In BC and Alberta take a look at either Uniserve.com or AcroDSL.ca for a couple of resellers of TELUS' service. Basically they will have you as a customer and deal with telus on your behalf to get you service. Keeps your Internet separate from your phone company, which in my experience has been a Good Thing.
I don't think they need to be trained at all... they just need to have script writer add a few options on their screens. When I had my original harddrive replaced the India-guy told me at one point the system is slow and it takes a moment to bring up the next section each time he asked me a question and input my response.
Once he got the authorization (my guess is something similar to an IM to his supervisor) for the replacement he proceeded to tell me exactly where each screw was that I needed to remove and had detailed instructions on every step necessary to remove the cover and get the drive out. I'm sure it's not feasable to train every single support rep every single model and every single part that can fail.
Unless someone has experience to the contrary, I'll remain confident that they just choose from a list of possibilities and only a small time investment is necessary to add new problems to their database. For example something that indicates this output (edited to make filters stop whining) may be part of a problem..
SMART Error Log Version: 1 ATA Error Count: 8417 (device log contains only the most recent five errors) --snip-- Powered_Up_Time is measured from power on, and printed as DDd+hh:mm:SS.sss where DD=days, hh=hours, mm=minutes, SS=sec, and sss=millisec. It "wraps" after 49.710 days.
Error 8417 occurred at disk power-on lifetime: 1454 hours (60 days + 14 hours)
When the command that caused the error occurred, the device was active or idle.
After command completion occurred, registers were:
ER ST SC SN CL CH DH
40 51 05 4a e4 d2 e5 Error: UNC 5 sectors at LBA = 0x05d2e44a = 97707082
Commands leading to the command that caused the error were:
CR FR SC SN CL CH DH DC Powered_Up_Time Command/Feature_Name
It's not that it took months to get everything to work, it's because it took months for me to care enough to spend the time to get it to work.
For example, suspend to ram... download a few scripts and set it up so when the right key combination is pressed it activates the script. Took less than an hour of tinkering while watching TV.
S-Video and SPDIF out -- just took a bit of reading to figure out the concept and to download the linux ATI drivers from ATI's website. Now MythTV works great (I have an older box that can use the on-board MPEG encodocer but doesn't have the CPU or graphics card to handle playback let alone even connect to a TV).
I did just remember that I have no clue how to use the infrared port on my Inspiron though. That is about the only issue I've spent hours on without any progress.
As to the harddrive, SMART reports damage as well. Dell doesn't care about SMART because it's not from Windows XP's proggie
After buying a Dell Inspiron 600m sometime in the summer I figured what the heck and installed Fedora Core on it. A few months down the road I've managed to get everything (including SPDIF out, TV-out, WLAN, suspend to ram) working. The only thing I haven't had a chance to play with is hot dock and undocking. If I want to either dock or undock, everything must be shut off and rebooted...anything else ends up freezing the system.
Having said that it seems perfectly Dell compatable... would just be nice if tech support would accept my linux-based diagnostic info when contacting them for tech support. I've had one harddrive completely die (replaced next day), but now I have bad sectors and htey won't help me because I'm running an unsupported OS.
It's great that they've been able to use our up and coming Universal Communication Medium to form the government. One step forward... now for other countries to follow their lead.
There was a test done once, the details of which I cannot recall exactly as I don't know that I ever knew them. The gist of it was that they set of some high explosives far below a ship. A large ship. The point was to see if the 'bubbles' would do any damage to and/or sink the ship.
I saw a program that had something similar to this called "Disaster Detectives" I believe. They wanted to see if a release of bubbles could sink a ship. Turns out they didn't do much if directly under. However if the bubbles were off to the side, they would create enough of a splash to spill into the ship and sink it.
. you are probably the same person who complains about commercials on tv.
Actually they're handy to remind me to get up and do things (ie. walk over and check the email), instead of being a couch potato and sit in the same spot for hours at a time.
Commercials, as annoying as they are, do prompt you to be productive. Whereas spam isn't passive and isn't going to delete itself if you walk away for 4 minutes.
So everyone is annoyed by spam... at least any person I've talked to in the last few years who has email... yet apparently a very significant portion support it.
It's perfectly legal to operate a radar detector in your vehicle while driving in B.C. Also, I read a newspaper not long ago about the Ontario police purchasing a few radar detector detector detectors:) I'm sure the radar detector detector detector detectors will be available in the next few months.
Microwave oven you mean... according to two friends of mine who work at Tim Hortons.
Since they "standardized" everything to come from their central factory, all the local outlets have to do is zap them in the microwave to get rid of the ice and they're good to go.
"Microwave" Oven Fresh, just as the sign says!
Re:Photo and PIN on Cash Card / Credit Card??
on
RFID MasterCard
·
· Score: 1
In Canada, we have debit cards that we can attach to bank accounts. They don't use Visa/Mastercard, but a system we call Interac. Each card allows you to link up to two bank accounts, and you have to authenticate with a 4 digit pin for every purchase.
Well, on numerous occasions my brother has lent his debit card to his girlfriend and she was able to use it no problem. This debit card has a picture of my brother on it, and believe me, the two do not look alike whatsoever!
Free online and telephone banking, free use of their ABMs, free cheques, free bill payments, free debit card purchases, and even free loyalty points!
but they are going to send you junk mail to pay for it.
Don't think they send you junk mail, but I'm pretty sure they sell your banking habits... which is probably the reason I use my good ole' trusty Credit Union.
Looks like the blank media tax shinces through. Even though I own all the music I listen to, and use DVD-RWs for weekly server backups, it seems if I wanted to, I can download music without fear! Thanks Courts!
The number 211 use to work in here in BC, Canada with Telus. They changed that a few years ago though, supposedly because phreakers were using it to identify the phone lines they got ahold of.
Now, you just call the power company at 1 888 POWER-ON and it repeats the number back to you:)
Some other *11s around here...
611 = repair 711 = TTY/TDD operator from payphones
Reminds me of the time I was staying in Boston for a conference... I wanted a drink but didn't want to pay double price for one from the hotel, so at about midnight or so I wondered outside to find a nearby gas station (turns it there was one maybe a half a kilometre away). Anyway on the way back a cop flipped his lights on and drilled me on why I was outside at that hour, wanted to know where I was heading, and when I said the hotel he started demanding why I had left -- all in a rather interrogative tone.
Experiences like that and stores like yours are many reasons why I will never choose the US as destination. On infrequent instances I will travel there for business, but never just for the fun of it.
I've done sales chat for a network of hosting companies... our interface was developed in-house to not require any Java or special plug-ins. Just HTML and JavaScript. A nice feature about it was what's called QuickFAQ's where you just choose the topic and it'll insert a pretyped message that you can customize before sending off to the prospect.
With these sales chats you can easily handle a half dozen chats at one time... just better hope the phone doesn't ring. That's when it gets tricky:)
When will Kodak lobby for a tax on Compact Flash/MMC/Memory Stick mediums like the music industry has (successfully) managed to get themselves on harddrives, CD-Rs, and DVD-Rs?
I mean, every day they are being circumvented by scanners and email where consumers should be taking the original negatives or photos to have copied with true Kodak equipment.
Sure isn't that way around here... I have come across plenty of dealers offering me real cheap or free "samples" just so I could say I've tried drug X, or so they try to convince me.
Here in BC, Canada, our monopoly telco Telus has right in the front of the phone book that they own the telephone number and can change it at any time with reasonable notice.
I suppose this is no longer the case with the American's number portability, but this probably use to be the case and is where eBay is getting it's worries from.
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In BC and Alberta take a look at either Uniserve.com or AcroDSL.ca for a couple of resellers of TELUS' service. Basically they will have you as a customer and deal with telus on your behalf to get you service. Keeps your Internet separate from your phone company, which in my experience has been a Good Thing.
Isn't this just fantastic.
I don't think they need to be trained at all... they just need to have script writer add a few options on their screens. When I had my original harddrive replaced the India-guy told me at one point the system is slow and it takes a moment to bring up the next section each time he asked me a question and input my response.
... or this ...
/dev/hda, 103 Currently unreadable (pending) sectors /dev/hda, 103 Currently unreadable (pending) sectors /dev/hda, 103 Currently unreadable (pending) sectors /dev/hda, 103 Currently unreadable (pending) sectors
Once he got the authorization (my guess is something similar to an IM to his supervisor) for the replacement he proceeded to tell me exactly where each screw was that I needed to remove and had detailed instructions on every step necessary to remove the cover and get the drive out. I'm sure it's not feasable to train every single support rep every single model and every single part that can fail.
Unless someone has experience to the contrary, I'll remain confident that they just choose from a list of possibilities and only a small time investment is necessary to add new problems to their database. For example something that indicates this output (edited to make filters stop whining) may be part of a problem..
SMART Error Log Version: 1
ATA Error Count: 8417 (device log contains only the most recent five errors)
--snip--
Powered_Up_Time is measured from power on, and printed as
DDd+hh:mm:SS.sss where DD=days, hh=hours, mm=minutes,
SS=sec, and sss=millisec. It "wraps" after 49.710 days.
Error 8417 occurred at disk power-on lifetime: 1454 hours (60 days + 14 hours)
When the command that caused the error occurred, the device was active or idle.
After command completion occurred, registers were:
ER ST SC SN CL CH DH
40 51 05 4a e4 d2 e5 Error: UNC 5 sectors at LBA = 0x05d2e44a = 97707082
Commands leading to the command that caused the error were:
CR FR SC SN CL CH DH DC Powered_Up_Time Command/Feature_Name
00:23:50.223 READ DMA
00:23:50.221 WRITE DMA
00:23:50.219 WRITE DMA
00:23:50.164 WRITE DMA
00:23:50.162 WRITE DMA
Mar 9 18:01:10 trevmobile smartd[2200]: Device:
Mar 9 18:31:11 trevmobile smartd[2200]: Device:
Mar 9 19:01:10 trevmobile smartd[2200]: Device:
Mar 9 19:31:10 trevmobile smartd[2200]: Device:
It's not that it took months to get everything to work, it's because it took months for me to care enough to spend the time to get it to work.
For example, suspend to ram... download a few scripts and set it up so when the right key combination is pressed it activates the script. Took less than an hour of tinkering while watching TV.
S-Video and SPDIF out -- just took a bit of reading to figure out the concept and to download the linux ATI drivers from ATI's website. Now MythTV works great (I have an older box that can use the on-board MPEG encodocer but doesn't have the CPU or graphics card to handle playback let alone even connect to a TV).
I did just remember that I have no clue how to use the infrared port on my Inspiron though. That is about the only issue I've spent hours on without any progress.
As to the harddrive, SMART reports damage as well. Dell doesn't care about SMART because it's not from Windows XP's proggie
After buying a Dell Inspiron 600m sometime in the summer I figured what the heck and installed Fedora Core on it. A few months down the road I've managed to get everything (including SPDIF out, TV-out, WLAN, suspend to ram) working. The only thing I haven't had a chance to play with is hot dock and undocking. If I want to either dock or undock, everything must be shut off and rebooted...anything else ends up freezing the system.
Having said that it seems perfectly Dell compatable... would just be nice if tech support would accept my linux-based diagnostic info when contacting them for tech support. I've had one harddrive completely die (replaced next day), but now I have bad sectors and htey won't help me because I'm running an unsupported OS.
There's a new site at RadioShackIsBack.com that explains some things in their FAQ section.
It's great that they've been able to use our up and coming Universal Communication Medium to form the government. One step forward... now for other countries to follow their lead.
I saw a program that had something similar to this called "Disaster Detectives" I believe. They wanted to see if a release of bubbles could sink a ship. Turns out they didn't do much if directly under. However if the bubbles were off to the side, they would create enough of a splash to spill into the ship and sink it.
Exactly what I was thinking :)
Now we just to find a living female T-Rex so the current known cloning process can begin.
Actually they're handy to remind me to get up and do things (ie. walk over and check the email), instead of being a couch potato and sit in the same spot for hours at a time.
Commercials, as annoying as they are, do prompt you to be productive. Whereas spam isn't passive and isn't going to delete itself if you walk away for 4 minutes.
So everyone is annoyed by spam... at least any person I've talked to in the last few years who has email... yet apparently a very significant portion support it.
Wonderful.
It's perfectly legal to operate a radar detector in your vehicle while driving in B.C. Also, I read a newspaper not long ago about the Ontario police purchasing a few radar detector detector detectors :) I'm sure the radar detector detector detector detectors will be available in the next few months.
Microwave oven you mean... according to two friends of mine who work at Tim Hortons.
Since they "standardized" everything to come from their central factory, all the local outlets have to do is zap them in the microwave to get rid of the ice and they're good to go.
"Microwave" Oven Fresh, just as the sign says!
In Canada, we have debit cards that we can attach to bank accounts. They don't use Visa/Mastercard, but a system we call Interac. Each card allows you to link up to two bank accounts, and you have to authenticate with a 4 digit pin for every purchase.
Well, on numerous occasions my brother has lent his debit card to his girlfriend and she was able to use it no problem. This debit card has a picture of my brother on it, and believe me, the two do not look alike whatsoever!
Source here
You mean sort of like this?
Free online and telephone banking, free use of their ABMs, free cheques, free bill payments, free debit card purchases, and even free loyalty points!
but they are going to send you junk mail to pay for it.
Don't think they send you junk mail, but I'm pretty sure they sell your banking habits... which is probably the reason I use my good ole' trusty Credit Union.
Looks like the blank media tax shinces through. Even though I own all the music I listen to, and use DVD-RWs for weekly server backups, it seems if I wanted to, I can download music without fear! Thanks Courts!
The number 211 use to work in here in BC, Canada with Telus. They changed that a few years ago though, supposedly because phreakers were using it to identify the phone lines they got ahold of.
:)
Now, you just call the power company at 1 888 POWER-ON and it repeats the number back to you
Some other *11s around here...
611 = repair
711 = TTY/TDD operator from payphones
Reminds me of the time I was staying in Boston for a conference... I wanted a drink but didn't want to pay double price for one from the hotel, so at about midnight or so I wondered outside to find a nearby gas station (turns it there was one maybe a half a kilometre away). Anyway on the way back a cop flipped his lights on and drilled me on why I was outside at that hour, wanted to know where I was heading, and when I said the hotel he started demanding why I had left -- all in a rather interrogative tone.
Experiences like that and stores like yours are many reasons why I will never choose the US as destination. On infrequent instances I will travel there for business, but never just for the fun of it.
I've done sales chat for a network of hosting companies... our interface was developed in-house to not require any Java or special plug-ins. Just HTML and JavaScript. A nice feature about it was what's called QuickFAQ's where you just choose the topic and it'll insert a pretyped message that you can customize before sending off to the prospect.
:)
With these sales chats you can easily handle a half dozen chats at one time... just better hope the phone doesn't ring. That's when it gets tricky
When will Kodak lobby for a tax on Compact Flash/MMC/Memory Stick mediums like the music industry has (successfully) managed to get themselves on harddrives, CD-Rs, and DVD-Rs?
I mean, every day they are being circumvented by scanners and email where consumers should be taking the original negatives or photos to have copied with true Kodak equipment.
Sure isn't that way around here... I have come across plenty of dealers offering me real cheap or free "samples" just so I could say I've tried drug X, or so they try to convince me.
Here in BC, Canada, our monopoly telco Telus has right in the front of the phone book that they own the telephone number and can change it at any time with reasonable notice.
I suppose this is no longer the case with the American's number portability, but this probably use to be the case and is where eBay is getting it's worries from.
I suppose my local LUG has no respect for the GPL either... selling those Red Hat, Suse, etc. CD-Rs for $5.