH IN YOUR RATE PLAN BROCHURE, OR IF WE MATERIALLY DECREASE THE GEOGRAPHICAL AREA IN WHICH YOUR AIRTIME RATE APPLIES (OTHER THAN A TEMPORARY DECREASE FOR REPAIRS OR MAINTENANCE), WE WILL DISCLOSE THE CHANGE AT LEAST ONE BILLING CYCLE IN ADVANCE (EITHER THROUGH A NOTICE WITH YOUR BILL, A TEXT MESSAGE TO YOUR DEVICE, OR OTHERWISE), AND YOU MAY TERMINATE THIS AGREEMENT WITHOUT PAYING AN EARLY TERMINATION FEE OR RETURNING OR PAYING FOR ANY PROMOTIONAL ITEMS, PROVIDED YOUR NOTICE OF TERMINATION IS DELIVERED TO US WITHIN THIRTY (30) DAYS AFTER THE FIRST BILL REFLECTING THE CHANGE.

*GOLFCLAP*

There is actually a good section though, at least in their agreement for BlackBerry they’ve qualified themselves.
In “PDA/BlackBerry Plans”

PDA/BlackBerry plans may ONLY be used with AT&T-certified RIM BlackBerry devices, and PDAs for the following purposes: (i) Internet browsing; (ii) email; and (iii) intranet access (including access to corporate intranets, email, and individual productivity applications like customer relationship management, sales force, and field service automation). Data Services sold for use with AT&T RIM BlackBerry devices, and PDAs may not be used with other devices, including but not limited to, Personal Computers, PC Data Cards and the like, either by tethering devices together, by SIM card transfer or any other means.

According to their sales site:
BlackBerry® Personal
BlackBerry Personal gives you unlimited data for your BlackBerry to connect you with your email, contacts, the web and more.

So it appears they are being truthful finally. Data on the device itself is unlimited, if you try to use the account elsewhere, then they’ll bitchslap you. This actually seems…….REASONABLE?!

Oh wait I may have jumped to conclusions. They have a separate page for Data Terms for iPhone, BlackBerry and other devices, most of which is just a data terms section repeat, but with a few gems.
PDF Link

Oh dear, here we go again!

*reads*

Prohibited and Permissible Uses

Except as may otherwise be specifically permitted or prohibited for select data plans, data sessions may be conducted only for the following purposes: (i) Internet browsing; (ii) email; and (iii) intranet access (including access to corporate intranets, email, and individual productivity applications like customer relationship management, sales force, and field service automation)

I’ve always loved this condition, Verizon has had it longer than AT&T has. I really want to exercise it sometime and see what happens. Scenario: Intranet access via VPN, then download over 5GB content on one of the older plans that is allegedly “Unlimited” - as long as your data usage is used through “intranet access” it is “legit.” Anyone with a compatible plan want to try? Would always be fun! Although AT&T did go a step further than Verizon and added a laundry list just below this block of text saying what is not allowed, such as “webcam usage” and other “high bandwidth” things. So this little game might not fly on this agreement.

There is one blurb though in the “Forbidden” section: software or other devices that maintain continuous active Internet connections when a computer’s connection would otherwise be idle or any “keep alive” functions, unless they adhere to AT&T’s data retry requirements, which may be changed from time to time.

Again, with the “you can adhere to our rules until we change them.” What horse shit cock fuck stupidness.

I always hate reading through these agreements. I’m sure glad I don’t have an AT&T account anymore.

Fuck you AT&T Wireless er AT&T Mobility er Cingular er Dobson er…

Actually just fuck the patchwork of shit that is the American wireless industry. Consumer rights are sparse, limitations imposed are ridiculous, and I am done analyzing these because my head is spinning now!

I’ve been reading a CNN article on the Wolverine Movie Piracy.

Holy Jesus Fish Tampon Wipe.

My favorite part?

“Unfortunately, the recent leak of the Fox film ‘Wolverine’ provided a stark backdrop to the impact that digital piracy has on the large investments that producers make in creating state-of-the-art films,” said Rep. Howard Berman, chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, who oversaw a congressional hearing on piracy after the leak.

Wait, what? So now Congress has hearings about movies? Never mind we have a fucking country (and to a greater extent) WORLD to save from our idiocy. (Remember the economy? Banks? Big business? Millions of unemployed Americans? Oh yeah, I forgot too, my bad.)

No let’s have Congressional hearings on fucking movies. Genius.

Here’s a summary for you folks: Can we stop piracy? NO! The Internet is smarter than any corporate drone will ever be. The end. So STFU and GTFO!

I’m sure many “pirates” that downloaded the unfinished version will undoubtedly pay to see the finished product in theaters, it’s human nature.

I for one didn’t see the draft, nor will I be watching in theaters. X-Men got old after the first movie, which I legally own, thank you very much.

Most of all I feel sorry for the FBI. They have to go to great lengths to stay on top of this shit as they are essentially the movie industry’s police. They gotta get pissed off every time the movie industry goes and cries to them, “wah wah stop the nasty pirates, they’re gonna hurt our perceived value that we can’t actually put a price on!”

Which is my favorite part, they make up numbers left and right. I bet if someone pirates one of my albums the RIAA won’t go after them for me, and even if they do, I doubt they’ll give me any compensation post-trial. (However, I am sure they will sick the FBI on them.)

Sigh… Same shit different day but still so annoying every time there’s a little bit of history repeatingg….

We all heard about it. I’ll be brief.

First: I saw on WSJ that it “angeres 9/11 witnesses” - seriously, has our country degraded to a bunch of bitches?

Gee, I guess nobody should ever look at a car or a gun or a human because these were all featured in major wars where millions died. I am angered by seeing these objects!

Fucking pussy cocksuckers!

Second: Stupid ass government. You have all these FAA regulations not allowing aircraft to fly in certain airspace without specific permission for public safety, to allay public fears, etc. Why in the goddamn fuck did you fly these aircraft into normally forbidden space without posting news on TV, newspapers, etc.? I’m sure you wanted to be cheeky sneaky and say that, “secrecy will be the best way to handle it,” but fuck you in your spum-soaked asses.

Finally: everyone involved in planning this “photo-op” should be personally fined out of their own paychecks. There are reasons why freedom of speech isn’t protected when yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theater, and these same apply to reckless stupid acts with no forewarning.

Fucking tell people about this shit next time. Or don’t do it again.

Or at least if you DO do it again, make sure it’s MIG fighters and a Nazi blimp. You might as well scare people for a reason.

Everyone involved was a bunch of jackasses.

End of story.

Bush may be out of office, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be afraid of people writing in notepads or using binoculars!

Everyone in a public place is evil! Especially if they are white, male, and wearing sunglasses! Heaven forbid a woman, or an arab, or a black, or any other kind of person wants to commit a terrorist act. Clearly the white males of the US are rising up to overthrow the American Bourgeoisie!

Wait, so they are overthrowing themselves? *golfclap*

I think what is most frightening is this is how Nazi Germany began, or the Salem Witch Trials - neighbors pointing fingers at each other, only now it’s with cell phones instead of fingers.

Nevermind that freedom of speech, freedom in public places, and freedom in general is being massively encroached upon under the guise of “terror”.

*plugs ears* LA LA LA OUR COUNTRY ISN’T GOING TO HELL! LA LA LA….

The entire city of Kansas City, Missouri gets the biggest Golden Teabag Award ever!

I can’t wait to see this bullshit tonight.

A bunch of people all across the world, shutting lights off for a whole hour to “save” carbon.

First: I can’t wait to see the crime and traffic accident increase for that 60 minute period.

Second: I can’t wait to see how many people will be burning candles. Almost every participant group/web site says they’ll be lighting candles.

Just for those who don’t know what happens when a paraffin candle burns, the end result is carbon, carbon dioxide, and heat.

In fact, using any source to generate light or heat will in some way cause carbon emissions. So the true way to help the Earth at night is to sit in total darkness for an hour. Wow that sounds fun. Trading my quality of life for that sounds fucking tits.

So much for reducing carbon emissions asshats!

I don’t know what has changed recently but Apple’s software is really starting to bug the bejeesus out of me lately.

When I launch my iLife apps, every once in a while I get reminded “Hey the new iLife is out, go to this web site to upgrade.” What the hell? I don’t need to know that! If my software is not meeting my needs, I will go replace it with newer or different software!

The same with MobileMe in iTunes. Every few times I plug my iPhone into my Mac lately I get these fucking MobileMe advertisements. I don’t want it. I used it once, it was mediocre. Push email was neat, but the storage was too small and having limited email storage was just pathetic when Google Mail offers all of that and more for free!

No, I don’t want your product, stop advertising it to me!

The worst thing is I keep seeing these ads. Once is enough to piss me off, but again and again? Oi.

That’s the whole market angle of Apple though so I suppose it is to be expected. Their consumers don’t know what they need, Apple has to tell their consumers what they need.

Who knows, I might jump platforms for all things but e-mail (Apple Mail is the best IMAP client ever, why can’t any other client be that good?) and go to Linux or Windows 7 for other stuff. Win 7 is actually fast and stable even if it is graphically juiced up like lipstick on a pig.

Stupid computers.

iPhone 3.0’s feature release came out Tuesday. That was fun to watch.

A slew of sites had live or delayed coverage:
Ars Technica
BoyGeniusReport
Gizmodo

A ton of features are being crammed in, I can only imagine how much work it is.

A brief rundown, heavy on the sarcasm of course:

1. A2DP Stereo Bluetooth - Available since 2005-2006 on most modern cell phones
2. Landscape Keyboard - Meh, it’s too wide for me, but it’ll stop the landscape whiners.
3. VPN On Demand - A Leopard feature brought over to iPhone, should make VPN much more usable! (Also help on battery too!)
4. Voice Memo - Circa 2000-2001, the Motorola V.60c did this quite well!
5. Cut, Copy, Paste - Circa 1994 - by Apple themselves with the original Newton MessagePad (and possibly with other portable/PDA devices before then.)
6. Proxy Support in VPN - Now the Proxy controls do something!
7. Find Me via MobileMe - There have been “locator” features by most Cell providers on many handsets since the whole E-911 push in 2004-2005ish, but depending on how this is utilized it could be pretty neat.
8. MMS support - Circa 2002!
9. Spotlight Search - BlackBerry has had it since the original RIM 850 in 1998, Newton had it too back in 1994.
10. Tethering - Geesh, even AMPS phones of the 80s could do this. My first cell phone in 2000 had a serial cable you could connect. Welcome to the future!
11. Multiple Image Attachments in Mail - Hrmm….WinMo could do multiple attachments, pretty sure BlackBerry could since it had the ability to handle images and such…2003 ish?

Still MIA:

1. Background Tasks - They’re using push notifications (finally, only 6 months late!) instead, good luck getting Pandora to background with that! Claiming that background tasks eat up battery life on BlackBerry and Windows Mobile…makes me wonder what apps they tried? If you run an infinite loop app that never makes the device sleep, sure it will chew battery life. Symbian, Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, even PalmOS to a certain degree all support background apps with no issue. Shoot even my Motorola E815 let me play music while I surfed the web and it was a feature phone!
2. FM Radio - Nope, nothing, a lot of new handsets are supporting it. Not needed, but nice to have.
3. Front-facing camera for 3G nations with video calls - so far a no-show. We’ll see once we hear about the new hardware, but I certainly wouldn’t hold my breath.
4. Video Recording - Nope, not here yet! Been around on other handsets since cameraphones circa 2002ish?
5. Voice Dial - I believe the V.60 had this back in 2001ish, although it sucked. It has become very usable since and a very essential part of the whole Bluetooth experience.

Anyway the general point is there. I just want to point out all these nuances because as the phone has developed, the staunch opinion is “we don’t need applications, we have web apps, everyone will do web apps” and now there are applications. Then “nobody uses MMS” and here is MMS. It goes on and on.

I really wonder why there still isn’t a “Tasks” application. How could something so simple be overlooked? Sure I know there are third-party ones, but with all the Exchange integration…HELLO?

Ah well. I guess that’s what the rest of the wireless industry is for.

This post at VoIPTechChat.com goes into the details.

Favorite Excerpt:

The DDA became aware of Mr. Vielmetti’s project after reading about it in the press. Immediately a number of concerns were expressed including 1) no permission from the DDA was granted before this project got underway, 2) this project hopes to sell this software to other communities and thereby make a profit and is using DDA-generated information to accomplish this, 3) the DDA has no control over what is done with this information yet this information is attributed to the DDA, 4) persons interested in finding out about parking structure vacancies must make a toll-call out of state.

It’s great because a publicly funded organization is trying to dictate terms to citizens with rights to the information, and another case of bureaucrats not knowing a DAMN THING about the world they live in. (The Clif Notes version being: They didn’t need permission, the project F/OSS’d the software, who cares if the DDA has control, and the out of state toll call was converted to an Ann Arbor number ASAP and paid for out of the developers’ pockets.)

Screw you Ann Arbor, I never liked your self-important arrogant vibes anyways.

Today I mulled over how I was going to cancel service. As much as I am annoyed that regular consumers are completely screwed by AT&T, I realized there is little point in my calling them and debating their contract terms with them as dealing with cell phone companies is like dealing with the mafia.

So instead I just chose the path of least resistance. Discussing it with a friend he recommended something so simple, it helped! I called AT&T consumer care, switched my account to a RAZR V3xx. Then called back and just for a +5 luck bonus I chose corporate care instead of consumer care. I got +15 third world country points when I got forwarded to a call center in India! I never thought I’d be glad for that to happen!

The CSR was helpful, friendly (I know, shocking right?) and had my account canceled in 10 minutes!

So for those who want an iPhone 3G without AT&T service:

1. Go to the Apple/AT&T store and buy an iPhone 3G on a new contract
2. Head home and grab an old AT&T phone that’s not an iPhone you can swap the account to, call AT&T and swap the account over to that phone
3. Call AT&T back and cancel the line of service!

Most importantly! Remember that nowhere in their service agreement, Apple’s sales receipt, or anything you signed does it say the handset has to be returned to the store before canceling. Escalate to a supervisor if necessary.

Or be sane and smart and buy a different handset on another provider that isn’t so restrictive and insane - but then you don’t get any iPhone love.

This will probably be my future plan as well. At least until AT&T shapes up.

Oh, and finally, a nice map Verizon built comparing their 3G to AT&T. Verizon is yellow, AT&T is orange (also Verizon coverage in the orange as well.) One more reason to flag them as worthless.

Consumer choice. That term gets kicked around a lot in our alleged “free market” economy. Yes, I know it is bad to start out an “article/report/blog/etc.” with an assumptive leading sentence…but just stick around and see what happens!

So my backstory: I wanted to purchase an iPhone 3G. That’s it. The end. I was going to be giving mine away to my brother and I wanted a new one. Both me, and my brother have active AT&T service. Neither of us want to pay for a new contract just to get a piece of phone equipment.

I went into my local Apple store to ask them about just buying a phone, period, because I want one, the end. They told me I could only get one for $500 outright if I exchanged one, or I could get one for $300 with a new line of service. I asked them what the deal was with that. They fed me a bunch of lines about how a bunch of foreigners keep coming into the store (yeah, foreigners in Colorado, I’m sure that’s a lucrative trade arrangement) to buy phones and then do evil illegal sales elsewhere. (Heaven forbid supply and demand are allowed to engage in a fair fashion without artificial limits imposed by greedy corporations!)

So I figured, who cares. I’ll just purchase a new contract and cancel the contract and pay the early termination fee, no new business to me! They get their money, I get my equipment, they get a handset on their network with monthly service, everyone wins.

I ring up, leave, go home. Skip to Monday, I call them to cancel. Customer service tells me I can’t cancel, and the only way I can cancel is to go into the Apple store and cancel there while returning the handset. I ask them why that is when I have never had to do that with any other handset. They gave me more guff about foreigners trying to rip them off.

At this point I scratch my head. There is massive demand here, why are they forcibly locking down the supply to curtail demand? Is it to generate perceived increases in demand? Is it to in their eyes force people to use AT&T? Or is it all a massive pile of short-sighted stupidity on their part?

So I looked in their iPhone-specific terms of service - specifically the section on ETF:

Terms Applicable to AT&T Nation/FamilyTalk® GSM Plans: Credit approval required. Subscriber must live and have a mailing address within AT&T’s owned network coverage area. An early termination fee of $175 applies if service is terminated before the end of the contract term. For service activated on or after May 25, 2008 the Early Termination Fee will be reduced by $5.00 for each full month toward your minimum term that you complete. If phone is returned within 3 days, activation fee will be refunded. If phone is returned within 30 days in like-new condition with all components, early termination fee will be waived. All other charges apply. Some dealers impose additional fees.

No mention in there about a returning the handset requirement. So I’ll be calling them back tomorrow to point out that they are violating their own terms of service and can’t charge me an ETF because they violated their own terms. They’ll probably say the unwritten rules are still law, but I might as well waste their time anyway for wasting mine!

The core issue here is: where do they get off making these false limitations? From one angle, they are the business selling a product (indirectly) and they have a right to choose what customers they sell to. On the other hand, is it a form of discrimination of sorts? I’m not talking “wah wah I’m black, give me free money” discrimination, but a slightly similar mien. Where does consumer choice come in? No law says I have to agree to AT&T’s service with the phone. If I purchase a Pontiac do I have to agree to always purchase GM gas to make it work? No, I can buy my gas anywhere.

What blows my mind the most, is Apple and AT&T went from having one of the most revolutionary (if not copied) methods of handset activation - that being: go into store, buy phone, go home, activate over Internet; to one of the most restrictive! (More restrictive than any other American handset activation policy I can think of!)

Of course, as an aside, Apple didn’t think up this “revolutionary” activation process first. Sprint had it years ago. You could walk into a Sprint store, buy a Sprint phone for cheap, take it home, and activate it, or ESN change to it, or throw it away, or unlock it and use it on Verizon. Nothing new, Apple just used iTunes to activate it instead of phones (or a web site - although iTunes is just a fancy web browser for activation so it’s kinda the same completely…and stuff.)

At any rate, they aren’t getting the handset back and I am not keeping the contract. I’m either going to wait a month and cancel, or, I’m going to port the number to another handset, as they legally can’t block a handset port. Yes AT&T, there are laws you have to follow.

It’s sad really, the iPhone revolutionized the wireless industry for all of five minutes. Then they crammed DRM, a shoddy application experience with promises they couldn’t keep (push notifications? you were supposed to be here last fall? where art thou!), and continue to sell a handset TIED TIGHTLY to AT&T service, which seems totally illegal in and of itself.

Sigh…oh well. Looks like this is the last iPhone I will be buying ever again. Sad too, I enjoyed working on the iPhone project, now it brings me nothing but disgust for ever having been associated with something so totalitarian and restrictive.

I forgot to post an update. My 3 months of free service ended, XM sent me a bill.

I called XM and canceled both radios. Service is discontinued.

When the CSR was on the phone with me she tried to assume, “oh both your radios are damaged and that is why you’re canceling service?” “No, I am canceling service because there are no good channels anymore.” “What do you mean?” “All the channels I liked went off the air, with promises of their return, and they never did.”

She got some info from me, transferred me to retention, who then asked if I wanted to stay, why I was quitting, I reiterated how the channels got crappy. At one point I had mentioned how Squizz (XM48) became Sirius Octane, and one of the bitch cunt Octane whore DJs came over as well. One day she was going on about some song she was about to play and bitching that the singer was nasty and rappers suck (it was one of those rap/rock combo genre tracks) and dissing the song she was about to play. I said to the rep, “having DJs that diss the music they are playing on the channel is highly unprofessional.” He said, “Maybe she just didn’t like the music?” I replied, “Maybe she shouldn’t be a DJ on that channel then.”

The rep ended up echoing the same though, he misses some XM stations they killed, and blamed Sirius - I assume I probably got an ex-XM retention rep. Their people were always more polite than Sirius’. Sirius totally destroyed XM. Too bad, it was a nice service while it lasted even though their audio quality was balls-ass horrible.

Now I listen to Internet radio and my own music collection, and the local ClearChannel FM station just to spite XM even more! (Of course turning off my radio for the 30 hours of commercials.)

I’m just glad the local FM stations aren’t THAT bad.

I wonder how many customers got the 3 months credit back in December for XM to make their merger look better than losing all the customers they would have, but then they didn’t get as much revenue for 3 months, and now a load of customers (with any brains) are now canceling at the end of the 3 months. It would be interesting to see the numbers. Especially with them going bankrupt!

RIP XM radio.

A line from My Dick Eats Plankton from the 2008 Freestyle sessions, fuckin’ timezones indeed.

It is just amazing how many things get screwed up because of timezones. Especially when you have friends back in the east coast, or phone numbers from the east coast, or just want to watch a show at a reasonable hour! This would probably be better suited to be a bulleted list, but I’m going to try and break it down into paragraphs just so a little more detail can be contained in each “bullet.” Mostly observations, with a little personal annoyance twist because I really hate how much a change in timezones screws things up.

Television shows are especially confusing. Some shows that are “live” are broadcast east coast time and pushed back horribly as you head west. A show at 9PM Eastern is on at 7PM Mountain, 6PM Pacific! That is if the same show is broadcast across the country. Not that I watch it, but a friend brought up the observation the other day, “live” shows like American Idol end up getting recorded and rebroadcast for pacific time, and mountain ends up watching the pacific recording an hour later. I guess voting is open a few hours after the show ends though, so at least their whole vote gimmick is still legit.

Cable networks are scattered. Some like A&E have one channel broadcast across the entire country, others like Comedy Central will have an east and west station playing shows offset as such.

With news broadcasts, the stations try and stay synced up with the Eastern TV schedule. Here in mountain time we have 4PM news instead of 6PM news, and 9PM news instead of 11PM news. The evening shows like Jay Leno start at 10:35, with the news for their channel starting at 10PM. TV Guide claims Adult Swim starts at 8PM but it’s more like 11PM. Oh yeah and the TV guide is always messed up. Basically if you’re a television viewer, it sucks, and if you want to watch shows with friends in other timezones it really sucks because who knows when they’ll be on. You’re better off renting a DVD.

Product launches that happen at N hour tend to ripple through the timezones. So when a product is available midnight eastern, you have to wait 2 more hours to get it in mountain. I remember reading a story on notalwaysright.com about some uninformed customer bitching about the timezones and store product selling time. The reality is it kinda isn’t fair to people on further back timezones with release schedules with stuff like that, as it would give east coasters a few extra hours before the west coasters could join in.

West coasters occasionally do sorta similar things, often silicon valley companies will have software releases at 10am PST, which is 2 in the afternoon back east. At least everyone is getting it at the same time, but east coaters have to wait a few extra hours for it to happen.

Having a phone number from another timezone, or dealing with stupid companies, both are a big pile of fail. Companies will call you at 6AM PST, 7AM MST for telemarketing/company calls, thinking everyone lives in the 9AM EST. Make sure to leave your phone on vibrate or off the hook! Some companies handle the situation worse than others. Verizon Wireless for example used to have 24/7 customer service. Now they have limited hours customer service during the days, (but at least 7 days a week as AT&T wireless doesn’t even have customer service on weekends anymore!) but they also made another subtle change. It used to be possible for you to call customer care up to 2AM eastern time, each time a customer service center would close at 11PM local time, your customer service call would be rolled to the next timezone’s call center. Not anymore! If your number is tied to your local timezone, you’ll get a recorded message saying customer service is closed. Of course you can circumvent this by finding a phone number of a friend in another timezone and using their number as the identifying number, but even then the customer service reps either don’t want to, or can’t access the billing system in your timezone. (This is especially frustrating if only your phone number is from that timezone and you live in the timezone you’re calling to!)

There are other weird issues as well. Having an east coast phone number on Verizon Wireless in another time zone, all your SMS messages get routed through your east coast SMSC. So SMS timestamps will be off by the number of hours between the time zones. Verizon however is the only company that suffers this bug, and they don’t seem to care to fix it. (I’ve spent hours with customer service troubleshooting the issue and their final answer was, “well you can get a phone number in your time zone” which doesn’t solve issues when traveling at all.)

Having friends who live east of you is always fun as well, especially if you own a PDA phone with push email. You’ll start receiving email at 6 or 7AM, another reason to be waken up early. Night and weekend minutes are even more hard to deal with. East coasters have to wait until 11PM or midnight to call people out west to ensure they are on their night and weekend minutes. Consequentially friends and family, myfaves, or mobile-to-mobile seems to be the way to go for the cheapest phone calls between timezones. (Internet phone and voice chat works as well.) If you have friends that work at normal hours, it is even more frustrating. An example is, I normally leave work at 6 or 7PM local time, that’s 8 or 9PM eastern time. My friends have already gone to sleep by the time I want to call them and I am not even home from work yet! (Or the night and weekend bit kicks in and the wait is longer.)

It is also frustrating if you have friends in other countries. When I lived on the west coast, by the time I got to work, my friends back in Europe were already eating dinner and getting ready for bed.

What I have observed overall is attempting to have a global-reaching lifestyle can be frustrating. (Let’s not even get into daylight savings time screwing with your sleep schedule!) Moving from your home time zone to elsewhere will totally screw with your schedule. Of course overall there isn’t much you can do about it other than just learn to deal with it, or just make a closed off lifestyle that stays centric to your town/location and avoid the outside world and its time zones, which is totally unrealistic obviously.

Other odd observations, I always wondered why people out west seem to wake up earlier, go to sleep earlier, etc. I think it is a combination of factors. With the earlier TV schedule, the shows you want to watch end earlier. With business schedules, companies back east close earlier so there’s less a reason to stay later out west… I am wondering if this is maybe why it seems so many people further west wake up earlier and earlier. Or maybe it is just my late night lifestyle conflicting with most peoples’ lifestyles.

Oh well, what can one do?

Drink more beer.

Sony Releases New Stupid Piece Of Shit That Doesn’t Fucking Work