By Chris Scott Barr

Here’s a funny story to brighten up your Monday morning. A 15-year-old girl was walking down a sidewalk on Staten Island and fell into an open manhole. While that would normally not make for an amusing story, the girl also happened to be texting at the time, thus she was completely oblivious to the fact that there was a gaping hole in the ground. She didn’t get seriously injured, so we’re all free to laugh a bit.

In the girl’s defense, there weren’t any cones or markers around the hole, which doesn’t look good on the city. The girl fell down 4 or 5 feet into a mostly drained sewer, got a few scrapes and lost a shoe. The family is planning on suing the city for an undisclosed amount due the physical and mental anguish that the girl has endured. No, not the mental anguish for being stupid enough to not look where you’re walking, but the fact that the sewer was “putrid.”

Yes, I think the city should offer the girl a little money, since they were partially at fault for not marking the area. However, since the girl didn’t actually suffer any real injuries, I think that the family should take any small amount offered. No jury in their right mind would award a large settlement to a girl that was paying too much attention to a phone to watch where she was going. Oh, and you can bet that this incident is going to be brought up by people trying to ban texting while driving. Congratulations Alexa Longueira, you’re going to be famous! Famous for being stupid.

VIA [ MSNBC ]

By Chris Scott Barr

I’d hoped that I was done writing about Time Warner Cable for a little while. Unfortunately it seems that they are already back up to their same old antics, only this time they’re being a little more sneaky about it. At least before they were up-front and honest about their decision to screw their customers. When too many people raised a stink about it, they backed off, or at least they pretended to.

One TWC customer in Austin hopped on his computer to do a little surfing only to find that his internet connection was down. A quick call to the ISP revealed that his service had been intentionally disconnected due to excessive bandwidth use. Apparently this guy had the audacity to use 44GB in a week’s time on his unlimited internet plan. What a jerk.

The next logical step was for the guy to ask just how much bandwidth was “acceptable” so that he didn’t get his service shut off again. The lovely rep at Time Warner couldn’t give him any exact numbers, but said that it would be somewhere between a quarter and half of the bandwidth he was currently using.

11 to 22GB per week is acceptable on an “unlimited” plan? In this day and age, that’s just bat-shit retarded. I downloaded GTA IV from Steam the other day, which was a whopping 15GB, which would put me in the red with TWC. God forbid that I’d want to stream a couple of Netflix movies or watch something on Hulu. If I were a Time Warner Cable customer, I can guarantee my service would be shut off pretty quick.

I really feel bad for this guy, and the countless others that have no other option but to use Time Warner Cable as their ISP. Instead of their tiered plans, they’re just going to keep disconnecting users until they start begging to pay more for extra bandwidth. Thankfully customers can use the very same internet provided by TWC to spread the word of these underhanded practices. Comcast finally came around and set a (comparatively) decent bandwidth cap, hopefully it’s only a matter of time before Time Warner does the same.

VIA [ StopTheCap ]

By Chris Scott Barr

There’s something wonderful about the power of the internet. Not only do we have a vast supply of knowledge at our fingertips, but we the ability to change things. No, I’m not talking about Wikipedia entries, but rather our ability to directly influence the decisions of people and companies. The latest victory for the internet masses comes from Time Warner Cable. Yes, the very same Time Warner that’s been spreading the disease of metered bandwidth.

We’ve been following the story for the last couple of weeks since Time Warner expanded their plans to bring metered bandwidth to the masses. Like almost everyone else out there, I was completely against these plans. Well apparently Time Warner has actually been listening to the uproar and decided to cancel its trial of metered bandwidth plans. You can pat yourselves on the backs peoples of the interweb, this victory is yours.

You can also thank New York Congressman Eric Massa and Senator Chuck Schumer for listening to the people that elected them. Both expressed great opposition to Time Warner’s plans, with Massa even trying to introduce a bill that would limit the ability of ISPs to place bandwidth caps on their connections. Something tells me that this is the last we’re going to hear about metered bandwidth for a little while. No company is going to want to touch this subject after the amount of negative press received by Time Warner.

VIA [ Ars ]

By Chris Scott Barr

I think enough people have gotten fired over the stupid crap they post online that you know someone’s always watching what you say. So what do you think happened when a girl complains about a lack of torrents for a movie that’s still in theaters? You guessed it, someone at the movie studio found her tweet and took action. Of course the actions of the studio weren’t what you would expect.

It seems the Miramax Films has been keeping an eye out for people tweeting about piracy. In this particular case, a girl (we’ll call her Amanda, mostly because thats her name) posted on Twitter that there weren’t any Adventureland torrents up. Miramax saw the tweet and offered her a pair of tickets to go watch the movie in theaters. That’s right, they didn’t scold her for trying to watch their new movie for free. Instead they made sure that she had no problems viewing it without paying. Wow.

Honestly, in this economy it’s hard to justify a trip to the movies, as it usually ends up being a $30+ affair. It was really nice to see Miramax step up and offer to give this girl a free night out. One one hand, they could have threatened the girl, and thus ensured that someone would pirate the movie just to spite them. However, they took the high road, and offered her a chance to see it on the big screen instead of pirating it. Well played Miramax, well played.

The only downside to this story is that Amanda only ended up getting one free ticket, instead of the pair she was promised. Still, one free ticket is better than no free tickets.

[ TorrenFreak ] VIA [ Crave ]

By Chris Scott Barr

Last week I brought you the news of Time Warner’s outrageous price gouging with metered bandwidth. Well it seems that there has been a bit of an update to the situation. No, they haven’t backed down, but rather given us some details on precisely how they are planning to screw their customers out of money.

Apparently the COO over at Time Warner has been listening to the outcry from the vast internet community, and decided to respond to our concerns. First, they know that some users out there spend only a few measly minutes a day checking their email, so there is now a plan for such people. They’ve also decided that they will be kindly putting a cap on overage charges. If you’re really worried about that bill at the end of the month, rest easy that you won’t see more than $75 in overage fees. Hit the jump for the full breakdown from COO Landel Hobbs.

• To accommodate lighter Internet users and those who need a lower priced option, we are introducing a 1 GB per month tier offering speeds of 768 KB/128 KB for $15 per month. Overage charges will be $2 per GB per month. Our usage data show that about 30% of our customers use less than 1 GB per month.

• We are increasing the bandwidth tier sizes included in all existing packages in the trial markets to 10, 20, 40 and 60 GB for Road Runner Lite, Basic, Standard and Turbo packages, respectively. Package prices will remain the same. Overage charges will be $1 per GB per month.

• We will introduce a 100 GB Road Runner Turbo package for $75 per month (offering speeds of 10 MB/1 MB). Overage charges will be $1 per GB per month.

• Overage charges will be capped at $75 per month. That means that for $150 per month customers could have virtually unlimited usage at Turbo speeds.

• Once we implement this trial, we will not immediately start billing customers for overage. Rather, we will first provide two months of usage data. Then we will provide a one-month grace period in which overages will be noted on customers’ bills, but they will not be charged. So, customers will have an opportunity to assess their usage and right-size their service packages before usage charges are applied.

So for $15 (the same price as AT&T’s cheapest unlimited DSL plan) you can download up to 1GB of data at really crappy speeds. Awesome. You’ll also have a high-end 10MB down/1MB up plan for $75 and an overage cap of $75. Seems to me like that’s slower than my Comcast connection, and I get 250GB of bandwidth. Lets see, $35 a month with Comcast, or $150 with Time Warner? I think I speak for almost everyone when I say you can take your metered bandwidth and shove it.

[ Longreply ] VIA [ MTV Multiplayer ]

By Chris Scott Barr

I remember a time long ago when I used to visit these very strange stores. I guess you would call them stores, but they were really more of a rental shop. Anyway, you would walk in and find the walls lined with movies that you could take home for a few days in exchange for several dollars. Of course if you didn’t bring them back by the designated time, you would be charged a fee. I hated those fees. Eventually technology advanced and no one needed to visit these stores anymore. You could either watch what I wanted by streaming it online, or with a few clicks have the movies sent to you via snail mail. Those companies that didn’t evolve to embrace the new technologies eventually died out, leaving only empty buildings in their wake.

It’s stories like that which I’m going to be able to tell my kids not long from now. Blockbuster, the largest movie rental store looks like it will be closing up in short order. They really don’t have much to offer the tech-savvy customers anymore, and rely on those that either haven’t hopped on the streaming bandwagon or are too impatient to wait a few days for their movie to arrive. Even if Blockbuster manages to find some more funding, I don’t suspect that they (or other movie rental shops) will survive more than a few years.

[ AP ] VIA [ CrunchGear ]

By Chris Scott Barr

I get my lifeline to the interwebs through Comcast, which isn’t something I’m always happy with. The first year that I had them was filled with random 8-10 hour periods of downtime that they would try to tell me was “scheduled maintenance”. This was something that occurred once every week or two for several months, and despite the fact that it was scheduled, they didn’t ever actually bother to inform me, despite me updating my contact info every single time I called in. Oh, and I still can’t access my account online. They have to send me a PIN, which despite requesting it on no less than seven occasions, I still have not received. Are you ready for the shocker? Today I’m glad to have Comcast as my ISP.

Last year Comcast instituted a 250GB per month bandwidth cap. Believe me, that was not something that made me happy at the time. I watch most of my TV and movies online these days, and I figure that one of these days I’ll end up hitting that limit. Hopefully it will be a while before that happens. However, the reason I’m happy to be with Comcast is that Time Warner Cable has decided to infect several cities with their 40GB per month cap. Yes, that’s a whopping 40GB maximum usage per month.

Their service will have different tiers which are based on your usage, not speed. You can pay as little as $29.95 for a paltry 5GB, all the way up to $54.90 for 40GB. If you go over your limit, you’ll be asked to fork over  a buck for every GB you go over. I’m sorry people, but that’s just ridiculous. I can get a webhosting package with 40GB of bandwidth per month for like $15. Sure, that’s sitting in a data center that’s got fiber connections running to it, but you still get my point.

This program has already been going in Beaumont, Texas for a little while, and the people there hate it. I can’t blame them either, since that’s enough bandwidth for around 2HD movies per week. They’ve even got a petition going around to try and stop metered bandwidth. Other cities which are slated to get this wonderful service include Greensboro NC, Rochester NY, Austin and San Antonio TX.

[ BusinessWeek ] VIA [ Dvice ]

By Luke Anderson

Have you ever been browsing Flickr and thought that some of the pictures are just incredible? It’s true that there are a lot of great pieces up on there, which have been taken by amateur photographers. It seems that Getty Images has taken notice, and wants to pay some of those people for their excellent works.

Getty has entered into a partnership with Flickr to comb their database of images in search for pieces to license. The photographers would then be asked to participate in their program, which would compensate them (the same rates as Getty pays contracted photographers) for using their images. They would take the necessary steps to make sure the images are released and licensed legally.

I think this is a great idea for the amateur photographer that might want their work a little more recognized. Sure, if Getty purchases a pic from you, you aren’t technically amateur anymore, but you also don’t need a fancy studio or business to get your work purchased.

[via NYT]

By Luke Anderson

If you’re having a really bad day, doesn’t it help for someone to stop by your desk and tell them how fabulous and wonderful their life is? I know that I enjoy having someone else’s good day rubbed in my face makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. If you’re needing that special pick-me-up, you can be sure that Blizzard will be more than happy to let you know that they’ve just hit over 10 million paying subscribers for World of Warcraft.

If you imagine that each one of those people are paying $15 per month, that would be $150 million dollars coming in each and every month. If that doesn’t make you feel great, I don’t know what will. For those wondering, yes, I would be one of those 10 million and no I’m not proud of the amount of time I’ve spent in Azeroth that I’ll never get back.

[ WoW ] VIA [ ReadWriteWeb ]

Aside from that, what can you expect to hear? A quick blurb on Steorn, the free energy nuts. And a sad tidbit on Richard Branson’s tragic incident in the desert a few hours ago.