….for showing us all what a bunch of idiots you really are. You have, beyond the shadow of a doubt, ensured that I will never, ever use you as my ISP. From your attempts to throttle BitTorrent traffic (which was ruled to be illegal by the FCC), to the just announced attempt to “cap” users to a set amount of bandwidth per month for their UNLIMITED use accounts.

The true stupidity of the people coming up with these “ideas” simply boggles my mind. I can’t possibly understand what they think that they are going to gain from this. As far as I can tell, they can only lose….customers. I have a feeling that they will be fleeing at a staggering rate to a new ISP, one who doesn’t attempt to control everything that they do on the internet.

The true scope of this decision has yet to be realized by the decision makers over at Comcast. It will not take long, however, for things to become clear. Any attempt to censor, restrict, or otherwise control the “internet” will result in complete and utter failure. P2P File sharing is a great example of this. For all of you that still remember Napster (the old Napster), there was a great lesson that should have been learned here……you can’t censor or control what is on the internet, plain and simple! After the shutdown of Napster, more and more file sharing programs/sites sprung up seemingly overnight. And for each consecutive one that was shut down, there were 5 more waiting to take its place.

And if you don’t recall what happened an oh so short time ago with Comcast throttling BitTorrent traffic, you should really see how clueless these people really are. And just to be clear, this rant is NOT coming from a Comcast user, I never have been, and never will be. But even from where I sit, this is truly absurd, to say the absolute least.

Now before yall start bashing on me for this, and arguing that satellite ISPs cap their traffic, let me make one thing quite clear. One of the subsidiaries of the company I work for actually offers satellite internet access. The true difference here lines in the fact that the cost to transport objects into space is staggering. It’s extremely hard (probably impossible) to provide satellite internet users with an unlimited amount of bandwidth per month at least without raising costs into the hundreds of dollars a month.

So back to my Comcast rant…..this is just really, really stupid. There is no possible way that this will fly, and they are going to lose a TON of customers, not just the ones who “hammer” on the network. I will truly enjoy sitting here and watching as Comcast meets their demise, or at the very least, and VERY large number of unhappy customers. Comcast will, in all likelihood, be the very fist, as well as the very last to attempt such a move. I hope that everyone over there at Comcast remembered to bring an umbrella, cause this is going to be one hell of a rainy day!

So I’m sure that you have all heard them by now….those very annoying HD Radio commercials that seems to be propagating across the airwaves. It seems like in my 45ish minute drive to work, I always hear at least one, 5 days a week. Up until a short while ago, they didn’t really bother me, in fact, I pretty much just ignored them. But having finally heard enough, and wanting to always move forward in the name of progress, I decided to take a trip to my local BestBuy store. According to the commercials, HD Radios were “All over” many local stores, include BestBuy, so I figure that there would be a nice selection and maybe now was finally the time to actually upgrade…..though what I got was far from that.

I strolled into the store late one afternoon on my way home from work, after hearing yet another commercial. I walked briskly through the store back to the “bookshelf” systems looking for a nice little compact HD Radio. Much to my dismay, however, I was greeted with the “wide variety” of a whole two choices. One was $200, while the other was $250. Neither offered anything other than an HD Radio…. Needless to say, I was very annoyed. I mean seriously, they have been pushing these damn things for months now, and in that time have only managed to stock a whole two models?!?! This tells me one of two things. Either:
a) Nobody really gives a damn about HD Radio, and they all are listening to their iPods instead.
or
b) This area (Columbus) just has so little choice in HD stations that the stores don’t even bother to stock radios.

Now I’m not going to claim to be a genius, and I may not even be smart, but it seems like for $250 dollars, I could buy a very nice MP3 player, and be able to listen to my ENTIRE MUSIC LIBRARY, for the same price. Once again, I ain’t going to claim to me smart, but somehow, listening to exactly what I want to, for the same price, seems like a MUCH better deal to me. I just really wish I knew what these people were thinking when they decided to air these commercials. To me, the “all over” claim seems…..well to be an outright lie. I’m not really sure why they are pushing this so hard….it seems like it’s going to all turn out to be a flop. I’m sure it’s related to the switch to digital TV in Feb. of 2009…..but still. If you are going to advertise something, at least make sure that you have them to sell!!!! Anyway, that’s just my two cents…..