Looks like Time Warner Cable's Road Runner has taken another step toward the dark side. As of today (from my office, anyway), if you try to visit a domain that doesn't exist, you are redirected to a page that contains "helpful" suggestions and, of course, advertisements. Go ahead, try to visit this website and see what happens.
At this stage you can still opt out of the service. To do so, either:
- Click "Why am I here?", followed by "Preferences"; or
- Click the "Opt In or Out of This Service" link at the very bottom of the page
On the next page, change your settings as appropriate. I personally recommend setting everything to "Disabled", but that's just me.
Unfortunately, this may represent a tiny step toward a future in which internet service providers inject themselves more and more into your daily web browsing routine. The companies will promote this sort of a thing as a "service" intended only to help people find their way on the big bad World Wide Web. Fair enough, though the advertisements strewn across the page lead me to believe that altruism isn't their sole motivation.
The average user probably won't bat an eye at this, and frankly, it's really not that big a deal at this point. I just don't like the notion that somebody is interfering with the steps between my action (requesting a website) and the expected outcome (either the website or an error arrives). Call me a pessimist, but I see this move as a foot in the door.
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See what your friends and neighbors have to say about this.
These people never seem to surprise me. When I posted my lengthy rant about the cable service a week or two ago, nobody chimed in with any outrage. I figure maybe it’s just me.
The long and short of my other post: They lied about new HD service coming on January 1, where we only got 2 channels rather than the 3 that were touted in their year-end brochure, and other TWC offices around the country have up to 7 or 8 more HD channels than we have here. Why should that be? If we are saddled with being guinea pigs for the craptacular Navigator, why aren’t we entitled to the same HD offerings as other TWC divisions?
Of course, if you don’t have cable or an HDTV, there’s no outrage. If you have HDTV, you most likely agree that once you get it, you don’t want to go back to SDTV.
Man, those people irritate me.
There’s also this story:
http://www.buffalonews.com/businesstoday/businessfinance/story/253742.html
Time Warner will try a new, tiered service where you pay for the bandwidth you use. I can agree with the pay per use model, but I have a feeling the prices will stay the same, it’s just now you’ll have to watch your bandwidth carefully to make sure you don’t go over the limit lest you be hit with overages.
Time will tell, but I’m guessing my days on internet TV are numbered. :(
OpenDNS
It’s good stuff 😉
In other news, Time Warner is considering charging per gigabyte of transfer. Slashdot article. I hate the thought of going to DSL, but I may have to…
Dang, beaten.
Anyways, I can’t wait til FiOS comes to Lincoln.
Thanks for the OpenDNS tip. I had never bothered to set that up, but I went ahead and did it just now. There are some handy tools in there.
I was curious as to if and when we’d be getting FIOS. Consumer Reports calls it awesome. I was hoping that with a large Verizon presence here, we’d be on a short list.
I am thinking of moving to a private company for fast DSL service and VOIP, but not thru Alltel. I can’t stand how much I pay TWC right now, so if I go to Dish I will try to eradicate them entirely. The irony is that they will likely try much harder to get me back as a “new” customer than they try now to keep me as a happy customer.
I just tried to opt out, and the page is broken. Erg. Maybe there’s a firefox extension to override this…
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