American Horror Story: Freak Show premiered last night and prompted the people of this fine nation to once again confront an undeniable truth: clowns are scary. But Comcast is scarier.

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Beware, Comcast customers who are upset with customer service—which I understand to be all Comcast customers—next time you ask to speak to a service rep's supervisor, they may also want to speak with yours.

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Time Warner Cable narrowly avoided bringing on the wifipocalypse this morning when service to their customers went down nationwide. Somehow, the people managed to band together in the dark and make due for a few hours without the Internet, but they're not happy about it.

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Everyone makes mistakes, but the important thing is to learn from them. Comcast, however, doesn't appear to have learned anything from that time a service rep repeatedly refused to cancel a customer's service. Youtube user Aaron Spain posted a video explaining his three-hour hold session with Comcast that simply ended in them closing up shop for the day and not helping him.

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This morning, Comcast announced its bid to buy competing company Time Warner Cable for a whopping $45.2 billion, thus creating one giant cable mechaprovider that will hopefully grant us humble peons better service in its infinite wisdom and goodness. See? We like this change, Comcast! Look at how much we're praising you! Please don't turn our Internet off.

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Last week, TorrentFreak published a great story about law firms that are also copyright trolls. As part of the article, they published a subpoena response from Comcast showing that an IP address connected with one firm was trolling torrent sites. Now, Comcast has loosed its lawyers, leveling charges of copyright infringement at TorrentFreak.

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In a recent Facebook post from Reed Hastings, the CEO of Netflix, we get a bit of intimate view into the life of the man who brings great movies and TV into our homes for a reasonable price. For instance, we learn that he has an Xbox, and is (not surprisingly) a big fan of streaming video. We also find out that he's really angry at Comcast for how they count data towards his pre-set limit, accusing the Internet Service Provider of being anti-net neutrality.

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A little while ago, Comcast announced that it'll be bringing its Xfinity On Demand streaming service to Xbox Live, allowing for streaming through the Xbox 360. Like competitors Netflix and Hulu, Xfinity On Demand will allow for Comcast users to watch their shows whenever they feel like it. The difference is that Xfinity On Demand on Xbox Live won't count against Comcast users' 250 gig data caps. The competitors' streaming, however, will. This is great news to anyone who has Comcast and an Xbox, but bad news to anyone who is a fan of a little thing we like to call "net neutrality."

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In an attempt to muscle in on the streaming video market, Comcast will be launching their own streaming video service starting tomorrow, dubbed Streampix. However, Streampix isn't a standalone service, so Netflix need not shiver (or laugh defiantly) in their boots just yet, as Streampix is only available to Comcast customers who are subscribed to either the double or triple-play package, which is some combination of Internet, television, and phone service. For those that can subscribe to Streampix, they'll be happy to know that it'll only cost an extra $4.99 per month.

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If you were not planning on buying a movie ticket to see the new Ben Stiller-Eddie Murphy movie Tower Heist, then ... Universal Studios is way ahead of you. Coming to the humble realization that moviegoers are catching on to the pandering nature of star-studded casts in mediocre movies, the studio has come up with a novel plan to offer the Brett Ratner-directed movie on VOD a mere three weeks after its theatrical release as an experiment to see where it will be the most successful. Movie theaters are not thrilled with this ... but shouldn't they be psyched about all those Disney re-releases coming up?

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Word on the street is that Microsoft is in talks with various content companies, Comcast, and Verizon about getting some TV content for its Xbox Live service. The initial report comes from Bloomberg, which reports that an Xbox Live streaming content service might be announced as early as next week, according to someone who is not authorized to speak publicly on the topic. According to another report by Digiday, Microsoft is also working on an agreement with Comcast whereby Xbox Live users can sign up (and pay) for Comcast content that can be streamed through the system itself. As for now, Xbox Live users can get streaming content through Netflix or purchase movie and show rentals through the Zune Store. It makes sense though, that Xbox would want to broker some streaming deals of its own so it can get a little closer to the real action (and the real money).

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Last Friday, Comcast announced a new initiative that will hopefully make broadband Internet more easily accessible to low-income families. The plan will provide broadband internet at a cost of only $10 per month to families that meet certain requirements regarding income, family size and a few other details. One of the additional requirements is that the family in question has at least one child that is qualified to receive a free school lunch under the NSLP, which gives you general idea of the income level they're targeting. In addition, families can receive a $149.99 voucher for the purchase of a new computer. Of course, that is not to say that the offering would be available to all families that might qualify financially. Other requirements include, of course, being in an area where Comcast provides service, not having subscribed to Comcast Internet service in the past 90 days and not having any outstanding balance to Comcast. If you manage to fit all those critera, however, it's a great deal. As a bonus, Comcast has pretty high and reliable speeds.

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Some of the United States' top Internet service providers, including AT&T, Comcast and Verizon, are set to adopt a new, harsher strategy to handle software piracy. The final agreement between the ISPs and media and entertainment outlets has yet to be signed, but the proposal, which is expected to be reached sometime next month, would have the ISPs adopt a "graduated response," which is fancy talk for punishments that become harsher as infringers are caught repeating the offense. The plan outlines various punishments from which the ISPs can choose, including throttling bandwidth speed or limiting web access -- something this blogger remembers being enacted on some of his peers around his dorm back in college. Almost hilariously, an example given regarding limiting an infringer's web access would have the ISP limit said access in such a way where the infinger could only access the top 200 websites until the infringer proves he or she stopped with the piracy. Another awful-sounding punishment would require the infringer to participate in a program that educates them on why piracy and copyright infringement is bad, similar to the course taken when nailed with a traffic ticket. Luckily for both ISPs trying to run a business and copyright infingers who'd like to keep their service, the proposal does not currently require the ISPs to kick infringers off their service. If implemented, the proposal could have a fairly drastic effect on the piracy community, but as anyone who has been following software piracy over the years knows, pirates tend to be some of the cleverest, quickest-acting people on the Internet, and one can only assume they would eventually find a clever way around ISP monitoring. For more detail on the proposal, check out CNET's coverage. (via CNET)

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In a brief fit of rage, Comcast pulled $18,000 worth of funding to the non-profit group Reel Grrls that would have covered their summer camp program. Why? Because of a Tweet. Comcast took heat for their decision and the funding was quickly reinstated. So, what exactly was in the offending Tweet? Did you think it might have something to do with a former FCC Commissioner approving the billion-dollar Comcast-NBCUniversal merger and then suddenly deciding to take a job with the newly-formed conglomerate? You guessed correctly.

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In January, the Federal Communications Commission approved, in a 4-1 vote, a landmark merger between cable and telecommunications giant Comcast and media and entertainment company NBC Universal. Though there were several strings attached -- Comcast-NBCU had to cede daily control of Hulu and make stand-alone broadband service available to customers for $49.95/month for the next three years, for instance -- observers generally agreed that the newly formed conglomerate would have massive reach and influence. Now, Meredith Attwell Baker, one of the four FCC commissioners who voted in favor of the merger, has announced that she will be leaving the FCC next month for a lobbying job with Comcast-NBCU following the expiration of her current term.

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There is talk that the convenience and reasonable pricing of Netflix's movie streaming services might be slowly ending torrenting and peer-to-peer file sharing. This comes after its number of subscribers have reached that of Comcast and after it started accounting for 40% of bandwidth use during evening hours. What it looks like is that users are turning to Netflix to watch movies cheaply and legally rather than wait hours for a free but illegal download. Someone tell Jack Sparrow that the rum might be running out.

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When "net neutrality" is a matter of defending highfalutin open Internet principles and P2P sites, it's hard to get average people too excited about it: But threaten their cheap Netflix, and matters get serious. The New York Times reports that Netflix partner Level 3 Communications, which delivers Netflix's streaming video to customers' computers, will have to pay recurring additional fees to ISP Comcast for continued carriage of their content. Level 3 is not too happy about this, and says it constitutes an assault on the open Internet and net neutrality.

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