We are working on the comments editor bug reported over the weekend, which allows some Firefox users to find their comment text spilling beyond the right margin of the editor.  I am not seeing this happen myself, and I use Firefox, but we’ll be double checking the code.

The About Us section here has been completely redone.  It contains a list of our team members, a revised Mission Statement, and our new Privacy Policy.  It’s part of my effort to overhaul the information that I haven’t had time to work on since April.  The alternative provider section will be the nightmare.  I really need help from folks outside of Rochester to help me develop appropriate information for other cities.  It is far easier for me if you are willing to work within our own online editor to develop this instead of sending me a lot of text in e-mail.  The editor is very simple to work with.  All you need is a registered account here and I can extend editor access to you.

The cities drop-down menu was not designed to be “comprehensive” going-forward.  Over time, if/when additional cities become hotbeds of capping, that format will be reconsidered.

Jay Ovittore is our first Issues Coordinator, for North Carolina.  We seriously need additional coordinators, especially for Texas which is a hotbed of capping.  The requirements are simply your willingness to develop content for Stop the Cap! and to be enthusiastic and engaged in fighting back.  We can use multiple coordinators in Texas because of the various cities involved.  Use the contact form if you are interested.

There are a few additional side projects I am also working on, particularly for e-mail notification of new content/calls to action and mobile access issues.

Keep an eye out for more new things, and some adjustments to our look going forward.

Todd Spangler, who we seem to spar with on a semi-regular basis here, has another blog entry up expanding on his views of why Time Warner Cable’s metered pricing experiment failed.  Of course, completely missing from the list is the fact most customers do not want it.  That’s dangerous to say in a cable industry trade publication like Multichannel News, however.

Todd still thinks it’s all about how they did it, not the fact they did it in the first place that created what even he admits was a “category five” storm of backlash.

Clearly, the company’s idea — given that these were trials — was to have the flexibility to tweak pricing, adjust specific cap levels, etc., and not have these things set in stone. But the ad-hoc communications on the usage trials was perhaps the biggest reason this blew up.

The only “trial” here was on the customer, and the jury was stacked with Time Warner Cable executives who already found themselves innocent of extortionist pricing and market abuse.  The “tweak” most customers wanted was none at all.  What was set in stone, until the groundswell finally achieved temporary results, was that the caps were coming no matter what customers had to say.  Just ask people in Beaumont, Texas.

… Continue Reading

North Carolina is not the only state where big telecom providers have gotten laws passed to protect their incumbency and monopoly/duopoly pricing.  From 2004, here is a list of the other states.  This may be one of the issues we may want to work on in the future.  These laws need to be repealed.  Local communities should not have their hands tied on broadband by one or two providers that only understand the word “no.”

State Barriers to Community Broadband Services

(updated December 2004)

Arkansas prohibits municipal entities from providing basic local exchange services. (Ark. Code § 23-17-409)

Florida imposes various taxes to increase the prices of telecommunications services (as distinguished from other services) sold by public entities. (Florida Statutes §§ 125.421, 166.047, 196.012, 199.183 and 212.08). Declared unconstitutional under Florida law, City of Gainesville v. Zingale, CA No. 2000-CA-00 1582 (Cir. Ct. 2d Cir., Leon Co., March 20, 2002), aff’d, Dep’t of Revenue v. City of Gainesville, No. 1D02-1582 (Dist. Ct. App., 1st Dist., Nov. 26, 2003), appeal pending in Florida Supreme Court.

… Continue Reading

After a considerable amount of research, testing, and work, welcome to the new look of Stop the Cap!

Our old theme, Tarski, served us well for nearly a year.  However, it was obviously developed for lighter traffic websites where content didn’t get blown off the front page within 24-48 hours.  Since this issue exploded on April 1st as Time Warner Cable expanded its ludicrous Internet rationing plan, the fast pace here simply became untenable for our readers.  Most people don’t read beyond page two of a website, much less hunt around for articles written two or three weeks earlier.

This new theme allows our editors to keep important issues front and center so readers can obtain information that is still very relevant, but was written a short time ago.

You will also find an increasing number of articles that only display the first paragraph or two, followed by …Continue Reading.  This is to reduce page load time and let you scroll through articles more quickly.  Very important information is often contained “below the jump,” so I strongly encourage you to click on the “Continue Reading” option as often as possible.

Here are some highlights:

• The horizontal menu bar below our heading offers several categories and topics to explore.  Some have drop-down menus that let the reader drill down for specific content, others bring readers all of the articles published here on a particular subject.  Cities tracks issues and developments in each hot spot where capping and consumption tiering has broken out.  Events gives you a rundown of upcoming activities (or prior ones) Stop the Cap! is working on, from public protests to legislative hearings you can attend.  Issues is the meat and potatoes section of our site, identifying important stories in the news.  Multimedia brings you audio and video clips and events.  Providers explores what Internet Service Providers are up to.  On the right side of the bar are a variety of information pages that are under reconstruction and reorganization at the moment.  The Subscribe button lets you access our RSS feed.  We are also planning an e-mail digest/notification system because RSS seems to be falling out of favor.
• The four images beneath the horizontal bar are currently showing night skylines from four of the cities recently impacted by the Time Warner Cable “experiment.”  These images will be changing regularly to highlight important developments, issues, and projects that deserve special focus here.  If you hover your mouse over them, text content will appear, with a clickable link to additional information.  This is not yet functional.
• The left side column will be the home of most of our content, with 10 articles per page.  Right above those articles, a Breaking News box may display late-breaking stories or important Calls to Action deserving your special attention.  The box below each headline will contain a byline, date of publication (and soon time I hope), the categories that apply, and the number of reader comments, if any.
• The middle column currently contains: Recent Headlines, stories selected by our editors for their importance or reader interest, Recent Comments, which display the latest reader input we’ve received, and Popular Content, which consists of articles getting the most reader commentary.  The order of these will be adjusted shortly, with Recent Comments going on top.
• The right column features a Search This Site box, where you can type keywords to locate a specific article, Content Tags, which give you a sense of how frequently a topic is covered here, a Blogroll of links to related websites, and Your Account, for account registration and sign-in/out.  Registering for an account takes seconds and makes submitting comments a lot easier.

It is important to note there have been some visual changes in this theme.  Linked content that you can click on now appears like this here.  The fonts have been changed.  Article headlines are in a sans-serif font which usually will present as Arial.  Article text will now appear in a serif font, typically Georgia.  Quoted text within the body of an article should be easier to read than it was under our old theme.  Please let me know if you experience any problems seeing fonts, reading the text, or any similar anomalies.

Here are the known bugs and problems we are working on:

The theme here is new, and there are some known bugs and issues we are already aware of and are working to resolve.  As they are repaired, the will be stricken from the list.

• Embedded videos from Dailymotion are too big for the column space they are given, and barge into adjacent columns and content.  I will be working to resize these videos over the weekend to get them displayed properly.
• There are some minor formatting problems with thumbnail images and how they present here.  I’ve already avoided using them in places where their presence would be immediately apparent.
• The comment editor does not appear just below the comment you are replying to at this time. Remember, you can reply to the article -and- to individual comments left by others.  You can also edit your comments to correct any grammar problems you missed the first time.  Those with registered accounts here no longer have a time limit to edit their remarks, for your convenience.
• The site is designed to render properly on most browsers and screen sizes, but has problems with Internet Explorer v6.0 in particular.  Mobile browsing is not currently supported, but may be in the future.

What is planned for the future:

• E-mail notification of new comments left on the articles you participate in, as well as a subscription digest/alert to remind you new articles are available. [After commenting, you can now be notified of new replies!]
• Paypal link to allow readers to contribute to help defray server expenses and software costs.
• Various minor fixes and adjustments based on your input.

Please feel free to share your comments, impressions, and suggestions in the Comments section of this article.  I hope this theme change will prove helpful in the days ahead as we continue our fight.

Phillip M. Dampier
Editor, Stop the Cap!

We have begun the transition to our new theme and look.  Over the course of this evening, you will find the site appearing dramatically different.  Not everything will function as the transition occurs, because a lot of manual changes will need to be made to certain features.  In particular, options across the top horizontal bar will probably not be completely functional/look right until the end of the weekend.  Embedded videos will also present a problem until I manually complete re-sizing them to work within the new layout.

You may need to refresh the page and/or empty your browser cache if you find part so the site conflicting with other parts.

There are a few known bugs in the theme, and they are being worked on.  We’ll be tinkering with the site over the coming days to handle them, and anything else that might occur.

Thanks for your patience.