Comment by bbuffone | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bbuffone | Hacker News Reader

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Everyone complains about the mobile industry but if I listed the industries that have or are currently screwing me mobile isn't even in the top 10.

Health-care, Insurance, Oil, Headphones, Government, Credit cards, Banking, Financial, Video Games, Cable then maybe mobile.

My mobile plan is one of the lowest monthly bills that I have based on amount of usage. To my knowledge it is one of the least subsidized industries. Are there issues? Sure. Could coverage be better? Sure. Would it be nice to have true consumption $/Mb pricing? Sure. Are they too locked down, Definitely, but the iPhone showed them what unlocking the phones to 3rd party developers can do.

I am not sure what another unlocked phone is going to do. The life-cycle of phones is shorter than the term of a mobile contract. So it really doesn't help me. If the phone allowed me auto-switch between AT&T and Verizon based on the best coverage and I paid Google on a $/Mb. That would be a game changer and push the mobile industry farther.

The Headphones industry is screwing you?

And specifically screwing you worse than the others you list later? I'm very curious to hear more about this...

Over the last two years, I have spent about $700 dollars (3x the cost of my iPhone) on 4 different pairs of in-ear headphones that have broken. Wires, connections, shocking my ears have all been part of the experience.

Now for the last week, I have been thinking I am going deaf because I need to turn everything to 11 just to hear it. Then I plugged in a different pair, and almost had my ear drums burst form the loudness.

I would suggest not buying headphones which, apparently, cost $175 a pair. I use a pair of very high-quality $99 bose in-ear buds; the point where the wire meets the phone in my pocket is a frequent point of failure, so I use a $14 headphone extension cable, which I replace every 4 months or so. I guess this is still pretty expensive but seems to be less than half the cost of what you're doing right now.

Oh, you mean that shocking-thing going on in my ears isn't supposed to be happening?

Not wanting to place product, but Grado make excellent headphones. iGrado are okay and reliably built, but the SR60's are the best. My ears have not suffered in over 9 years use. The only problem is the SR60's should go through an extension cable, and I even have to re-solder the headphone cable to the cans (the headphone speakers) cable every few months as the connection gets loose with friction.

[Note: These are not in-ear headphones]

4 pairs in 2 years? Are you chewing on the wires? Do you let your pets use them as toys? Do you regularly drench them in liquids (battery acid, maybe) ?

I can only conclude that you must work in the most hazardous of environments.

I've had pairs of Apple, Sennheiser, Shure, and Sony headphones over the last 10 years (ranging from $10 - $200 in price), and I can only think of maybe one pair that has died (an old pair of iPhone in-ears succumbed to sweat during long-distance running), and they've all seen well over 2 years of use each.

Care to tell me why you listed banking, creditr cards and financial? Also, I think I can speak for most of us in saying that the communications industry as a whole is pretty much one big cartel. Cable, landline, long-distance, voip, mobile, ISPs... the lines are getting blurred more and more by the day, and none of them have our best interests in mind. Bandwidth caps on mobile data plans, ISPs and net neutrality all hearken back to the days of anti-competitive practices with phone billing. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Health care, Big Pharm and insurance are indifferentiable, as well. It's all one big cash party with price fixing, tax write-offs, and lots of customer-screwing to go around. Government is getting tied up in there as well.

Sucks about your headphones. That's why I never spend more than $60 or so on a pair.

Screwing me is unacceptable, regardless of the relative degree. The mobile and telco industry is extremely consumer-hostile, and anyone that argues it isn't simply isn't paying attention (or is a shill for the industry). Google has never screwed me or tried to screw me. Maybe they will, someday, and maybe they have screwed others. But, in general, Google has done the right thing by me, and I believe the Nexus One is also an honest attempt to do right by me, as a mobile device consumer.

I find it interesting when people trash the government. In the US atleast, you have some control over it. If you are getting screwed by the government, you have various outlets to mobilize change and if you don't act on them it's no ones fault but your, since the government answers to it's shareholders: you.

I didn't vote this guy into office. But I did vote. And I knew going into it that either candidate would've screwed us over in his own way. Most of us have come to terms with the fact that all candidates are for bigger government, it's just whose pork barrels will be filled for the next 4-8 years.

You can be a candidate too. That's the the whole premise of democracy. Choose the right guy, and if the right guy ain't there you can step up.

Or you can keep whining and wait until someone else does it like the rest of us.

That'd be great, if America was a democracy.

//you have various outlets to mobilize change and if you don't act on them it's no ones fault but yours

I disagree. I should not need to mobilize change or act on it to be able to have certain things. Mobilizing change has a cost (time, effort, money etc) and I should not be forced to pay those costs for things an individual in a civilized society ought to be entitled to.

Freedom isn't free. The 'civilized' society just doesn't arrive naturally. People who want a civilized society have to actively work to maintain it.

What do you think tax is for? It pays for the military which defends your civilized society, your schools to make sure the next guy you hire isn't an idiot, and your police so that it's less likely you get mugged.

When you pay tax you're actively working to maintain your civilized society, but it's not enough. A government can enforce and execute but at the lowest level it still needs people like you with ideas to operate.

You have the right to bitch about your goverent only after you have exhausted all recourse.

You're only entitled to what you work for, and that includes defending it.

I'm sorry, but this just isn't well thought out. I do agree that people should be much more active in politics than they are (and much more educated on the subjects!), but the US has a hopelessly broken government. It will take a great deal more than activism to effect that.

If you were talking about an actual, direct democracy (e.g. Switzerland) then what you say would have some truth to it, but in the US? No.

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