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Get a cable modem, go to jail (1999)

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Re: Get a cable modem, go to jail (1999)

#181

Post by notpushkin »

b112 wrote: post #165
kelnos wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Theft" doesn't just mean "physically taking something away from someone else, who now no longer has it". As much as you might like it to mean that, that's not what the law says.

On top of that, it takes equipment, hardware, personnel, infrastructure, power to deliver cable. The OP literally has no idea what they are talking about, and could use the same logic for electricity theft.

There's a subtle but very important difference.

Electricity theft does extract a resource from the grid (electricity provider needs to supply the energy you're using on the other end). Similarly, phreaking uses phone lines which is a finite resource too (and phone company would rather keep those available for paying customers).

Cable on the other hand runs all channels to your household in the first place. By removing the filter, you aren't creating any additional load on the cable network or using any additional resources for free.

Re: Get a cable modem, go to jail (1999)

#182

Post by Gud »

yetihehe wrote: post #179
Gud wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not done by “low income, uneducated people". This is done by 1st, 2nd and 3rd generation immigrants from the middle east and africa. Please be specific, otherwise these problems will never be resolved. I come from a low income neighborhood but native parents, this was unheard of up until the 2000s.

To be specific - Poland. We don't have enough immigrants from middle east and africa for this to be noticeable problem. It's mostly uneducated drunk idiots who target ER teams. Firefighters - I didn't heard about them being targeted yet. Edit: I don't say that MENA immigrants targeting public services is not an issue. I say that this issue exists globally too, it's a result of having a lot of uneducated demoralised p…

Maybe in Poland this is the issue, in the rest of Europe it is not.

Re: Get a cable modem, go to jail (1999)

#183

Post by Slava_Propanei »

wkat4242 wrote: post #89
thatoneguy wrote: post #31

I was a "broadband technician" around then and AT&T Broadband did not give AF if you were stealing cable or not. I only handled cable modem installs and quit after a year to go major in philosophy and because: - Getting quietly threatened once (with AR-15 up against the customer's front door) on a troubleshooting call that I wasn't able to leave until "the internet started working". - Having to increasingly go do cab…

The amount of incidents involving firearms is astonishing. I'm glad I live in Europe where literally nobody has guns except police and heavy criminals that only really use them to shoot their rivals. I thought most people in the US were proud of their firearm handling professionalism which of course includes not brandishing, threatening or murdering people. I'm really a bit surprised to hear this. I did a similar job…

[dead]

Re: Get a cable modem, go to jail (1999)

#184

Post by Cyphase »

euroderf wrote: post #129
boneitis wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess it really did depend on the mood and demeanor of whatever technician got sent out on a given day. Back in those same years, it was a painful, nonstop pendulum swing every month-or-two, between a) cripplingly unusable internet, and b) working Internet but with absolutely every channel unlocked for free. Everytime something happened that required a technician to come out while it was in state "b", it always tri…

The invisible hand of the free market has clearly worked to perfection.

Whatever else you think on these topics, government-enforced utility monopolies aren't the free market.

Re: Get a cable modem, go to jail (1999)

#185

Post by OhMeadhbh »

psunavy03 wrote: post #170
nojvek wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who moved to the US and finds the gun culture absolutely bonkers, I get the gun culture and why they had it in the constitution. I don’t get the obsession behind open carry though. What good is people walking around in shopping malls with large semi automatic rifles on their back?

Almost no one actually does this, and most sane gun owners think those people are attention whores at the very best, dangerous nuts at worst. This is a phenomenon I've head described as "nutpicking." Take the absolute worst of a demographic and then go "why are you all like THAT?" Claiming US gun culture is all about going to the mall open-carrying a semiauto rifle is on the same level as claiming gay men all prance…

I'm going to plus one psunavy03's comment here. I own firearms, but they're locked in a gun safe. I pull them out every now and again, drive them to a gun range, fire them, clean them and then put them back in the safe.

And I believe this is the experience of the overwhelming majority of gun owners in the US.

It occurs to me I haven't seen any estimates for how many people open carry on a daily basis. (You would think SOMEONE would collect that data SOMEWHERE.)

The states are sort of (in)famous for how many people own firearms, but I assert the number of people who open carry on a daily (or weekly) basis is much smaller than the number of people who own firearms.

I'm going to stop short of accusing nojvek of nutpicking, but encourage them to look around. The stats I've seen are that one in three Americans owns a firearm. If you were walking around and one out of three people were open carrying... well... I think that would be a little unusual unless you were in a gun show or at a shooting range.

Gun-culture in America can be weird, but it's often portrayed as being weirder than it actually is.

[Edit: also. how did we go from cable modems to guns so quickly?]

Re: Get a cable modem, go to jail (1999)

#186

Post by sneed-oil »

wkat4242 wrote: post #89
thatoneguy wrote: post #31

I was a "broadband technician" around then and AT&T Broadband did not give AF if you were stealing cable or not. I only handled cable modem installs and quit after a year to go major in philosophy and because: - Getting quietly threatened once (with AR-15 up against the customer's front door) on a troubleshooting call that I wasn't able to leave until "the internet started working". - Having to increasingly go do cab…

The amount of incidents involving firearms is astonishing. I'm glad I live in Europe where literally nobody has guns except police and heavy criminals that only really use them to shoot their rivals. I thought most people in the US were proud of their firearm handling professionalism which of course includes not brandishing, threatening or murdering people. I'm really a bit surprised to hear this. I did a similar job…

> I'm glad I live in Europe where literally nobody has guns except police and heavy criminals

I live in the EU and that's not true, I know multiple people who own guns and go to the shooting range every other weekend

Re: Get a cable modem, go to jail (1999)

#187

Post by Doxin »

Humboldtsnee wrote: post #169
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The glock safety is on the back of the grip?

The person holding the Glock? Because a Glock doesn't have a safety lever. It's built into the trigger mechanism.

> It's built into the trigger mechanism.

What, so pressing the trigger automatically disengages the safety? As a non-gun-person that seems like an insane design decision.

Re: Get a cable modem, go to jail (1999)

#188

Post by Slava_Propanei »

wkat4242 wrote: post #118
dreamcompiler wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I thought most people in the US were proud of their firearm handling professionalism which of course includes not brandishing or murdering people. I take it you have not actually visited the United States.

[flagged]

[dead]

Re: Get a cable modem, go to jail (1999)

#189

Post by brenns10 »

talldatethrow wrote: post #143
dreamcompiler wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I thought most people in the US were proud of their firearm handling professionalism which of course includes not brandishing or murdering people. I take it you have not actually visited the United States.

There are over 300 million fire arms in the US. Yet other than criminals shooting rivals, and people commiting suicide, almost no one uses their gun. Even if you include full time criminals and suicides, that still means basically 0.001% of fire arms are used to kill someone every day year. Most gun owners are decent people that want to protect themselves, not use it to cause hard to the innocent.

If anything, that statistic (roughly one per person) doesn't inspire confidence. The correct takeaway isn't "wow, so few of the guns in America are used to kill people." It's "wow, there are so many guns that anybody can have one, regardless of whether they are fit to."

Re: Get a cable modem, go to jail (1999)

#190

Post by Ylpertnodi »

wkat4242 wrote: post #89
thatoneguy wrote: post #31

I was a "broadband technician" around then and AT&T Broadband did not give AF if you were stealing cable or not. I only handled cable modem installs and quit after a year to go major in philosophy and because: - Getting quietly threatened once (with AR-15 up against the customer's front door) on a troubleshooting call that I wasn't able to leave until "the internet started working". - Having to increasingly go do cab…

The amount of incidents involving firearms is astonishing. I'm glad I live in Europe where literally nobody has guns except police and heavy criminals that only really use them to shoot their rivals. I thought most people in the US were proud of their firearm handling professionalism which of course includes not brandishing, threatening or murdering people. I'm really a bit surprised to hear this. I did a similar job…

>Europe where literally nobody has guns except police and heavy criminals

Europe? Literally lots of people have guns, where I live, from 01 Sept there's plenty of gunshots ringing out scaring one of my dogs. I know two people in the uk that have shotguns (police checked, locked away in the attic). There are many ww2 firearms in circulation (Serbia, I believe just had an amnesty), so 'literally' is incorrect. The difference is: guns aren't common, and certainly aren't often carried, and most definitely not openly (apart from farmers and hunters, but the gun must be unloaded and broken(. My fave is talking to Americans that 'can't wait to get back home so I can carry my gun, for protection, it's my right'. Not a single one of them has been threatened whilst here. Nor have they been threatened in the States....but it's their right to protect themselves from the government. I always ask, if their government started being 'oppressive', how long would either sides' ammunition last? Not a single person I've spoken to has more than a few days ammo available.

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