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Errh...that "hilarious article" was posted in this thread a few posts above your own!

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More proof that some never read a topic thread before posting from the hip.

I moved back in June and cancelled my Comcast account at my old apartment. 4 months later they were still "fishing" for me to make payments on the account even after I contacted them again. They gotta get there sh-t together.

Just to add to the list, I'm a comcast customer, and it does go down periodically, which is extremely annoying. When it does go down, my roommate calls and gets a refund for the downtime. If everybody does that, maybe comcast would actually start caring enough to fix whatever is breaking so often. More likely, everybody's rates will just increase to pay for the refunds...

I guess it depends on location. I have been using Comcast internet for 3 years and always get fast, reliable service. Service has only gone out maybe 2 or 3 times that I can remember and it was quickly restored each time. I tried DSL to save a bit of money and it was horrible. It was tremendously slow and most of the time I could barely get a connection.

I read a hilarious article (in I think The Record) on Friday telling the story of a 70 something year-old woman who was sooo pissed off at comcast that she brought a hammer down to their office and went nuts with the hammer. She supposedly smashed the keyboard of the computer and the monitor and other stuff.

Poor lady was taken away in cuffs and all.

They even used the word "comsmashtic" to describe the scenario.

Hahah

Comcast is crap. But so are most cable providers.
My internet goes down at least once a week, then I call them, talk to some idiot, they always have my information screwed up. For awhile my bills were going to the wrong address. I've ben on a "waiting list" for an HD box for months now. And they tell me that I just have to keep calling and hope that they have boxes in stock, and then I have to come down and pick one up...Great Service.

Companies like this know that they really have you by the b_lls, because the only other option is satTV. They can treat you like crap because you have no other choice in service...

Comcast is the way to go in JC. But check out open dns...

http://www.opendns.com/

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The OP was posting about internet service which I was replying to. DSL really isn't a comparison.

I used to have satellite TV, but every time I really wanted to watch television (i.e. it was so nasty outside that I didn't want to leave my house) the satellite couldn't get a signal. So now I deal with the evil that is Comcast.

Also, this article is about the internet. To my knowledge you cannot surf the net with satellite TV.

RE: Ansky's post - "You have a choice. Satellite TV. I switched to Directv over 2 years ago and never looked back. Cheaper service, more channels, more reliable equipment, and more HD than Comcast. I would never go back."

Verizon sucks too!

"Is Verizon Big Brothers best Friend?" (Click to Link)

However, on a side note -- I do think Comcast's Slowskys campaign backfired and has really helped sell Verizon's DSL.

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You have a choice. Satellite TV. I switched to Directv over 2 years ago and never looked back. Cheaper service, more channels, more reliable equipment, and more HD than Comcast. I would never go back.

When I lived in journal square, my internet connectivity got very splotchy in the winter, and I noticed that whether I had a connection or not seemed to correlate nicely with the outside temperature, suggesting that something that a connection was sufficiently loose such that contraction from the cold caused it to be broken.

I had at least four service calls to my place in order to fix the problem. Even though I was convinced the line was the problem, they insisted on replacing my cable modem several times. Finally, they sent a guy who was trained to deal with real cable issues, and he ended up stringing a new line across the street from the box on the pole to my apartment. I never had another connectivity issue after that.

Comcast = Evil necessary.

Nobody wants to use them but we really have no choice. If this were truly a free market Comcast would be out of business instantly or they would be forced to raise their service standards.

Its not as if Verizon is much better however bringing them into the same markets as Comcast will show them how terrible they really are when customers leave in droves.

I hate Comcast.

I hate comcast because I suddenly and abruptly no longer have court tv ch 69 & I LOVE court tv
AND suddenly tv guide ch 60 is not that; but something else
so that is why I HATE comcast at this moment
Mary Ann

Woman Fined for Hammer Fit at Comcast
The Associated Press
Friday, October 19, 2007; 4:18 PM

BRISTOW, Va. -- She was fined and got a suspended jail sentence, but Mona Shaw says she has no regrets about using a hammer to vent her frustration at a cable company.

"I stand by my actions even more so after getting all these telephone calls and hearing other people's complaints," she told The Associated Press in an interview Friday.

Shaw, 75, and her husband, Don, say they had an appointment in August for a Comcast technician to come to their Bristow home to install the company's heavily advertised Triple Play phone, Internet and cable service.

The Shaws say no one came all day, and the technician who showed up two days later left without finishing the setup. Two days after that, Comcast cut off all their service.

At the Comcast office in Manassas later that day, they waited for a manager for two hours before being told the manager had left for the day, the Shaws say.

Shaw, a churchgoing secretary of the local AARP branch, returned the next Monday _ with a hammer.

"I smashed a keyboard, knocked over a monitor ... and I went to hit the telephone," Shaw said. "I figured, 'Hey, my telephone is screwed up, so is yours.'"

Comcast Corp., the nation's largest cable company, disputes Shaw's version of its customer service record and calls Shaw's hammer fit on Aug. 20 an "inappropriate situation."

"Nothing justifies this sort of dangerous behavior," Comcast spokeswoman Beth Bacha said.

Police arrested Shaw for disorderly conduct. She received a three-month suspended sentence, was fined $345 and and is barred from going near the Comcast offices for a year.

The Shaws did eventually get phone and television service _ with Verizon and DirecTV.

She said many people have called her a hero. "But no, I'm just an old lady who got mad. I had a hissy fit," she said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/ ... 2007101901277.html?sub=AR

Long time reader, first post.

Confirmation Comcast screws with user's ability to upload files
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/ ... ION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Oct 19, 6:32 PM EDT
Comcast Blocks Some Internet Traffic

By PETER SVENSSON
AP Technology Writer

Comcast Blocks Some Internet Traffic

NEW YORK (AP) -- Comcast Corp. actively interferes with attempts by some of its high-speed Internet subscribers to share files online, a move that runs counter to the tradition of treating all types of Net traffic equally.

The interference, which The Associated Press confirmed through nationwide tests, is the most drastic example yet of data discrimination by a U.S. Internet service provider. It involves company computers masquerading as those of its users.

If widely applied by other ISPs, the technology Comcast is using would be a crippling blow to the BitTorrent, eDonkey and Gnutella file-sharing networks. While these are mainly known as sources of copyright music, software and movies, BitTorrent in particular is emerging as a legitimate tool for quickly disseminating legal content.

The principle of equal treatment of traffic, called "Net Neutrality" by proponents, is not enshrined in law but supported by some regulations. Most of the debate around the issue has centered on tentative plans, now postponed, by large Internet carriers to offer preferential treatment of traffic from certain content providers for a fee.

Comcast's interference, on the other hand, appears to be an aggressive way of managing its network to keep file-sharing traffic from swallowing too much bandwidth and affecting the Internet speeds of other subscribers.

Comcast, the nation's largest cable TV operator and No. 2 Internet provider, would not specifically address the practice, but spokesman Charlie Douglas confirmed that it uses sophisticated methods to keep Net connections running smoothly.

"Comcast does not block access to any applications, including BitTorrent," he said.

Douglas would not specify what the company means by "access" - Comcast subscribers can download BitTorrent files without hindrance. Only uploads of complete files are blocked or delayed by the company, as indicated by AP tests.

But with "peer-to-peer" technology, users exchange files with each other, and one person's upload is another's download. That means Comcast's blocking of certain uploads has repercussions in the global network of file sharers.

Comcast's technology kicks in, though not consistently, when one BitTorrent user attempts to share a complete file with another user.

Each PC gets a message invisible to the user that looks like it comes from the other computer, telling it to stop communicating. But neither message originated from the other computer - it comes from Comcast. If it were a telephone conversation, it would be like the operator breaking into the conversation, telling each talker in the voice of the other: "Sorry, I have to hang up. Good bye."

Matthew Elvey, a Comcast subscriber in the San Francisco area who has noticed BitTorrent uploads being stifled, acknowledged that the company has the right to manage its network, but disapproves of the method, saying it appears to be deceptive.

"There's the wrong way of going about that and the right way," said Elvey, who is a computer consultant.

Comcast's interference affects all types of content, meaning that, for instance, an independent movie producer who wanted to distribute his work using BitTorrent and his Comcast connection could find that difficult or impossible - as would someone pirating music.

Internet service providers have long complained about the vast amounts of traffic generated by a small number of subscribers who are avid users of file-sharing programs. Peer-to-peer applications account for between 50 percent and 90 percent of overall Internet traffic, according to a survey this year by ipoque GmbH, a German vendor of traffic-management equipment.

"We have a responsibility to manage our network to ensure all our customers have the best broadband experience possible," Douglas said. "This means we use the latest technologies to manage our network to provide a quality experience for all Comcast subscribers."

The practice of managing the flow of Internet data is known as "traffic shaping," and is already widespread among Internet service providers. It usually involves slowing down some forms of traffic, like file-sharing, while giving others priority. Other ISPs have attempted to block some file-sharing application by so-called "port filtering," but that method is easily circumvented and now largely ineffective.

Comcast's approach to traffic shaping is different because of the drastic effect it has on one type of traffic - in some cases blocking it rather than slowing it down - and the method used, which is difficult to circumvent and involves the company falsifying network traffic.

The "Net Neutrality" debate erupted in 2005, when AT&T Inc. suggested it would like to charge some Web companies more for preferential treatment of their traffic. Consumer advocates and Web heavyweights like Google Inc. and Amazon Inc. cried foul, saying it's a bedrock principle of the Internet that all traffic be treated equally.

To get its acquisition of BellSouth Corp. approved by the Federal Communications Commission, AT&T agreed in late 2006 not to implement such plans or prioritize traffic based on its origin for two and a half years. However, it did not make any commitments not to prioritize traffic based on its type, which is what Comcast is doing.

The FCC's stance on traffic shaping is not clear. A 2005 policy statement says that "consumers are entitled to run applications and services of their choice," but that principle is "subject to reasonable network management." Spokeswoman Mary Diamond would not elaborate.

Free Press, a Washington-based public interest group that advocates Net Neutrality, opposes the kind of filtering applied by Comcast.

"We don't believe that any Internet provider should be able to discriminate, block or impair their consumers' ability to send or receive legal content over the Internet," said Free Press spokeswoman Jen Howard.

Paul "Tony" Watson, a network security engineer at Google Inc. who has previously studied ways hackers could disrupt Internet traffic in a manner similar to the method Comcast is using, said the cable company was probably acting within its legal rights.

"It's their network and they can do what they want," said Watson. "My concern is the precedent. In the past, when people got an ISP connection, they were getting a connection to the Internet. The only determination was price and bandwidth. Now they're going to have to make much more complicated decisions such as price, bandwidth, and what services I can get over the Internet."

Several companies have sprung up that rely on peer-to-peer technology, including BitTorrent Inc., founded by the creator of the BitTorrent software (which exists in several versions freely distributed by different groups and companies).

Ashwin Navin, the company's president and co-founder, confirmed that it has noticed interference from Comcast, in addition to some Canadian Internet service providers.

"They're using sophisticated technology to degrade service, which probably costs them a lot of money. It would be better to see them use that money to improve service," Navin said, noting that BitTorrent and other peer-to-peer applications are a major reason consumers sign up for broadband.

BitTorrent Inc. announced Oct. 9 that it was teaming up with online video companies to use its technology to distribute legal content.

Other companies that rely on peer-to-peer technology, and could be affected if Comcast decides to expand the range of applications it filters, include Internet TV service Joost, eBay Inc.'s Skype video-conferencing program and movie download appliance Vudu. There is no sign that Comcast is hampering those services.

Comcast subscriber Robb Topolski, a former software quality engineer at Intel Corp., started noticing the interference when trying to upload with file-sharing programs Gnutella and eDonkey early this year.

In August, Topolski began to see reports on Internet forum DSLreports.com from other Comcast users with the same problem. He now believes that his home town of Hillsboro, Ore., was a test market for the technology that was later widely applied in other Comcast service areas.

Topolski agrees that Comcast has a right to manage its network and slow down traffic that affects other subscribers, but disapproves of their method.

"By Comcast not acknowledging that they do this at all, there's no way to report any problems with it," Topolski said.

Associated Press Writers Ron Harris, Brian Bergstein, Deborah Yao and Kathy Matheson contributed to this story.