You'd be surprised (at least in the US). Drivers have a tendency to be lemmings and if they're unsure of something, they'll just do what the car in front of them does. During a wind storm where power was just restored here in Western WA, I approached an intersection where the signal had recently come on from an outage. It was flashing red in all directions (I guess this is the bootup state of this cities lights, I've seen it happen elsewhere). Yet when I approached, cross traffic from my left was NOT STOPPING! It was insane! At least 15 cars in that direction (two lanes) went through before a smart independent thinker driver decided flashing red means STOP.
A very similar story happened when I was in Phoenix, too, turning onto an arterial from a side street. On this side of the country, if it isn't clearly red, yellow, or green, its pratcially every man for himself:)
Well, I found an old e-mail sent to me from slashdot back in 2000... I have no idea when my account was actually created though.
Received: from mail.andover.net [64.28.67.55] (slashdot@slashdot.org); Thu, 13 Jul 2000 14:01:19 -0400 X-Envelope-To: bweaver Received: from localhost (nobody@www4.slashdot.com [10.2.48.4])
by mail.andover.net (8.10.0/8.10.0) with SMTP id e6DI1UA08134
for <bweaver@mailandnews.com>; Thu, 13 Jul 2000 14:01:30 -0400 Message-Id: <200007131801.e6DI1UA08134@mail.andover.net> Subject: Slashdot user password for Brian360 Content-transfer-encoding: quoted-printable Content-type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Mime-version: 1.0 To: bweaver@mailandnews.com From: slashdot@slashdot.org Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2000 18:01 +0000 X-PMFLAGS: 34078848 0 1 P2DD70.CNM
The user account 'Brian360' on Slashdot has this email associated with it. A web user from 208.3.12.32 has just requested that password be sent. It is 'YHr7MgVF'. You can change it after you login at <URL:http://slashdot.org/users.pl>.
If you didn't ask for this, don't get your panties all in a knot. You are seeing this message, not "them". So if you can't be trusted with your own password, we might have an issue, otherwise, you can just disregard this message.
Back in 2001 when I moved to Phoenix, AZ, I set up a Bank of America account there. Apparently, the only way to gain online banking access was to call customer service and request an account. At the time, they *required* me to use my SSN as my User-ID and limited my password to 7 characters. I even mentioned on the phone that I felt it was very insecure, but she insisted...
This was also back when Washington Mutual required you to enter your Visa Debit card number in its entirety every time to log in to online banking... ahh, good times:)
Note that this is no longer a requirement and BofA has since restructured everything (even forced me to change my UserID at one point) since implementing the SiteKey.
Thats a good point... although I believe most phones will prefer their Home network over a Roaming network, however I don't know how signal strength is factored in that. Luckily, my Nokia 6230 lets me manually select an operator from a list of in-range operators. I'm sure not-so-tech-saavy customers wouldn't know (or care) until they got the bill in the mail though.
Beware if you're with Cingular. If you don't give them something like 30 days notice to your cancellation, they will charge you for a full month of service _AFTER_ they deactivate your SIM card, even if your contract is over.
Additionally, they do NOT prorate your last bill -- it is always billed to the end of the billing cycle whether or not your SIM card was even active.
Good luck porting your number from them for this reason... they just cancel your account immediately upon the port request, giving you pretty much no opportunity to avoid this extra month of payments. This caused me to be billed to the end of my last billing cycle PLUS an additional billing cycle for not giving them 30 days notice. It worked out to about 1.5 extra months of service I was forced to pay that I didn't receive.
Just be sure you read the fine print on your usage agreement very very carefully... that company in particular is destined to scam you.
I guess it depends on where you take the phone and the mood of the person who helps you, unfortunately. I had a Nokia 3589i that I tried changing some setting on (don't remember) via the USB cable and some PC software (MobiMB). A few days later, when I rebooted the phone for other reasons, it got to the Verizon logo and rebooted... infinite reboot cycle. Took it to the nearest Verizon store and 20 minutes later they had fixed it and returned it to me, no questions asked.
(Note that I am in no way recommending Verizon in the first place. They cripple way to many features on their phones that caused people like me to try this "unsupported" stuff in the first place.)
If you want proof, then download the Nokia Series 40 Software Development Kit, which includes an emulator for the Nokia 6230 series. Figure out how to emulate a large memory card and add more than 99 music files and then start the music player and browse the track list.
On my phone, I have exactly 272 mp3's on the memory card (yes, it is far from full), and the music player, which I use to _PLAY_ music *daily*, has no problems shuffling between every single one. I can also view all the tracks in the track list and jump to any track I wish.
I'm not sure how long ago you last talked to Nokia, but I am 100% certain that the person you talked to was wrong, as I have living proof sitting in my hand. In fact, the mp3 capabilities was one of the primary reasons I bought this phone in the first place.
I have a Nokia 6230b with a 2GB memory card and serveral hundred songs in mp3 format, a few music videos (3gp), and dozens of pictures. It also outputs true stereo sound to my car head unit via a modified cable -- It even doubles as a hands-free kit that automatically pauses the music when I receive a call. It works flawlessly!
It also supports OBEX file transfer via Bluetooth so i can easily add/remove music on it. Now I just need to write a program to sync up podcasts to it when in range.
MythTV (0.19+) does this too. Since the Live TV "recordings" are basically the same as a regular recording but with a short lifespan, you can hit "record" at any point during a show of any length and it'll flag it as a recording and automatically save the rest of the show, even if you back out of LiveTV. I do this all the time, and its great.
Interesting... I just went online about 15 days ago and added their $19.99 "T-Mobile Internet" plan. Works great! Speeds are about 100kbps via bluetooth on my Nokia 6230b.
Since my phone is an "unsupported" phone (taken from Cingular -- wow am I happy to be away from that horrible company), I had to fudge with their website selecting different phones for a while until I got the options I needed to enable the Internet GPRS plan.
I've been planning to using 1 (or more) dedicated MythTV backends with "thinner" clients as the frontends. Has anybody ported a MythTV front-end to the X-Box (or better yet as a plugin to XBMC)? That way I could still watch live-tv with PVR functions and program guide all on the xbox. A setup like that would be sweet and very cost effective.
In all fairness I have been a DirecTV subscriber since they took over Primestar. I have used their online bill pay, manually each month, for at least the past 2 years. I have never had a problem with a "double-charge" or any other form of unauthorized charge to my credit card. Any issues I have had (service issues, installation, outages) have always been prompty handled by customer service and resolved above my satisfaction. One example was replacing a Hughes receiver I owned that stopped functioning and was well out of warranty -- they shipped, for free, a new receiver and a label to send the old one back. Couldn't have been more painless.
Its unfortunate that you appear to have had some serious issues with them. One trick I've heard from people is to call their customer retention department directly (1-800-600-8977) -- they'll do almost anything it seems to keep you as a valued customer!
Now if they would just get some decent HD channels:)
Slashdot Mirror
You'd be surprised (at least in the US). Drivers have a tendency to be lemmings and if they're unsure of something, they'll just do what the car in front of them does. During a wind storm where power was just restored here in Western WA, I approached an intersection where the signal had recently come on from an outage. It was flashing red in all directions (I guess this is the bootup state of this cities lights, I've seen it happen elsewhere). Yet when I approached, cross traffic from my left was NOT STOPPING! It was insane! At least 15 cars in that direction (two lanes) went through before a smart independent thinker driver decided flashing red means STOP.
:)
A very similar story happened when I was in Phoenix, too, turning onto an arterial from a side street. On this side of the country, if it isn't clearly red, yellow, or green, its pratcially every man for himself
Well, I found an old e-mail sent to me from slashdot back in 2000... I have no idea when my account was actually created though.
Received: from mail.andover.net [64.28.67.55] (slashdot@slashdot.org); Thu, 13 Jul 2000 14:01:19 -0400
X-Envelope-To: bweaver
Received: from localhost (nobody@www4.slashdot.com [10.2.48.4])
by mail.andover.net (8.10.0/8.10.0) with SMTP id e6DI1UA08134
for <bweaver@mailandnews.com>; Thu, 13 Jul 2000 14:01:30 -0400
Message-Id: <200007131801.e6DI1UA08134@mail.andover.net>
Subject: Slashdot user password for Brian360
Content-transfer-encoding: quoted-printable
Content-type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Mime-version: 1.0
To: bweaver@mailandnews.com
From: slashdot@slashdot.org
Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2000 18:01 +0000
X-PMFLAGS: 34078848 0 1 P2DD70.CNM
The user account 'Brian360' on Slashdot has this email
associated with it. A web user from 208.3.12.32 has
just requested that password be sent. It is 'YHr7MgVF'. You
can change it after you login at <URL:http://slashdot.org/users.pl>.
If you didn't ask for this, don't get your panties all in a knot.
You are seeing this message, not "them". So if you can't be
trusted with your own password, we might have an issue, otherwise,
you can just disregard this message.
--Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda
malda@slashdot.org
Back in 2001 when I moved to Phoenix, AZ, I set up a Bank of America account there. Apparently, the only way to gain online banking access was to call customer service and request an account. At the time, they *required* me to use my SSN as my User-ID and limited my password to 7 characters. I even mentioned on the phone that I felt it was very insecure, but she insisted...
... ahh, good times :)
This was also back when Washington Mutual required you to enter your Visa Debit card number in its entirety every time to log in to online banking
Note that this is no longer a requirement and BofA has since restructured everything (even forced me to change my UserID at one point) since implementing the SiteKey.
Thats a good point ... although I believe most phones will prefer their Home network over a Roaming network, however I don't know how signal strength is factored in that. Luckily, my Nokia 6230 lets me manually select an operator from a list of in-range operators. I'm sure not-so-tech-saavy customers wouldn't know (or care) until they got the bill in the mail though.
Beware if you're with Cingular. If you don't give them something like 30 days notice to your cancellation, they will charge you for a full month of service _AFTER_ they deactivate your SIM card, even if your contract is over.
Additionally, they do NOT prorate your last bill -- it is always billed to the end of the billing cycle whether or not your SIM card was even active.
Good luck porting your number from them for this reason... they just cancel your account immediately upon the port request, giving you pretty much no opportunity to avoid this extra month of payments. This caused me to be billed to the end of my last billing cycle PLUS an additional billing cycle for not giving them 30 days notice. It worked out to about 1.5 extra months of service I was forced to pay that I didn't receive.
Just be sure you read the fine print on your usage agreement very very carefully... that company in particular is destined to scam you.
I guess it depends on where you take the phone and the mood of the person who helps you, unfortunately. I had a Nokia 3589i that I tried changing some setting on (don't remember) via the USB cable and some PC software (MobiMB). A few days later, when I rebooted the phone for other reasons, it got to the Verizon logo and rebooted... infinite reboot cycle. Took it to the nearest Verizon store and 20 minutes later they had fixed it and returned it to me, no questions asked.
(Note that I am in no way recommending Verizon in the first place. They cripple way to many features on their phones that caused people like me to try this "unsupported" stuff in the first place.)
If you want proof, then download the Nokia Series 40 Software Development Kit, which includes an emulator for the Nokia 6230 series. Figure out how to emulate a large memory card and add more than 99 music files and then start the music player and browse the track list.
On my phone, I have exactly 272 mp3's on the memory card (yes, it is far from full), and the music player, which I use to _PLAY_ music *daily*, has no problems shuffling between every single one. I can also view all the tracks in the track list and jump to any track I wish.
I'm not sure how long ago you last talked to Nokia, but I am 100% certain that the person you talked to was wrong, as I have living proof sitting in my hand. In fact, the mp3 capabilities was one of the primary reasons I bought this phone in the first place.
Simply not true.
I have a Nokia 6230b with a 2GB memory card and serveral hundred songs in mp3 format, a few music videos (3gp), and dozens of pictures. It also outputs true stereo sound to my car head unit via a modified cable -- It even doubles as a hands-free kit that automatically pauses the music when I receive a call. It works flawlessly!
It also supports OBEX file transfer via Bluetooth so i can easily add/remove music on it. Now I just need to write a program to sync up podcasts to it when in range.
MythTV (0.19+) does this too. Since the Live TV "recordings" are basically the same as a regular recording but with a short lifespan, you can hit "record" at any point during a show of any length and it'll flag it as a recording and automatically save the rest of the show, even if you back out of LiveTV. I do this all the time, and its great.
client$ nc -l -p 5000 > /dev/null /dev/urandom | nc client 5000
server$ cat
Some of us like to transfer data that never hits the disk.
Interesting ... I just went online about 15 days ago and added their $19.99 "T-Mobile Internet" plan. Works great! Speeds are about 100kbps via bluetooth on my Nokia 6230b.
Since my phone is an "unsupported" phone (taken from Cingular -- wow am I happy to be away from that horrible company), I had to fudge with their website selecting different phones for a while until I got the options I needed to enable the Internet GPRS plan.
I've been planning to using 1 (or more) dedicated MythTV backends with "thinner" clients as the frontends. Has anybody ported a MythTV front-end to the X-Box (or better yet as a plugin to XBMC)? That way I could still watch live-tv with PVR functions and program guide all on the xbox. A setup like that would be sweet and very cost effective.
In all fairness I have been a DirecTV subscriber since they took over Primestar. I have used their online bill pay, manually each month, for at least the past 2 years. I have never had a problem with a "double-charge" or any other form of unauthorized charge to my credit card. Any issues I have had (service issues, installation, outages) have always been prompty handled by customer service and resolved above my satisfaction. One example was replacing a Hughes receiver I owned that stopped functioning and was well out of warranty -- they shipped, for free, a new receiver and a label to send the old one back. Couldn't have been more painless.
:)
Its unfortunate that you appear to have had some serious issues with them. One trick I've heard from people is to call their customer retention department directly (1-800-600-8977) -- they'll do almost anything it seems to keep you as a valued customer!
Now if they would just get some decent HD channels