this time Chief of Staff Matthew Berry, speaking at the National Conference of State Legislatures, has endorsed states' right to ban municipal broadband networks
He's endorsed the right of the people in each state to get bent over by massively-corrupt telcos with their monopolistic behaviors - by reinforcing their monopolies - all in the name of a free market (despite the fact that it's anything but).
FTFY.
Except, you know, they aren't monopolies. But none of that will matter soon. After the disastrous Rural broadband initiative from 2009, the FCC realized just how expensive it is to provide service outside the cable footprint. So they've reverse course and it now seems they are about a 20yr plan to completely eliminate the universal service fund. At that point, there will be no teleco for most of these communities and they'll have to have municipal broadband or nothing at all. With the changes in FCC rulings, Telcos have started charging different rates base on how expensive it is to serve you. Previously this was a big no-no but I've now see the FCC rules changes, and it's kosher with them as long as it isn't for the phoneline itself. But DSL is fair game. Soon I bet it will be phone service to.
If a new wireless tech doesn't come along soon, rural internet will be dead and gone. And by rural I mean outside the cable footprint, if you don't have Cable access now and have to rely on DSL like most of the country, you're who I'm talking about. It's a sad thing but Urban users refuse to subsidize the poor anymore I guess.
This is complete BS, they come out with nonsense studies like this all the time. My father works in manufacturing, they don't like going over seas, you have a hard time controlling quality, ensuring design specs, etc... But there is no way they can stay in business without it. According to my father, when doing analysis of where to send work The total cost of labor (including benefits an such) are roughly as follows: US: $15/hr Mexico: $1/hr China: 10cents/hr The minimum wage is mexico is $5/day, so yea... China has the benefit of the manufacturer paying no benefits at all and the government keeping the employees healthy. There are added costs like shipping, bribing government officals etc... But the costs would have to be huge to make up the difference between $15/hr and 10 cents per hour. Where US workers come into the picture is to save money on shipping. If you can send the product over in pieces, save a ton on shipping and then have the final product assembled here, you can get the best of both worlds.
Not uncommon for a salesman to have two cell phones. One provided by the company, and their personal. Aside from the PITA of packing and charging both devices, it makes since to keep both the phone numbers and billing separate.
It was before, but in recent years employers have been ending the company provided phone programs. We went through it recently and I lost my work phone. To be honest, I don't mind. I rooted my phone and can do with it what I want. Also, I don't feel obligated to answer just because it's a work call now. But yea, my employer wont like this ruling. Getting rid of the phones was painful but it saved them money. If they have to pay the money anyway, the entire painful mess is going to be a finger in their eye.
And was most certainly used in air conditioners for decades. It's banned for that use now, but anyone with an older system that's being replaced could definitely have R10.
Linux has so much going for it in the device market that I don't see why Linus doesn't just double down on it. The future of Linux seems to make more sense as a kernel used for other things (like Android) rather than trying to break into the standalone desktop OS market.
Where would you code the kernel without the desktop? On your tablet?
I used to work in a department that handled DMCA notices on the consumer side. (They were complaining that our customers were hosting the content) The vast majority of these complaints were fraudulent. The problem is that the media companies hire other companies to monitor for infringement and send take-down notices. I suspect they pay per notice sent and they are getting swindled. Some were so bad, we literally blacklisted their domain so they'd stop sending us complaints. They'd send take down notices for people that weren't even in our IP block. They were just sending nonsense and collecting money from the content provider. This likely also where the content providers get their insane numbers about the amount of money they are losing.
We used to just call it "pouring cement" and "laying bricks" but now that additive manufacturing is such a big hit we have to call it 3D Printing.
Right... this isn't even the first time this has been done either. It's just a machine that mixes cement with filler and pours it into a shape. They then move the shapes into place and kind of prop them up against each other. It's slower, wasteful, not as strong and more expensive than the old fashion way. But he got his name in the paper, and that's all that really matters.
call your supervisor over, I'd like to speak to them immediately. Inform them that if THEY can't disconnect my service, I'll be asking for their manager as well
There's no legal obligation for them to transfer you to their supervisor. You can ask a dozen times, and the "supervisor" or "manager" you get, will keep being the guy in the next cubicle over.
Did I ever say there was? You're not trying to get a supervisor, you're trying to waste their time. I am fully aware that you get transferred to the guy in the next cube in a lot of cases. But, you refuse to be transferred, nearly all call centers have a policy on "Warm transfers" meaning, they have to first get your permission and then transfer you in person (i.e. this is frank, he has x problem, etc...) But you refuse to give permission. I guarantee their policy doesn't govern that.
The end result in the call center is the agent can't transfer you or put you on hold per policy, so they have to mute you and walk over and ask what to do. They will either give up on the spot, send a real manager over or have an agent get up from his cube and take over the call to pretend to be supervisor. You'll then ask for another, and they'll switch, and another agent walks over. Soon there's a crowd around this cube, no ones getting anything done, you've created total chaos on the sales managers floor. Keep in mind, the manager (the real one) has stats to. His are for the entire team. You're not just hurting those agents stats, you're hurting HIS stats now. Weather he gets on the phone or not, he knows who you are, what you want and he wants you off the phone.
I know this happens, I've been that manager and I've had that done to me a few times. As soon as I would hear someone was pulling that on one of my agents my reply would be "Give him what he wants, get him off the phone asap" With the caveat that what the person wants is possible. I had one guy try that and want a years refund. I ended up getting on the phone and being frank with that guy "Listen, I want this to be over as much as you do. But there are limits to what I can do. I have no '1 year refund' button on my screen. No amount of arguing can change that. If you want that kind of restitution you're calling the wrong place, you need a lawyer or something." He seemed to accept that I'd done what I could and went on his way.
It would have been good form to update the vulnerable device. But it's not "to blame" for the data loss. The people who willfully broke in and grabbed the patient data are the cause of the loss.
If your breaks were failing, you didn't do anything about it, and then another car ran a red light and you plowed into them it would be all their fault? No, The person that ran the light, the break manufacturer, and more importantly you, would all be at fault. The healthcare company is just as much at fault as the attackers, there's no excuse for not having patched that equipment.
FWIW, windmills and skyscrapers kill a lot of birds too.
And automobiles, for that matter.
Not to get in the way of everyones back patting circle jerk here but windmills and skyscrapers are required by California law to take mitigating steps to help prevent deaths. Even where I live in the midwest, they forced a local cell tower to replace its aircraft warning light because it was confusing migratory birds into thinking it was the moon so they'd end up flying in circles around it until they crashed into the wires. Large buildings are required to have those bird shaped stickers on the windows so the birds don't try to fly it and whack themselves on the glass. This is nothing new, the solar tower will have to take similar steps.
Not that hard. So lets say my brother has an accident, and leave me his Pink Floyd albums on iTunes. If I don't have an account already, I simply start using the inherited account. Easy for them. Maybe I want the name changed. If I already have an account, they can simply give me the albums he had. It is digital stuff, so there is no difference between a "new" instance of an album and and "old". So they won't need a special transfer mechanism - just give me a new copy of whatever is in the old account before deleting it. No new procedure, merely a "sale without the money". If I already had those albums in my own account it is even easier - no change! There is no such thing as "two instances" of the same album on iTunes.
You clearly don't work in IT. Software doesn't work that way. If the datatable is shaped like this: Customers -------------------- name, cust_id, credits
Items -------------------- Cust_id, song
Then your system would work. But it probably is not organized like that. That's very inefficient. What if the items table is like this: Items -------------------- Pinfloyd - the wall Y/N? Pinfloyd - the Division bell Y/N? Pinfloyd - Live Y/N?
Each of those Yes/No's only takes up 1 bit of space. It's either 1 or 0 on the datatable. Now what if you and your brother both own "The wall" ? How do they reflect that you now own 2? What if you're 10? And the song is for adults only? What if you were previously banned from iTunes?!?!
There are 1000 ways to store this data and only a few lend themselves to easily transferring songs from one person to another.
you've no idea what you're talking about. This is a contract dispute between the ISPs, Netflix and the peers (mainly Level3) They all get this hairy, and there's always a lot of bullying going on. The difference here, and what's new is that Netflix has gone full retard, gotten the public and the government involved. If they continue, this will not turn out well for them, the ISPs or us.
You want government enforced net neutrality? Do you think they'll be neutral about porn? "Terrorist" activity? Anti-government sentiment? Once the governments fingers are in your business, they never, ever, come back out. Poison is the cure.
Does anyone have a script a customer can stick to when dealing with Comcast?
I used to work in and run call centers for years. (don't anymore, but I manage software that's used in them in some ways) They want to make money off you. You want them to do what you want? Cost them money. The following works every time, I do it myself. The key is to: A: Do not be reasonable or polite, they count on that. Remember you're in the midst of a con. The person you're talking to is reading a scripted con, that they relies on you being polite and normal. Being not polite and not normal ruins the process. B: Do not get upset or use poor language, that's a free ticket to hang up on you. Passive aggressive is the key here. C: Waste as much of their time as possible. D: Never let them put you on hold. That gives them a mental break, this is a test of endurance. They've been it for hours, you're fresh and can eat chips and drink soda while you ruin their day.
For example, if you want to disconnect. Comcast: Thanks for calling in... long nonsense fill speech later... How can I help you? You: I would like to disconnect my service effective immediately, if you waste my time and/or do anything other than disconnect me immediately, I will request a supervisor, I will accept nothing less than a supervisor, I will not allow you to put me on hold, and I will make this call miserable for the both of us until my service has been satisfactorily disconnected. *at this point 90% of agents will just do it and take the hit on their stats to not deal with you, but if they wont, read on* Comcast: I'm sorry to hear that sir, but I will have to transfer you to our disconnect department... You: *cut them off* Please get your supervisor, do not put me on hold. Thank you. Comcast: But my supervisor can't... You:You're wasting both of our time, call your supervisor over, I'd like to speak to them immediately. Inform them that if THEY can't disconnect my service, I'll be asking for their manager as well. This will continue until my service is disconnected, I will not be put on hold.
I doubt the supervisor will even get on the phone. Continue down this path, ask for higher and higher level supervisors. There is a chance you will run into a hardass. Don't worry, take down his name, hang up, call back, get someone else. You're shooting for the weakest link. You will find it, they will get sick of talking to you. You'll ruin their stats for the night and they will eventually just say "Screw it" and give you what you want. Their stats are the only measure by which they keep their jobs. You're a loss either way by acting like this so eventually they'll take the hit on the Sale/disco instead of letting you screw up their call times or keep the manager from browsing Slashdot. Remember, the person you're talking to doesn't hate you, doesnt like doing what they are doing and doesn't care if you buy anything. They are required to keep their average call times under X minuites, to make Y sales per month, to have under Z disconnects. Make it clear which stats they are not going to be able to save on this call and which ones they could make up for them on... namely, this could be a very short call and they could stop talking to you, who's clearly unhinged sooner.
In a separate development on Monday, the White House said it wanted all cars and light trucks to be equipped with technology that could prevent collisions.
And finally law enforcements wet dream of being able to remotely disable your car becomes a reality. If you think this is anything but that, you're very naive.
Yes, because the single payer systems in Europe of trouble free right?
I'm not saying we don't have an issue, but your 1 step solution is a joke. The same corruption, greed and poor administration that afflicts us now would continue in the new system. It would just include all the problems of government waste and politics as well.
The problem in the US is states have enacted their own laws governing what treatment is required by law. So states that are pro-patient rights oppose allowing patients being able to seek insurance outside of the state as that would be an end run around their laws. As a result, patients cannot for any meaningful patients rights groups of a large enough size to make a difference in the healthcare market. There aren't enough doctors because younger doctors can make more money doing plastic surgery and other cosmetic specialty work, and the older doctors get pair so much they only feel the need to work 2 days a week. Tuition to medical schools in this country is borderline insane.
This is a very complex issue and throwing black and white solutions at it while calling your opponents stupid will get your no-where.
I thought I'd provide some anecdotal evidence for the sake of argument. I've worked at 3 major telephone companies/ISPs over the years and have been involved in installing phone and data lines at multiple power companies across the country including 1 reactor. In every case the power company had a standing police that basically boiled down to "No data enters the facility" It used to be a rule that "no copper entered the facility" but that changed with the advent of fiberoptics. I don't know if this is a law, or just a common security practice, but in the dozens of facilities I've worked with they were all air-gaped. Again, this is anecdotal, I don't know if this is done everywhere, but I certainly found it reassuring when I saw it.
On the other hand, I did work with a local municipality once that opened and closed the local damn with a single copper pair running between the control house and the damn. When the damn overflowed and flooded that copper pair rendering it inoperable, they were furious with us because we wouldn't "fix it" I had to explain to a local community leader that our field techs are not trained to use scubba gear and had we known the safety of the entire community was riding on a single $12/month copper pair we'd have likely suggested an alternative solution.
This has interesting implications for the entire industry. Mainly because they'll now need to restructure their systems to deal with moving an asset from one account to another as well as deal with when one user ends up with 2 of the same media. It may seem simple from the outside but if they've never prepared for these problems it could be a major headache for them now.
What a joke. And let me guess, they're offering free credit monitoring for up to a year! It's completely inexcusable that they waited over a month to report this. I hate to see the feds get involved in anything, but this is getting ridiculous. These incidents should result in fines in the tens of millions, minimum. Then they'd take security seriously. Most serious security efforts aren't even all that expensive. It's getting all the people and systems in compliance that's the issue.
You can have literally any mix of frequencies you want. Because of the research I put into getting my wifes issues taken care of I became very adept at lighting and such. So I expanded into Fish and Corals. I was able to get a proper frequency mix that represented diffused light at about 20 meters down, which turns very "Actinic" Here are what actinic light looks like: http://www.advancedaquarist.co... The water filters out certain frequencies and turns the light bluish/violet.
Then I decided that, with the extra fixtures to try and show my kid how tomatoes/peppers/etc... grow. So in the dead of winter we planted a small garden in our spare room. In that case I was able to dial in specific frequencies used by chlorophyll. That light was oddly red/green/brown. But it worked like gangbusters. I had huge tomatoes when there was still ice outside. Unfortunately when I moved those outside they didn't produce as well. I think they were weak because of their pampered indoor upbringing.
Now I've been eying LED lights. With those you can literally pick any spectrum you want. You can put in LED's for very specific wavelengths. If you were going to go that route, I think what you should do is try and figure out what the spectrum of light is that falls on northern Africa. That's where humans started out, so it would make sense that we're designed for whatever spectrum lands there. What I found out when I was doing the Aquarium stuff was that depending on where the plants you're growing came from the light could be totally different. The spectrum that falls on us up here in the north is different from what falls on the equator.
Well, yes, of course. When Microsoft throws that much software license cuts and maybe a few junkets for the mucky-mucks in exotic places for âoeconferencesâ, well, this is the way it goes.
Is there anyone who really thought it would go any other way?
I love linux as much as anyone on here. But I'm not about to pretend the sky ain't blue just to support my argument. Linux, plain and simple, is not user friendly. The only notable exception is Android. If they tried to just push their own Nix flavor at government types, I'm not surprised that they got complaints. I've never seen a Linux GUI environment that wasn't a tacked on joke. You're still required to go to the command line to do anything meaningful. Control panels that fail at even the most basic tasks, and on and on. If Linux is to ever take off as a desktop environment, someone will need to do a complete overhaul like Google did with Android.
Now queue all the people ranting about how the public is just dumb and don't know how to use Linux. To you I say, you're right... the public is dumb and don't know how to use linux. Yet those same people can use Windows. See the problem? You can have an IQ of a slice of Bacon and still get your mail open in Windows... that's how easy it has to be. Make Linux that easy and you'll have something.
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$15 per hour for manufacturing labor in the US? I'd be shocked if it was less that 3x that when you add in Obamacare, Workman's Comp, SSI, etc.
That was including all that. Average factory worker starts at less than $10/hr in the US. The rest is for insurance and such.
A petition with 13 signatures is not worth mentioning. Any idiot can set one up.
You mean any idiot with 12 idiot friends.
I think he meant any idiot with access to 13 different IP addresses/proxies and 12 sock puppets
Or Tor and the refresh button.
this time Chief of Staff Matthew Berry, speaking at the National Conference of State Legislatures, has endorsed states' right to ban municipal broadband networks
He's endorsed the right of the people in each state to get bent over by massively-corrupt telcos with their monopolistic behaviors - by reinforcing their monopolies - all in the name of a free market (despite the fact that it's anything but).
FTFY.
Except, you know, they aren't monopolies.
But none of that will matter soon. After the disastrous Rural broadband initiative from 2009, the FCC realized just how expensive it is to provide service outside the cable footprint. So they've reverse course and it now seems they are about a 20yr plan to completely eliminate the universal service fund. At that point, there will be no teleco for most of these communities and they'll have to have municipal broadband or nothing at all. With the changes in FCC rulings, Telcos have started charging different rates base on how expensive it is to serve you. Previously this was a big no-no but I've now see the FCC rules changes, and it's kosher with them as long as it isn't for the phoneline itself. But DSL is fair game. Soon I bet it will be phone service to.
If a new wireless tech doesn't come along soon, rural internet will be dead and gone. And by rural I mean outside the cable footprint, if you don't have Cable access now and have to rely on DSL like most of the country, you're who I'm talking about. It's a sad thing but Urban users refuse to subsidize the poor anymore I guess.
This is complete BS, they come out with nonsense studies like this all the time.
My father works in manufacturing, they don't like going over seas, you have a hard time controlling quality, ensuring design specs, etc...
But there is no way they can stay in business without it.
According to my father, when doing analysis of where to send work The total cost of labor (including benefits an such) are roughly as follows:
US: $15/hr
Mexico: $1/hr
China: 10cents/hr
The minimum wage is mexico is $5/day, so yea...
China has the benefit of the manufacturer paying no benefits at all and the government keeping the employees healthy.
There are added costs like shipping, bribing government officals etc...
But the costs would have to be huge to make up the difference between $15/hr and 10 cents per hour.
Where US workers come into the picture is to save money on shipping. If you can send the product over in pieces, save a ton on shipping and then have the final product assembled here, you can get the best of both worlds.
Not uncommon for a salesman to have two cell phones. One provided by the company, and their personal. Aside from the PITA of packing and charging both devices, it makes since to keep both the phone numbers and billing separate.
It was before, but in recent years employers have been ending the company provided phone programs. We went through it recently and I lost my work phone. To be honest, I don't mind. I rooted my phone and can do with it what I want. Also, I don't feel obligated to answer just because it's a work call now. But yea, my employer wont like this ruling. Getting rid of the phones was painful but it saved them money. If they have to pay the money anyway, the entire painful mess is going to be a finger in their eye.
CCL4 has the industry name of R10
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
And was most certainly used in air conditioners for decades. It's banned for that use now, but anyone with an older system that's being replaced could definitely have R10.
halon and the old refrigerants certainly are NOT liquid at STP, you are blathering about carbon tet perhaps but this thread was about venting HVAC
I've seen a halon system go off in person before. It most certainly was a gas.
Linux has so much going for it in the device market that I don't see why Linus doesn't just double down on it. The future of Linux seems to make more sense as a kernel used for other things (like Android) rather than trying to break into the standalone desktop OS market.
Where would you code the kernel without the desktop? On your tablet?
"A clever attacker can smuggle contraband past the machines using surprisingly low-tech techniques."
Please, God, Tell me it's tinfoil... plz plz plz plz
I used to work in a department that handled DMCA notices on the consumer side. (They were complaining that our customers were hosting the content) The vast majority of these complaints were fraudulent. The problem is that the media companies hire other companies to monitor for infringement and send take-down notices. I suspect they pay per notice sent and they are getting swindled. Some were so bad, we literally blacklisted their domain so they'd stop sending us complaints. They'd send take down notices for people that weren't even in our IP block. They were just sending nonsense and collecting money from the content provider. This likely also where the content providers get their insane numbers about the amount of money they are losing.
We used to just call it "pouring cement" and "laying bricks" but now that additive manufacturing is such a big hit we have to call it 3D Printing.
Right... this isn't even the first time this has been done either. It's just a machine that mixes cement with filler and pours it into a shape. They then move the shapes into place and kind of prop them up against each other. It's slower, wasteful, not as strong and more expensive than the old fashion way. But he got his name in the paper, and that's all that really matters.
There's no legal obligation for them to transfer you to their supervisor. You can ask a dozen times, and the "supervisor" or "manager" you get, will keep being the guy in the next cubicle over.
http://www.icmi.com/Resources/...
Did I ever say there was? You're not trying to get a supervisor, you're trying to waste their time. I am fully aware that you get transferred to the guy in the next cube in a lot of cases. But, you refuse to be transferred, nearly all call centers have a policy on "Warm transfers" meaning, they have to first get your permission and then transfer you in person (i.e. this is frank, he has x problem, etc...) But you refuse to give permission. I guarantee their policy doesn't govern that.
The end result in the call center is the agent can't transfer you or put you on hold per policy, so they have to mute you and walk over and ask what to do. They will either give up on the spot, send a real manager over or have an agent get up from his cube and take over the call to pretend to be supervisor. You'll then ask for another, and they'll switch, and another agent walks over. Soon there's a crowd around this cube, no ones getting anything done, you've created total chaos on the sales managers floor. Keep in mind, the manager (the real one) has stats to. His are for the entire team. You're not just hurting those agents stats, you're hurting HIS stats now. Weather he gets on the phone or not, he knows who you are, what you want and he wants you off the phone.
I know this happens, I've been that manager and I've had that done to me a few times. As soon as I would hear someone was pulling that on one of my agents my reply would be "Give him what he wants, get him off the phone asap" With the caveat that what the person wants is possible. I had one guy try that and want a years refund. I ended up getting on the phone and being frank with that guy "Listen, I want this to be over as much as you do. But there are limits to what I can do. I have no '1 year refund' button on my screen. No amount of arguing can change that. If you want that kind of restitution you're calling the wrong place, you need a lawyer or something." He seemed to accept that I'd done what I could and went on his way.
It would have been good form to update the vulnerable device. But it's not "to blame" for the data loss. The people who willfully broke in and grabbed the patient data are the cause of the loss.
If your breaks were failing, you didn't do anything about it, and then another car ran a red light and you plowed into them it would be all their fault? No, The person that ran the light, the break manufacturer, and more importantly you, would all be at fault. The healthcare company is just as much at fault as the attackers, there's no excuse for not having patched that equipment.
FWIW, windmills and skyscrapers kill a lot of birds too.
And automobiles, for that matter.
Not to get in the way of everyones back patting circle jerk here but windmills and skyscrapers are required by California law to take mitigating steps to help prevent deaths. Even where I live in the midwest, they forced a local cell tower to replace its aircraft warning light because it was confusing migratory birds into thinking it was the moon so they'd end up flying in circles around it until they crashed into the wires. Large buildings are required to have those bird shaped stickers on the windows so the birds don't try to fly it and whack themselves on the glass. This is nothing new, the solar tower will have to take similar steps.
Number of birds killed by oil spills?
Number of birds killed by air pollution?
Thanks California. Human impact of using coal fired plants? Nope, think of the children has been replaced by "think of the birds".
That right there is some fantastic Moral equivalence if I've ever seen it.
Not that hard. So lets say my brother has an accident, and leave me his Pink Floyd albums on iTunes.
If I don't have an account already, I simply start using the inherited account. Easy for them. Maybe I want the name changed.
If I already have an account, they can simply give me the albums he had. It is digital stuff, so there is no difference between a "new" instance of an album and and "old". So they won't need a special transfer mechanism - just give me a new copy of whatever is in the old account before deleting it. No new procedure, merely a "sale without the money". If I already had those albums in my own account it is even easier - no change! There is no such thing as "two instances" of the same album on iTunes.
You clearly don't work in IT. Software doesn't work that way. If the datatable is shaped like this:
Customers
--------------------
name, cust_id, credits
Items
--------------------
Cust_id, song
Then your system would work. But it probably is not organized like that. That's very inefficient. What if the items table is like this:
Items
--------------------
Pinfloyd - the wall Y/N?
Pinfloyd - the Division bell Y/N?
Pinfloyd - Live Y/N?
Each of those Yes/No's only takes up 1 bit of space. It's either 1 or 0 on the datatable.
Now what if you and your brother both own "The wall" ?
How do they reflect that you now own 2?
What if you're 10? And the song is for adults only?
What if you were previously banned from iTunes?!?!
There are 1000 ways to store this data and only a few lend themselves to easily transferring songs from one person to another.
you've no idea what you're talking about. This is a contract dispute between the ISPs, Netflix and the peers (mainly Level3) They all get this hairy, and there's always a lot of bullying going on. The difference here, and what's new is that Netflix has gone full retard, gotten the public and the government involved. If they continue, this will not turn out well for them, the ISPs or us.
You want government enforced net neutrality? Do you think they'll be neutral about porn? "Terrorist" activity? Anti-government sentiment? Once the governments fingers are in your business, they never, ever, come back out. Poison is the cure.
Does anyone have a script a customer can stick to when dealing with Comcast?
I used to work in and run call centers for years. (don't anymore, but I manage software that's used in them in some ways) They want to make money off you. You want them to do what you want? Cost them money. The following works every time, I do it myself.
The key is to:
A: Do not be reasonable or polite, they count on that. Remember you're in the midst of a con. The person you're talking to is reading a scripted con, that they relies on you being polite and normal. Being not polite and not normal ruins the process.
B: Do not get upset or use poor language, that's a free ticket to hang up on you. Passive aggressive is the key here.
C: Waste as much of their time as possible.
D: Never let them put you on hold. That gives them a mental break, this is a test of endurance. They've been it for hours, you're fresh and can eat chips and drink soda while you ruin their day.
For example, if you want to disconnect.
Comcast: Thanks for calling in... long nonsense fill speech later... How can I help you?
You: I would like to disconnect my service effective immediately, if you waste my time and/or do anything other than disconnect me immediately, I will request a supervisor, I will accept nothing less than a supervisor, I will not allow you to put me on hold, and I will make this call miserable for the both of us until my service has been satisfactorily disconnected.
*at this point 90% of agents will just do it and take the hit on their stats to not deal with you, but if they wont, read on*
Comcast: I'm sorry to hear that sir, but I will have to transfer you to our disconnect department...
You: *cut them off* Please get your supervisor, do not put me on hold. Thank you.
Comcast: But my supervisor can't...
You:You're wasting both of our time, call your supervisor over, I'd like to speak to them immediately. Inform them that if THEY can't disconnect my service, I'll be asking for their manager as well. This will continue until my service is disconnected, I will not be put on hold.
I doubt the supervisor will even get on the phone. Continue down this path, ask for higher and higher level supervisors. There is a chance you will run into a hardass. Don't worry, take down his name, hang up, call back, get someone else. You're shooting for the weakest link. You will find it, they will get sick of talking to you. You'll ruin their stats for the night and they will eventually just say "Screw it" and give you what you want. Their stats are the only measure by which they keep their jobs. You're a loss either way by acting like this so eventually they'll take the hit on the Sale/disco instead of letting you screw up their call times or keep the manager from browsing Slashdot. Remember, the person you're talking to doesn't hate you, doesnt like doing what they are doing and doesn't care if you buy anything. They are required to keep their average call times under X minuites, to make Y sales per month, to have under Z disconnects. Make it clear which stats they are not going to be able to save on this call and which ones they could make up for them on... namely, this could be a very short call and they could stop talking to you, who's clearly unhinged sooner.
In a separate development on Monday, the White House said it wanted all cars and light trucks to be equipped with technology that could prevent collisions.
And finally law enforcements wet dream of being able to remotely disable your car becomes a reality. If you think this is anything but that, you're very naive.
Yes, because the single payer systems in Europe of trouble free right?
I'm not saying we don't have an issue, but your 1 step solution is a joke. The same corruption, greed and poor administration that afflicts us now would continue in the new system. It would just include all the problems of government waste and politics as well.
The problem in the US is states have enacted their own laws governing what treatment is required by law. So states that are pro-patient rights oppose allowing patients being able to seek insurance outside of the state as that would be an end run around their laws. As a result, patients cannot for any meaningful patients rights groups of a large enough size to make a difference in the healthcare market. There aren't enough doctors because younger doctors can make more money doing plastic surgery and other cosmetic specialty work, and the older doctors get pair so much they only feel the need to work 2 days a week. Tuition to medical schools in this country is borderline insane.
This is a very complex issue and throwing black and white solutions at it while calling your opponents stupid will get your no-where.
I thought I'd provide some anecdotal evidence for the sake of argument. I've worked at 3 major telephone companies/ISPs over the years and have been involved in installing phone and data lines at multiple power companies across the country including 1 reactor. In every case the power company had a standing police that basically boiled down to "No data enters the facility" It used to be a rule that "no copper entered the facility" but that changed with the advent of fiberoptics. I don't know if this is a law, or just a common security practice, but in the dozens of facilities I've worked with they were all air-gaped. Again, this is anecdotal, I don't know if this is done everywhere, but I certainly found it reassuring when I saw it.
On the other hand, I did work with a local municipality once that opened and closed the local damn with a single copper pair running between the control house and the damn. When the damn overflowed and flooded that copper pair rendering it inoperable, they were furious with us because we wouldn't "fix it" I had to explain to a local community leader that our field techs are not trained to use scubba gear and had we known the safety of the entire community was riding on a single $12/month copper pair we'd have likely suggested an alternative solution.
This has interesting implications for the entire industry. Mainly because they'll now need to restructure their systems to deal with moving an asset from one account to another as well as deal with when one user ends up with 2 of the same media. It may seem simple from the outside but if they've never prepared for these problems it could be a major headache for them now.
"They used sophisticated malware!"
What a joke. And let me guess, they're offering free credit monitoring for up to a year! It's completely inexcusable that they waited over a month to report this. I hate to see the feds get involved in anything, but this is getting ridiculous. These incidents should result in fines in the tens of millions, minimum. Then they'd take security seriously. Most serious security efforts aren't even all that expensive. It's getting all the people and systems in compliance that's the issue.
You can have literally any mix of frequencies you want. Because of the research I put into getting my wifes issues taken care of I became very adept at lighting and such. So I expanded into Fish and Corals. I was able to get a proper frequency mix that represented diffused light at about 20 meters down, which turns very "Actinic"
Here are what actinic light looks like: http://www.advancedaquarist.co...
The water filters out certain frequencies and turns the light bluish/violet.
Then I decided that, with the extra fixtures to try and show my kid how tomatoes/peppers/etc... grow. So in the dead of winter we planted a small garden in our spare room. In that case I was able to dial in specific frequencies used by chlorophyll. That light was oddly red/green/brown. But it worked like gangbusters. I had huge tomatoes when there was still ice outside. Unfortunately when I moved those outside they didn't produce as well. I think they were weak because of their pampered indoor upbringing.
Now I've been eying LED lights. With those you can literally pick any spectrum you want. You can put in LED's for very specific wavelengths. If you were going to go that route, I think what you should do is try and figure out what the spectrum of light is that falls on northern Africa. That's where humans started out, so it would make sense that we're designed for whatever spectrum lands there. What I found out when I was doing the Aquarium stuff was that depending on where the plants you're growing came from the light could be totally different. The spectrum that falls on us up here in the north is different from what falls on the equator.
Well, yes, of course. When Microsoft throws that much software license cuts and maybe a few junkets for the mucky-mucks in exotic places for âoeconferencesâ, well, this is the way it goes.
Is there anyone who really thought it would go any other way?
I love linux as much as anyone on here. But I'm not about to pretend the sky ain't blue just to support my argument. Linux, plain and simple, is not user friendly. The only notable exception is Android. If they tried to just push their own Nix flavor at government types, I'm not surprised that they got complaints. I've never seen a Linux GUI environment that wasn't a tacked on joke. You're still required to go to the command line to do anything meaningful. Control panels that fail at even the most basic tasks, and on and on. If Linux is to ever take off as a desktop environment, someone will need to do a complete overhaul like Google did with Android.
Now queue all the people ranting about how the public is just dumb and don't know how to use Linux. To you I say, you're right... the public is dumb and don't know how to use linux. Yet those same people can use Windows. See the problem? You can have an IQ of a slice of Bacon and still get your mail open in Windows... that's how easy it has to be. Make Linux that easy and you'll have something.