Comcast Plans Cable Boxes with Integrated Wi-Fi and Snooping

Kaa writes "Short version: Comcast's cable modem/802.11g base station that is made by Linksys has capabilities to 'phone home' to Comcast and tell them how many devices are connected to your WiFi base station, how much bandwidth they are using, etc. It also has the capability to 'disable LAN segments' which, I assume, means they can kick your devices off your home network if they choose to do so. Something tells me this particular device won't make it into my house..."

Comments

Re:Smoothwall

[0x0000]

> I suppose the built-in WiFi would block your own WiFi's signal, but that
> doesn't point to a conspiracy.

like HELL it doesn't you comcast totalitarianism apologist you! Just wait to you're on the USER side of their fukking B'n'D approach to customer abuse. The bitch went OUT OF HER WAY to let me know she had a GUN -- more than one, in fact.

She left her mic open and pretended she was talking to someone else while I was supposed to think it was just an oversite -- open mic while I was on hold.

And that's not all not only does she have GUNS, the stoopid twit tried to tell me the NIC was bad in my laptop!

Comcast's policies are clearly so fascist, they have had to dredge the bottom of the sledge-pile to find individuals STOOPID and RUDE and MORONIC enough to impose their policies on unwitting customers without walking off the job in disgust. No actual thinking human being would impose those kinds of atrocities on fellow human beings! This is a perfect example of why certain jobs SHOULD be outsourced. The AMERIKAN who took my call a) refused to cooperate with me at all to get me online, b) was too stoopid to live, let alone have a job, and c) didn't understand english well enough to allow me to tell her how to do her job.

I've had FAR better "tech support" experiences dealing with foreign nationals who, while they may have an accent, at least are not entirely STOOpid (I think some of them can even read, and may have graduated high school, neither of which this twit could possibly have accomplished), and in many cases actually TRY to solve the problems with which they are presented. Comcast showed no desire at all to help. The attitude (leaving aside for the moment the rudeness and blatant attempts at intimidation and extortion of additional monies) was simply "It's not our fault you were stoopid enough to give us money."

Their pet BLONDE (and I don't mean that in a nice way; let me be clear about that) tried to convince me that the reason the Comcast server refused to provide routing for the circuit after providing the IP address to the NIC was because was because the cable modem was "full of junk mail or something".

She then tried to tell me that the NIC on the comp was bad, and hung up while I was trying to explain to her what it meant that a PING against her stoopid PROXY IP timed out...

She should use her fukking capgun on herself; unfortunately for her and the IDIOTS WHO PAY HER SALARY, I remain strangely unintimidated...

So. The moral of the story is: Just because their DHCP server sends your network configuration, this does not mean they will actually let yuor packets onto their wires afterward. Not even if you call them and ask them nicely.