The net seems to have been having problems off and on especially today, but for the last 3-4 days. I don't think it is a dns issue. I run dns on my machine and one moment a site works and then it doesn't. Had a problem with www.webmin.com eariler and Slashdot seems to be slow right now.
That's absurd. The testing branch is newly introduced packages in the "unstable" branch that have passed automated package quarantining. It's as close as you can get to the bleeding edge without figuratively dying of blood loss.
Think what you like, but it was behind. If I remember right one of the packages that was behind was Mozilla. At the time Debian testing had 0.9.6 while 0.9.9 was out.
That's even more absurd: If you'd paid any attention whatsoever to the preceding conversation or to basically any Debian documentation at all, or so much as looked at DebianPlanet or asked a Debian user, you'd have known that you get onto the "unstable" branch by using any Debian-compatible installer of your choice, adjusting/etc/apt/sources.list to pull packages from "unstable", and then resynchronise to "unstable" using apt-get.
That is what I did and it barfed during the installer.
Before you do, read some elementary Debian documentation, or browse my collection of Debian tips: http://linuxmafia.com/debian/tips [linuxmafia.com]. (Note that it's grown in chronological order, so more-current material is closer to the bottom.)
I did get testing installed and had X windows running just fine. I am not a linux newbie. I was using Linux when the only distribution was Slackware and I do Linux consulting.
The Debian "testing" branch is exactly the right distance from the bleeding edge for my taste, much more so than the "stable" branch (currently 3.0/woody). Of course, the point of using the PGI installer for x86 Debian is not to mindlessly remain with exactly what remains at the conclusion of the installer, but rather to start tracking one of the Debian branches using apt-get.
I have tried the testing branch and I found it too behind. Then I tried the unstable since many people said it worked for them. It wouldn't even install. One of these days I may give the testing branch another try.
Libranet has serious issues with me in that they charge for the second cd which has all the real differences between Debian and Libranet on it. Their ftp site doesn't accept anonymous ftp. Are they even following GPL?
With Xandros I don't see where you can freely download anything. Their ftp site again doesn't accept anonymous ftp. How are they following GPL?
Debian 3.0 with PGI would be nice if Debian 3.0 was as up to date with software as others.
Actually after doing more research into c2it they are free for transactions inside the country, $10 for sending money outside the country, and you simply can't receive money from outside the country. They are backed by Citibank and have bank/credit card company rules and protections. This is great for me for things like Ebay and US Clients. Though it is useless for my clients in England.
In a sense we are both spliting hairs. I could live with a text installer and debian could make a graphical installer. Yes, me living with the text installer is easier, but when everyone else has managed to get a graphical installer year ago, I wonder. As for the comment about install once and upgrade forever, I question how well that works. When I have tried upgrading with apt-get before I had problems with upgrading everything, relating to too many dependecies. From what I have heard this is a known problem and people suggest you just incremental upgrade you way the whole way.
Yes, this is from a x86 user perspective. Yes, I know it can be great to have it on every system. I also know what it is like to be in that small percentage that does things differently. Mostly I was ranting, but overall I am was trying to point out Debian could probably be a Wonderful x86 linux distribution that everyone would flock to give the managed the project better. Maybe this could be done while supporting all the current platforms. That would still leave dumping over half the packages which I am sure would improve release speed.
No, I believe there is middle ground. I was complaining about redhat rushing releases for deadline, which is a certain problem. Then I complained about Debian using old versions, not necessarily becuase they are more stable, but for their own reasons, that is another problem. I think redhat could easily delay each X.0 release another 2-3 months and get the stability they need. Debian takes an extra year or more.
I have read that message before. The gest is he keeps with the old stuff so he can support all the platforms. As I mentioned above I think this is impractical. I am sure the the people using those non-i386 archs would complain, but there has always been specially distributions for each arch, because they take so much extra work. You mention "other distributions" with the features I want, but I gave a list of distributions I had tried and didn't suit me. You have any actual names to give?
No, I haven't tried Lindows. From what I have heard it doesn't sound like the type of distribution for me, but I might give it a try one of these days.
Yeah, I thought of that after I posted it. Though humans aren't known for being always rational. They may see PayPal as different. I have sense decided to cancel my PayPal account and I am looking into c2it. The major problem with them is they don't allow me to accept money from people internationally.
I think this article points out very well the problems with Debian that cause it's extremely slow release cycle.
First is it has way too many packages it tries to support. The articles says 9000 packages for 3.0 Woody. RedHat has something like 1800(I am sure this figure it slightly off) packages in RedHat 8.0 Psyche. So Debian has 5 times has many packages to support. I do think RedHat would do better to support more packages, but not that many more. I might add say abother 200 packages to RedHat which would put them at 2000, still 4.5 times less than Debian.
Second is that Debain tries to support way too many platforms. My personal philisophy is that while it would be nice to have the exact same distribution for every platform it is just impractical. It would help their development greatly if the cut platforms. If they wanted to be logical about it they could probably look at the number of users of each platform and create some minimum number of users to support that platform.
I do think that simplifying package maintaining is a good move, but they are trying to fix the symptom instead of the problem. I applaud them for delaying to make releases extremely stable, but I think some of their maintainers have the wrong idea. One example that comes to mind is the XFree86 maintainer continuing to maintain XFree86 4.1 months after 4.2 had been released.
Another point about Debian has been it's horrible installer. I am hoping the Progency installer does take over and is also improved upon.
I use RedHat and have for years, but I am looking for a new distribution. I am doing so because of bad decesions RedHat has made in my opinion. These include rushing releases to meet a deadline instead of holding back and making it truly stable. They love to talk about their Q/A team, but their touch is very obviously lacking in RedHat 8.0, but at least they aren't as bad as Mandrake Q/A.
Then there is having Havoc Penington as an employee and on top of that having him as a Gnome Developer. He has a philisophy of simplify the user inferace to make it more usable. I agree with this idea, but he takes it way to far. His definition of simplification is dumbing everything down and removing very useful features and settings. Even worse he has convinced many Gnome developers.
I have tried Debian, Sourcer, Mandrake, Gentoo, and even Slackware before RedHat. None were better than RedHat in my opinion. Like when I used Windows, I wish for something better.
Paypal does have phone support, but you only get it with their business/premier accounts. If you have a business account it trivial to find a 1-888 number for them. Now I have read it has been outsourced to India which doesn't sound great, but at least you can talk to someone if they are actually making money off you. They shave 2.2-3.9% + 30 cents off each of my incoming money. 2.2% + 30 cents is for Merchant accounts which have qualification requirements. 3.2% + 30 cents is merchant receiving money from someone outside the country. 2.9% + 30 cents is standard business caaounts receiving money and 3.9% + 30 cents is standard receiving money from outside the country. The prices are like a form of sales tax, but at least they are better than c2it, western union, or bank wire. Checks would be cheaper in the US, but also less convientent. Not sure checks from out of the country would work.
Overall I am just going to require payments be charge + paypal sales tax. It makes me wonder if the government is going to get especially upset with ebay/paypal now they they have found a way to virtually collect a sales tax on the internet.
I am definitely use the methods mentioned above to protect myself and look for something better. So far I haven't found anything as cheap online.
I have been hearing a feature freeze for early November. Can it really take 7-8 months to go from feature freeze to a final version? Or is Linus actually planning to make 2.6.0 what 2.X.18+ quality?
I totally agree. This isn't cell phone related, but relates to customer service and getting screwed over by big companies.
I was looking to move from Oklahoma to Reno, so I do research into broadband in Reno. The two choices were Nevada Bell/SBC/Yahoo/Prodigy DSL or Charter Communications Cable. So I called Nevada Bell up and found they had 384kbit-1.5mbit down/128kbit up service normally for $49.99 a month. They also normally had a $99 equipment fee(dsl modem), $50 setup fee, and $199 installation fee(if you were stupid enough to want them to setup it up with your computer). They were having a special where they would waive equipment and setup fee plus give you $10 off for 6 months if you signed up with a one year contract. Even better(not) you would get Yahoo for your e-mail and stuff. If you canceled before one year you had to pay a $200 cancelation fee. I also found out that in reality you always got 768kbit down or less. I was like No way. I called Charter Communications and found they had three tiers. 384/128(crap) for $30, 512/128(something like that) for $40, or 1.5/128(not great but the best in town) for $50. They also had a simple $21.95 installation fee and $5 for cable modem rental. Their 128 up sucks, but that it the best you could get from them and Nevada Bell had the same. They told me I would get 3 dynamic ip address included for free when I asked.
I purchase a brand new cable modem from Ebay for $50 and move to Reno after a few weeks. I call Charter and request their 1.5/128 plan. While ordering I am told I hae to pay a $5 access fee that they didn't mention before because it is normally included in the price of cable tv, but I am not getting cable tv. I am upset about this, but didn't think it was worth fighting about. So a few days later I get it setup and it seems to work great.
The next day I try to hook up my roommate and find I can only get one dynamic ip address at a time. So I call Charter and I am told you only get one dynamic ip address included, but you can get additional ip addresses for $4.95 each. I tried telling them what I was told and they were firm in their position. I wasn't really that upset over it, so I dropped it. We happen to have a D-Link router appliance available for sharing. I used that for a while.
After a few days I started having a problem with the connection. It would just stop working one or twice a day. Couldn't ping anything even though the cable modem showed all green lights. Resetting the modem fixed the problem. It did this even without the D-Link router. So I call up Charter and they say it isn't them, but at the time it didn't make since that it could be anything but them. They insist it can't be them and so I drop it for a while. The problems starts to get really annoying so I try a search on the Internet and find it is a bug in this cable modem. I find that if the firmware is upgraded the problem should go away. So I called Charter the next day and tell them the problem and what I have found is the solution. They tell me ok, we understand, we will have it fixed in 2-3 days. So I called them on day 3 and I am told that they are having trouble figuring out how to upgrade and want to test the procedure before they actually do it to mine to make sure it won't cause network problems. They then tell me they will have it fixed in 3-5 days. I read them as them stalling, but go with it. I call on day 3 and I am told they are still working on it, but why don't we try a static ip address to see if that fixes it. Their theory was that the cable modem wasn't allowing the dhcp lease to be renewed. I say ok, sure:) I quickly figure out the static ip address doesn't help the problem. I then call on day 5(actually 4 days later, because of a weekend) and I am told they are still working on it. I tell them the static isn't helping. Finally I ask them if they can send out one of their modems for free and let me use it till they fix mine. They said after a short hold that yes they can do it by bringing one out, billing me for it, but also crediting me the price. I agree to this and I am told my account will be credited for two months worth of modem rental including tax. They also were able to schedule for someone to come out the next day. I am happy with this.
A little later I decide I do want to a second dyanmic ip address since I am having problems with the cheap D-Link Router resetting itself and hence causing ssh connections to be dropped. I had tried different/the latest firmware with no luck. I call them up and ask for a second dynamic ip address for $4.95 as I was told I could get a few weeks before. The guy seems to be willing to set it up, but in the middle of the call the call ends. Best guess is that it was my cell phone. I call back and the next guy says they can't and spends over half an hour arguing with me about why I should use a router appliance and how I should either get D-Link to replace the current one or buy a new one. In the middle of him arguing with me I ask him to talk to a supervisor and find out the credits that the previous tech was supposed to have put on the account aren't showing up. He says ok, but then keeps arguing with me. Finally I ask him again and he puts me on hold. He comes back 15 minutes later to tell me that he talked to his supervisor and his supervisor talked to his supervisor. They both said they can't do it. At this point I am Pissed. I again explain the lies they have told me and yell a little bit. Then I hang up. Then I call back and get another tech. This one tells me I can't either and after 15 minutes I hang up on him. Seconds after talking with him another tech I had talked to a few days before calls me and tells me they are still working on my cable modem problem. I tell him I had already worked out for them to bring another one out and then tell him the story of the lies. He tells me they can't do it. I ask to talk to a supervisor and I am told the supervisor is on the phone. He tells me the supervisor will call me back. I wait half an hour and no calls. So I call back again and demand to talk to a supervisor. I am told that I can't be given to a supervisor directly and it will require paperwork and for them to call me. They then ask me about the problem. I tell the guy the story and he says they can't do that. I then demand to talk to a supervisor repeatedly. Finally I am put on hold and 5 minutes later he comes back. He tells me, Oh we can do it for $4.95, but this won't be a permanent thing. We can remove it at any time. I say ok sure give it to me. He setups it up and says it should work in 6-8 hours.
I stay up and at 3am I can't get out. I check with traceroute and find a routing loop. I call them up. I have up till this point gotten a tech in 5 minutes or less. At 3am I am on hold for half an hour. I repeatedly hear, We are experiencing high call volume. I finally get through and I am told the techs were told 20 minutes ago they are upgrading the router and it should be up in 45 minutes. It finally comes back 3 hours later. I try resetting the modem and find the new dynamic ip address is working and my static one still works. I then get some sleep and wake up around 11am. I wait till noon(the latest the tech with the new modem was supposed to show up) and he is a no show. I call them and they can't even find the work order. I am told they will look for it and call me back. Half an hour later I get a call back saying they can't find the work order, but they have made one. The guy says the tech should be out by 7pm. At 3pm he shows up and is a really nice guy. He ends up replacing the modem and also replacing the apartment buildings connection point where all the coax for the building meets, because it is old and in bad connection.
A week later I get my second bill and find they have charged me a prorate of $1.75 for cable modem rental for a time period I didn't even have one of their cable modems and a cable modem rental charge without the credit. So I call them up and explain the problem. He agrees and credits me for the charges. The next day I call back to verify that the credit card automatic payment I had setup at their billing office a few weeks before was going to work. At the same time I ask if the credits had been applied and I was told yes. They then tell me they aren't sure if the credit card will be automatically billed and tell me to call back around the first of the month to check.
Is this half ass customer service or what.
Re:Sourceforge down the hole
on
Linuxworld Fun
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· Score: 1
Lets see
The interface is overly complex and cluttered. One of the biggest flaws is lack of search for mailing lists.
Auto-download/Mirror setup makes all download links not actually point to the file directly. When I right click on a link and select copy link I expect to get a link to the file not to the auto download page. Auto-download also can't be opted out of directly. You have to click the link, stop the page load and/or cancel the dialog, and then copy the link at the top of the page.
DB2/Websphere seems like a marketing decesion. Change in technology solely for marketing sucks. I go to sourceforge sites constantly haven't seen a performance problem for a while. I also question how much downtime, new problems, etc we will see during the switch over.
Sourceforge down the hole
on
Linuxworld Fun
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Ok, I think this is the straw that broke the camel's back for me. First it was the poor site interface, then it was the auto-download system, and now this converting to DB2. Sourceforge offically now sucks in my book. I wish everyone would start moving their projects off sourceforge.
I am currently running Limbo after my second fresh install. The first one I did to give Gnome2 a spin, and boy did it Suck. I had tried Gnome2 betas and they weren't that great, but I had to give Gnome2 final a spin to see if anything changed.
First problem was I installed sawfish and metacity. If you install both, metacity takes preference. So I uninstall metacity and try to find a way to use sawfish. Well I found a setting for window manager in gconf_editor, but it had no effect. Finally after doing a few searchs on Google I found you just manually run the window manager and make sure the session gets saved on exit(Lame). So I tried Sawfish for a little bit and it isn't too bad, but is missing viewports and many other features I require. So I install Enlightenment and find I need to recompile it. So I recompile it, install, and run it. It runs, but Gnome2 and Enlightenment 0.16.5 don't get along. First the panel isn't sticky across viewports. Second the panel becomes very resistant to unhiding. Three Enlightenment's viewport hotkeys go wacko. After reinstalling Limbo and replacing Gnome2 with Gnome1(remarkably not that hard of a thing to do, tho will require some recompiling to get near perfect) unsurpisingly enough Enlightenment 0.16.5 and Gnome1 work great together under Limbo.
Another problem with Gnome2 is the lack of settings. You may have heard of they just hide all the settings in Gconf, NOT! After looking through gconf_editor I can tell you, yes, there are a few settings in gconf_editor that aren't normally visible, but not nearly as many as were in preference panels in Gnome1.
Then there is the stupid stuff like when you go to change a panel's type. You can't change a panel's type. You must make a new panel, configure it how you want, and then move everything over. In Gnome1 you would just turn a edge panel into an aligned panel, and then move it where you wanted it.
Yet another problem was the lack of a gtk1 theme selector. In Limbo the Majority of the the applications are still gtk1(Xchat, xmms, galeon, gaim, etc).
There is the inconsistant Cancel/OK mess. Gnome1 uses OK/Cancel and Yes/No, Gnome2 uses the silly reversed Cancel/OK and No/Yes. Sawfish2 uses OK/Cancel.
I agree with you the old volume control applet was alot nicer. I won't be switching to Gnome2 till all the Gnome1 applets I require are ported. I might not even switch then as dumbed down as Gnome2 is.
Yes, it was supposed to be June 21st. I heard last night in #gnome that it might be released on June 26th or something like that. But now that RC2 is out I bet it will be at least another two weeks.
Slashdot Mirror
Warning, parent is goatse.cx style link.
The net seems to have been having problems off and on especially today, but for the last 3-4 days. I don't think it is a dns issue. I run dns on my machine and one moment a site works and then it doesn't. Had a problem with www.webmin.com eariler and Slashdot seems to be slow right now.
That's absurd. The testing branch is newly introduced packages in the "unstable" branch that have passed automated package quarantining. It's as close as you can get to the bleeding edge
/etc/apt/sources.list to pull packages from "unstable", and then resynchronise to "unstable" using apt-get.
without figuratively dying of blood loss.
Think what you like, but it was behind. If I remember right one of the packages that was behind was Mozilla. At the time Debian testing had 0.9.6 while 0.9.9 was out.
That's even more absurd: If you'd paid any attention whatsoever to the preceding conversation or to basically any Debian documentation at all, or so much as looked at DebianPlanet or asked a Debian user, you'd have known that you get onto the "unstable" branch by using any Debian-compatible installer of your choice, adjusting
That is what I did and it barfed during the installer.
Before you do, read some elementary Debian documentation, or browse my collection of Debian tips: http://linuxmafia.com/debian/tips [linuxmafia.com]. (Note that it's grown in chronological order, so more-current material is closer to the bottom.)
I did get testing installed and had X windows running just fine. I am not a linux newbie. I was using Linux when the only distribution was Slackware and I do Linux consulting.
The Debian "testing" branch is exactly the right distance from the bleeding edge for my taste, much more so than the "stable" branch (currently 3.0/woody). Of course, the point of using the PGI installer for x86 Debian is not to mindlessly remain with exactly what remains at the conclusion of the installer, but rather to start tracking one of the Debian branches using apt-get.
I have tried the testing branch and I found it too behind. Then I tried the unstable since many people said it worked for them. It wouldn't even install. One of these days I may give the testing branch another try.
Libranet has serious issues with me in that they charge for the second cd which has all the real differences between Debian and Libranet on it. Their ftp site doesn't accept anonymous ftp. Are they even following GPL?
With Xandros I don't see where you can freely download anything. Their ftp site again doesn't accept anonymous ftp. How are they following GPL?
Debian 3.0 with PGI would be nice if Debian 3.0 was as up to date with software as others.
Actually after doing more research into c2it they are free for transactions inside the country, $10 for sending money outside the country, and you simply can't receive money from outside the country. They are backed by Citibank and have bank/credit card company rules and protections. This is great for me for things like Ebay and US Clients. Though it is useless for my clients in England.
In a sense we are both spliting hairs. I could live with a text installer and debian could make a graphical installer. Yes, me living with the text installer is easier, but when everyone else has managed to get a graphical installer year ago, I wonder. As for the comment about install once and upgrade forever, I question how well that works. When I have tried upgrading with apt-get before I had problems with upgrading everything, relating to too many dependecies. From what I have heard this is a known problem and people suggest you just incremental upgrade you way the whole way.
Yes, this is from a x86 user perspective. Yes, I know it can be great to have it on every system. I also know what it is like to be in that small percentage that does things differently. Mostly I was ranting, but overall I am was trying to point out Debian could probably be a Wonderful x86 linux distribution that everyone would flock to give the managed the project better. Maybe this could be done while supporting all the current platforms. That would still leave dumping over half the packages which I am sure would improve release speed.
Yeah, I meant to have Debian's release cycle is too slow as the title, but when I got writing it became broader so I redid the title.
Yes, Debian is volunteer driven, but that doesn't mean it couldn't be managed much better.
No, I believe there is middle ground. I was complaining about redhat rushing releases for deadline, which is a certain problem. Then I complained about Debian using old versions, not necessarily becuase they are more stable, but for their own reasons, that is another problem. I think redhat could easily delay each X.0 release another 2-3 months and get the stability they need. Debian takes an extra year or more.
I have read that message before. The gest is he keeps with the old stuff so he can support all the platforms. As I mentioned above I think this is impractical. I am sure the the people using those non-i386 archs would complain, but there has always been specially distributions for each arch, because they take so much extra work. You mention "other distributions" with the features I want, but I gave a list of distributions I had tried and didn't suit me. You have any actual names to give?
No, I haven't tried Lindows. From what I have heard it doesn't sound like the type of distribution for me, but I might give it a try one of these days.
Yeah, I thought of that after I posted it. Though humans aren't known for being always rational. They may see PayPal as different. I have sense decided to cancel my PayPal account and I am looking into c2it. The major problem with them is they don't allow me to accept money from people internationally.
I think this article points out very well the problems with Debian that cause it's extremely slow release cycle.
First is it has way too many packages it tries to support. The articles says 9000 packages for 3.0 Woody. RedHat has something like 1800(I am sure this figure it slightly off) packages in RedHat 8.0 Psyche. So Debian has 5 times has many packages to support. I do think RedHat would do better to support more packages, but not that many more. I might add say abother 200 packages to RedHat which would put them at 2000, still 4.5 times less than Debian.
Second is that Debain tries to support way too many platforms. My personal philisophy is that while it would be nice to have the exact same distribution for every platform it is just impractical. It would help their development greatly if the cut platforms. If they wanted to be logical about it they could probably look at the number of users of each platform and create some minimum number of users to support that platform.
I do think that simplifying package maintaining is a good move, but they are trying to fix the symptom instead of the problem. I applaud them for delaying to make releases extremely stable, but I think some of their maintainers have the wrong idea. One example that comes to mind is the XFree86 maintainer continuing to maintain XFree86 4.1 months after 4.2 had been released.
Another point about Debian has been it's horrible installer. I am hoping the Progency installer does take over and is also improved upon.
I use RedHat and have for years, but I am looking for a new distribution. I am doing so because of bad decesions RedHat has made in my opinion. These include rushing releases to meet a deadline instead of holding back and making it truly stable. They love to talk about their Q/A team, but their touch is very obviously lacking in RedHat 8.0, but at least they aren't as bad as Mandrake Q/A.
Then there is having Havoc Penington as an employee and on top of that having him as a Gnome Developer. He has a philisophy of simplify the user inferace to make it more usable. I agree with this idea, but he takes it way to far. His definition of simplification is dumbing everything down and removing very useful features and settings. Even worse he has convinced many Gnome developers.
I have tried Debian, Sourcer, Mandrake, Gentoo, and even Slackware before RedHat. None were better than RedHat in my opinion. Like when I used Windows, I wish for something better.
Paypal does have phone support, but you only get it with their business/premier accounts. If you have a business account it trivial to find a 1-888 number for them. Now I have read it has been outsourced to India which doesn't sound great, but at least you can talk to someone if they are actually making money off you. They shave 2.2-3.9% + 30 cents off each of my incoming money. 2.2% + 30 cents is for Merchant accounts which have qualification requirements. 3.2% + 30 cents is merchant receiving money from someone outside the country. 2.9% + 30 cents is standard business caaounts receiving money and 3.9% + 30 cents is standard receiving money from outside the country.
The prices are like a form of sales tax, but at least they are better than c2it, western union, or bank wire. Checks would be cheaper in the US, but also less convientent. Not sure checks from out of the country would work.
Overall I am just going to require payments be charge + paypal sales tax. It makes me wonder if the government is going to get especially upset with ebay/paypal now they they have found a way to virtually collect a sales tax on the internet.
I am definitely use the methods mentioned above to protect myself and look for something better. So far I haven't found anything as cheap online.
I have been hearing a feature freeze for early November. Can it really take 7-8 months to go from feature freeze to a final version? Or is Linus actually planning to make 2.6.0 what 2.X.18+ quality?
I totally agree. This isn't cell phone related, but relates to customer service and getting screwed over by big companies.
:) I quickly figure out the static ip address doesn't help the problem. I then call on day 5(actually 4 days later, because of a weekend) and I am told they are still working on it. I tell them the static isn't helping. Finally I ask them if they can send out one of their modems for free and let me use it till they fix mine. They said after a short hold that yes they can do it by bringing one out, billing me for it, but also crediting me the price. I agree to this and I am told my account will be credited for two months worth of modem rental including tax. They also were able to schedule for someone to come out the next day. I am happy with this.
I was looking to move from Oklahoma to Reno, so I do research into broadband in Reno. The two choices were Nevada Bell/SBC/Yahoo/Prodigy DSL or Charter Communications Cable. So I called Nevada Bell up and found they had 384kbit-1.5mbit down/128kbit up service normally for $49.99 a month. They also normally had a $99 equipment fee(dsl modem), $50 setup fee, and $199 installation fee(if you were stupid enough to want them to setup it up with your computer). They were having a special where they would waive equipment and setup fee plus give you $10 off for 6 months if you signed up with a one year contract. Even better(not) you would get Yahoo for your e-mail and stuff. If you canceled before one year you had to pay a $200 cancelation fee. I also found out that in reality you always got 768kbit down or less. I was like No way. I called Charter Communications and found they had three tiers. 384/128(crap) for $30, 512/128(something like that) for $40, or 1.5/128(not great but the best in town) for $50. They also had a simple $21.95 installation fee and $5 for cable modem rental. Their 128 up sucks, but that it the best you could get from them and Nevada Bell had the same. They told me I would get 3 dynamic ip address included for free when I asked.
I purchase a brand new cable modem from Ebay for $50 and move to Reno after a few weeks. I call Charter and request their 1.5/128 plan. While ordering I am told I hae to pay a $5 access fee that they didn't mention before because it is normally included in the price of cable tv, but I am not getting cable tv. I am upset about this, but didn't think it was worth fighting about. So a few days later I get it setup and it seems to work great.
The next day I try to hook up my roommate and find I can only get one dynamic ip address at a time. So I call Charter and I am told you only get one dynamic ip address included, but you can get additional ip addresses for $4.95 each. I tried telling them what I was told and they were firm in their position. I wasn't really that upset over it, so I dropped it. We happen to have a D-Link router appliance available for sharing. I used that for a while.
After a few days I started having a problem with the connection. It would just stop working one or twice a day. Couldn't ping anything even though the cable modem showed all green lights. Resetting the modem fixed the problem. It did this even without the D-Link router. So I call up Charter and they say it isn't them, but at the time it didn't make since that it could be anything but them. They insist it can't be them and so I drop it for a while. The problems starts to get really annoying so I try a search on the Internet and find it is a bug in this cable modem. I find that if the firmware is upgraded the problem should go away. So I called Charter the next day and tell them the problem and what I have found is the solution. They tell me ok, we understand, we will have it fixed in 2-3 days. So I called them on day 3 and I am told that they are having trouble figuring out how to upgrade and want to test the procedure before they actually do it to mine to make sure it won't cause network problems. They then tell me they will have it fixed in 3-5 days. I read them as them stalling, but go with it. I call on day 3 and I am told they are still working on it, but why don't we try a static ip address to see if that fixes it. Their theory was that the cable modem wasn't allowing the dhcp lease to be renewed. I say ok, sure
A little later I decide I do want to a second dyanmic ip address since I am having problems with the cheap D-Link Router resetting itself and hence causing ssh connections to be dropped. I had tried different/the latest firmware with no luck. I call them up and ask for a second dynamic ip address for $4.95 as I was told I could get a few weeks before. The guy seems to be willing to set it up, but in the middle of the call the call ends. Best guess is that it was my cell phone. I call back and the next guy says they can't and spends over half an hour arguing with me about why I should use a router appliance and how I should either get D-Link to replace the current one or buy a new one. In the middle of him arguing with me I ask him to talk to a supervisor and find out the credits that the previous tech was supposed to have put on the account aren't showing up. He says ok, but then keeps arguing with me. Finally I ask him again and he puts me on hold. He comes back 15 minutes later to tell me that he talked to his supervisor and his supervisor talked to his supervisor. They both said they can't do it. At this point I am Pissed. I again explain the lies they have told me and yell a little bit. Then I hang up. Then I call back and get another tech. This one tells me I can't either and after 15 minutes I hang up on him. Seconds after talking with him another tech I had talked to a few days before calls me and tells me they are still working on my cable modem problem. I tell him I had already worked out for them to bring another one out and then tell him the story of the lies. He tells me they can't do it. I ask to talk to a supervisor and I am told the supervisor is on the phone. He tells me the supervisor will call me back. I wait half an hour and no calls. So I call back again and demand to talk to a supervisor. I am told that I can't be given to a supervisor directly and it will require paperwork and for them to call me. They then ask me about the problem. I tell the guy the story and he says they can't do that. I then demand to talk to a supervisor repeatedly. Finally I am put on hold and 5 minutes later he comes back. He tells me, Oh we can do it for $4.95, but this won't be a permanent thing. We can remove it at any time. I say ok sure give it to me. He setups it up and says it should work in 6-8 hours.
I stay up and at 3am I can't get out. I check with traceroute and find a routing loop. I call them up. I have up till this point gotten a tech in 5 minutes or less. At 3am I am on hold for half an hour. I repeatedly hear, We are experiencing high call volume. I finally get through and I am told the techs were told 20 minutes ago they are upgrading the router and it should be up in 45 minutes. It finally comes back 3 hours later. I try resetting the modem and find the new dynamic ip address is working and my static one still works. I then get some sleep and wake up around 11am. I wait till noon(the latest the tech with the new modem was supposed to show up) and he is a no show. I call them and they can't even find the work order. I am told they will look for it and call me back. Half an hour later I get a call back saying they can't find the work order, but they have made one. The guy says the tech should be out by 7pm. At 3pm he shows up and is a really nice guy. He ends up replacing the modem and also replacing the apartment buildings connection point where all the coax for the building meets, because it is old and in bad connection.
A week later I get my second bill and find they have charged me a prorate of $1.75 for cable modem rental for a time period I didn't even have one of their cable modems and a cable modem rental charge without the credit. So I call them up and explain the problem. He agrees and credits me for the charges. The next day I call back to verify that the credit card automatic payment I had setup at their billing office a few weeks before was going to work. At the same time I ask if the credits had been applied and I was told yes. They then tell me they aren't sure if the credit card will be automatically billed and tell me to call back around the first of the month to check.
Is this half ass customer service or what.
Lets see
The interface is overly complex and cluttered. One of the biggest flaws is lack of search for mailing lists.
Auto-download/Mirror setup makes all download links not actually point to the file directly. When I right click on a link and select copy link I expect to get a link to the file not to the auto download page. Auto-download also can't be opted out of directly. You have to click the link, stop the page load and/or cancel the dialog, and then copy the link at the top of the page.
DB2/Websphere seems like a marketing decesion. Change in technology solely for marketing sucks. I go to sourceforge sites constantly haven't seen a performance problem for a while. I also question how much downtime, new problems, etc we will see during the switch over.
Ok, I think this is the straw that broke the camel's back for me. First it was the poor site interface, then it was the auto-download system, and now this converting to DB2. Sourceforge offically now sucks in my book. I wish everyone would start moving their projects off sourceforge.
I am currently running Limbo after my second fresh install. The first one I did to give Gnome2 a spin, and boy did it Suck. I had tried Gnome2 betas and they weren't that great, but I had to give Gnome2 final a spin to see if anything changed.
First problem was I installed sawfish and metacity. If you install both, metacity takes preference. So I uninstall metacity and try to find a way to use sawfish. Well I found a setting for window manager in gconf_editor, but it had no effect. Finally after doing a few searchs on Google I found you just manually run the window manager and make sure the session gets saved on exit(Lame). So I tried Sawfish for a little bit and it isn't too bad, but is missing viewports and many other features I require. So I install Enlightenment and find I need to recompile it. So I recompile it, install, and run it. It runs, but Gnome2 and Enlightenment 0.16.5 don't get along. First the panel isn't sticky across viewports. Second the panel becomes very resistant to unhiding. Three Enlightenment's viewport hotkeys go wacko. After reinstalling Limbo and replacing Gnome2 with Gnome1(remarkably not that hard of a thing to do, tho will require some recompiling to get near perfect) unsurpisingly enough Enlightenment 0.16.5 and Gnome1 work great together under Limbo.
Another problem with Gnome2 is the lack of settings. You may have heard of they just hide all the settings in Gconf, NOT! After looking through gconf_editor I can tell you, yes, there are a few settings in gconf_editor that aren't normally visible, but not nearly as many as were in preference panels in Gnome1.
Then there is the stupid stuff like when you go to change a panel's type. You can't change a panel's type. You must make a new panel, configure it how you want, and then move everything over. In Gnome1 you would just turn a edge panel into an aligned panel, and then move it where you wanted it.
Yet another problem was the lack of a gtk1 theme selector. In Limbo the Majority of the the applications are still gtk1(Xchat, xmms, galeon, gaim, etc).
There is the inconsistant Cancel/OK mess. Gnome1 uses OK/Cancel and Yes/No, Gnome2 uses the silly reversed Cancel/OK and No/Yes. Sawfish2 uses OK/Cancel.
I have tried multiple betas of Gnome2 and wasn't impressed. So I have given it a whirl. Yes, I understand it is a developer platform.
I agree with you the old volume control applet was alot nicer. I won't be switching to Gnome2 till all the Gnome1 applets I require are ported. I might not even switch then as dumbed down as Gnome2 is.
http://www.kiarchive.ru/pub/windows/dll/
That may work in metacity, but other than that metacity is missing even more than Sawfish.
Yes, it was supposed to be June 21st. I heard last night in #gnome that it might be released on June 26th or something like that. But now that RC2 is out I bet it will be at least another two weeks.