In today's (syndicated) story from Dave Barry, he writes about what happened when he published the toll-free # for the American Teleservices Associates (they were SWAMPED with calls, and rather pissed at Dave:-)
Dave writes:
But it appears that the telemarketers plan to continue their efforts to save the planet by fighting for the right to call people who do not want to be called.
I realize that this makes many of you angry. I realize that many of you would like to, once again, let the telemarketers know who you feel. And I am, frankly, tempted to reveal to you here that the American Teleservices Association (www.ataconnect.org) seems to have a phone line working (at least for now) at 317-816-9336.
But would it be right to reveal this? I mean, yes, you could call the ATA again. But the ATA surely doesn't want you to call again. It's inconvenient.
And to insist on calling somebody who doesn't want to be called, even if you have the legal right to call - well, that's just plain rude.
Meat was OK for us way back when it wasn't pumped full of hormones, anti-biotics, and God-knows-what-else. I didn't stop eating meat because I'm a bunny-hugging tree-sitting earthy-crunchy. I stopped eating it because of modern farming techniques and the fact that animals are ABUSED (Veal? HELLO?) beyond ANYTHING that could even remotely be considered humane. Check out the book "Diet for a New America" by Robins (son of the founder of the Baskin&Robins ice cream empire.) or ask anyone that's ever worked in a meat processing plant. Ugh, do you people know what goes into hotdogs? (Lips and assholes, as they say.)
Meat 1000 years ago (heck even 100) is fine. Modern meat is NOT perfectly natural and good for you. You dig your grave with your teeth.
This whole thing is one MAJOR troll and/or market research by the RIAA.
The RIAA is just testing the waters to see how the hacker community responds, and what countermeasures we propose. This is just one phase of their strategy. (What the overall strategy is, I don't know. I think its something akin to rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.)
Still, I can't imagine they actually think they'd get away with what they're proposing, or that there wouldn't be reprocussions if they did.
C'mon now, do you seriously think the RIAA isn't reading/. themselves??
Doesn't sound like this guy is much of a 'computer guy'. If he was, he'd already know what he needed. (Sorry, not trying to be a troll. He's probably a programmer and/or home hacker type that hasn't done much real-world helpdesk style PC support. And if that's the case, he's not going to be of much use to these people anyways. In my opinion it takes at least a few years of hands-on experience fixing PCs to really 'get it'.)
Anyways, first, I'd be interested to know what OS's he encountered on these remote islands. My guess is that it would be some flavor of Win95 or 98 (or even, gasp Windows for Workgroups). Having a Linux boot disk isn't going to do much for you, unless you can't boot to the OS. And in that case, I'd try an MS-DOS disk and do a C:\>fdisk/mbr to rebuild the bootsector FIRST.
Second, what types of problems did these people report they were having? Were they strictly software based, or could hardware issues also have been a factor? If you're REALLY interested in doing tech-support in this type of situation, you need to carry more than just a bunch of boot disks. You'll need:
* RAM, in both the new 168-pin AND the older 72-pin flavors
* a spare Floppy Drive
* an ISA video card, and probably a PCI one too. (probably NOT an AGP)
* a spare hard drive, AND its Master slave settings, AND a few of those little jumper thingys
* several IDE and floppy drive connectors
* a tiny bottle of WD-40 type oil, for squeaky (or non-spinning) power supply of CPU fans.
* I'd say 'a bottle of compressed air' for blowing out dust, but I don't think you can take this on a plane nowadays
* a floppy-disk cleaning kit, with a bottle of cleaning solution (I have to admit, I rarely use these nowadays, but PCs on islands may benefit. YMMV, of course.
* a few blank floppies
* pad and paper, for writing down notes and configuration and jumper settings (BEFORE you change them)
* an ISA network card, preferably a 3COM 3C5x9 (or any older common network card, plus a bootable floppy with its drivers and the program that lets you configure the card
* a Cat-5 patch cable or two, plus a small 10mbps hub
* tie-wraps, in a few different sizes. These things are second only to duct-tape in their usefulness and variety of applications.
I've supported Windows systems since the 'original' 3.1 version. More often than not, software based problems could be solved by either mucking with win.ini, system.ini, autoexec.bat and config.sys and/or other DOS and Windows files. Use scandisk to see if the harddrive is bad. Use FDISK to see what's up with the partitions.
Having a few flavors of MS-DOS boot disks can't hurt (www.bootdisk.com) I also agree with previous posters that having a linux boot disk with the NT password recovery utility would be great idea. And, of course, if these are WinNT or Win2k systems you can't go wrong with ANYTHING you find on www.sysinternals.com.
In general, if you're going to do this at all, and you can't just 'run home' and grab what you need, you really need to have anything and everything at your fingertips. The above list is what I carry with me when I get called to a client site to do support. I have all the cards in those static-proof bags, the cables are tie-wrapped to keep them organized, and I have a collection of print-outs of various stuff.
By the way, if you see any job openings for PC support next time you're down there, please forward them to me. Boston, Massachusetts (USA) is getting ANOTHER snowstorm tonight and I'm losing my mind.
This is an old joke, which I had absolutely no part in creating. Read aloud for best enjoyment, and to annoy your surrounding cube-mates:
The European Union commissioners have announced that agreement has been reached to adopt English as the preferred language for European communications, rather than German, which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty's Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a five-year phased plan for what will be known as EuroEnglish (Euro for short).
In the first year, "s" will be used instead of the soft "c." Sertainly, sivil servants will resieve this news with joy. Also, the hard "c" will be replaced with "k". Not only will this klear up konfusion, but typewriters kan have one less letter.
There will be growing publik emthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced by "f". This will make words like fotograf" 20 persent shorter.
In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkorage the removal of double letters, which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of silent "e"s in the languag is disgrasful, and they would go.
By the fourth year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" by "z" and "w" by " v".
During ze fifz year, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou", and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.
After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubls or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech ozer.
Ze drem vil finali kum tru.
Amazon is taking advantage of people who believe they need to wear an AFDB. The link to their site for the book mentioned in the article made the following recommendations when I visited the site:
Customers who wear clothes also shop for:
Clean Underwear from Amazon's Target Store
Ladybug Rain Boots from Amazon's Nordstrom Store
Pet Socks from Amazon's Urban Outfitters Store
Puppy Footed One-Pieces for Newborns from Amazon's Old Navy Store
"Customers who wear clothes". Hmm.. As opposed to the other kind?
Join Safari.Oreilly.com; for as little as $10 a month you can have 5 "book points" (each book in your "bookshelf" is worth 1 points, some big ones are 2 pts.)
I've had it for about 6 months now, and have read a LOT of books I otherwise wouldn't have bought. Plus, with a bit of effort (and some diminishment in quality (i.e. page #s, no index) you can cut-and-paste all of the HTML in your word processor and then go print it on your company and/or school's printers. (Tip: Print 2-pages per side, double sided, the books take up 1/4 of the space)
I know this is OT, but the above post just reminded me of this line from the movie:
Robin Williams: "Excuse me sir, but considering that the VP is such a VIP, shouldn't we put his PC on the QT, otherwise the VC might make us MIA and then we'll all be put on KP."
(PC in this case is referring to "Press Conference")
Slashdot Mirror
A few years ago a co-worker (we were both programmers) bumped into me on the train, as I was reading my "Jazz for Dummies" book.
He immediately freaked out, thinking that he was missing out on some new dot-com buzzword language/app/whatever. Kind of funny.
"But Sir, it'sa onlee ah WAF-er theen meeent."
Why YES, Mr. Anderson. How insightful of you.
Now, please turn around while we re-insert you back into the Matrix.
Dave writes:
But it appears that the telemarketers plan to continue their efforts to save the planet by fighting for the right to call people who do not want to be called.
I realize that this makes many of you angry. I realize that many of you would like to, once again, let the telemarketers know who you feel. And I am, frankly, tempted to reveal to you here that the American Teleservices Association (www.ataconnect.org) seems to have a phone line working (at least for now) at 317-816-9336.
But would it be right to reveal this? I mean, yes, you could call the ATA again. But the ATA surely doesn't want you to call again. It's inconvenient.
And to insist on calling somebody who doesn't want to be called, even if you have the legal right to call - well, that's just plain rude.
So I am taking the high road.
Dave Barry is a fucking genius.
Now one-armed users can give a one-finger salute to the man that created the three-finger-salute.
Yes, but will they have an interstellar Muzak version of the "Girl from Ipanema" playing as you ride the elevator up?
anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
(sigh)
Why don't they just use the one that the aliens left there thousands of years before? Sheesh.
Yes, but all I want to know is if I can get them mounted on the heads of a few sharks I have.
Meat 1000 years ago (heck even 100) is fine. Modern meat is NOT perfectly natural and good for you. You dig your grave with your teeth.
Specifically, I'm a vegetarian, and don't want to be adding 5 grams of powdered cow liver (sic) to my juice every morning.
"Vegetarians taste better"
Yes, Gary Coleman, we all know that you're glory years have long since past. However, you should revel in your Dick Clark(tm) like eternal youth.
Cool, that means marijuana isn't a drug. There is no known letal dose for it.
I think the warchalking symbol for a good spam wireless access point should be a spam can with an antenna sticking out of it.
The RIAA is just testing the waters to see how the hacker community responds, and what countermeasures we propose. This is just one phase of their strategy. (What the overall strategy is, I don't know. I think its something akin to rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.)
Still, I can't imagine they actually think they'd get away with what they're proposing, or that there wouldn't be reprocussions if they did.
C'mon now, do you seriously think the RIAA isn't reading /. themselves??
Umm, that'd be 8 MEGs you got in there, Sparky.
I'll bet it has a 5.25 TB floppy drive, and a 20" LCD green-screen monitor.
Anyways, first, I'd be interested to know what OS's he encountered on these remote islands. My guess is that it would be some flavor of Win95 or 98 (or even, gasp Windows for Workgroups). Having a Linux boot disk isn't going to do much for you, unless you can't boot to the OS. And in that case, I'd try an MS-DOS disk and do a C:\>fdisk /mbr to rebuild the bootsector FIRST.
Second, what types of problems did these people report they were having? Were they strictly software based, or could hardware issues also have been a factor? If you're REALLY interested in doing tech-support in this type of situation, you need to carry more than just a bunch of boot disks. You'll need:
* RAM, in both the new 168-pin AND the older 72-pin flavors
* a spare Floppy Drive
* an ISA video card, and probably a PCI one too. (probably NOT an AGP)
* a spare hard drive, AND its Master slave settings, AND a few of those little jumper thingys
* several IDE and floppy drive connectors
* a tiny bottle of WD-40 type oil, for squeaky (or non-spinning) power supply of CPU fans.
* I'd say 'a bottle of compressed air' for blowing out dust, but I don't think you can take this on a plane nowadays
* a floppy-disk cleaning kit, with a bottle of cleaning solution (I have to admit, I rarely use these nowadays, but PCs on islands may benefit. YMMV, of course.
* a few blank floppies
* pad and paper, for writing down notes and configuration and jumper settings (BEFORE you change them)
* an ISA network card, preferably a 3COM 3C5x9 (or any older common network card, plus a bootable floppy with its drivers and the program that lets you configure the card
* a Cat-5 patch cable or two, plus a small 10mbps hub * tie-wraps, in a few different sizes. These things are second only to duct-tape in their usefulness and variety of applications.
I've supported Windows systems since the 'original' 3.1 version. More often than not, software based problems could be solved by either mucking with win.ini, system.ini, autoexec.bat and config.sys and/or other DOS and Windows files. Use scandisk to see if the harddrive is bad. Use FDISK to see what's up with the partitions.
Having a few flavors of MS-DOS boot disks can't hurt (www.bootdisk.com) I also agree with previous posters that having a linux boot disk with the NT password recovery utility would be great idea. And, of course, if these are WinNT or Win2k systems you can't go wrong with ANYTHING you find on www.sysinternals.com.
In general, if you're going to do this at all, and you can't just 'run home' and grab what you need, you really need to have anything and everything at your fingertips. The above list is what I carry with me when I get called to a client site to do support. I have all the cards in those static-proof bags, the cables are tie-wrapped to keep them organized, and I have a collection of print-outs of various stuff.
By the way, if you see any job openings for PC support next time you're down there, please forward them to me. Boston, Massachusetts (USA) is getting ANOTHER snowstorm tonight and I'm losing my mind.
This is an old joke, which I had absolutely no part in creating. Read aloud for best enjoyment, and to annoy your surrounding cube-mates: The European Union commissioners have announced that agreement has been reached to adopt English as the preferred language for European communications, rather than German, which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty's Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a five-year phased plan for what will be known as EuroEnglish (Euro for short). In the first year, "s" will be used instead of the soft "c." Sertainly, sivil servants will resieve this news with joy. Also, the hard "c" will be replaced with "k". Not only will this klear up konfusion, but typewriters kan have one less letter. There will be growing publik emthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced by "f". This will make words like fotograf" 20 persent shorter. In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkorage the removal of double letters, which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of silent "e"s in the languag is disgrasful, and they would go. By the fourth year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" by "z" and "w" by " v". During ze fifz year, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou", and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters. After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubls or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech ozer. Ze drem vil finali kum tru.
Sure, blame the blisters on the video games. C'mon, fess up. We know what they were REALLY from.
Customers who wear clothes also shop for:
Clean Underwear from Amazon's Target Store
Ladybug Rain Boots from Amazon's Nordstrom Store
Pet Socks from Amazon's Urban Outfitters Store
Puppy Footed One-Pieces for Newborns from Amazon's Old Navy Store
"Customers who wear clothes". Hmm.. As opposed to the other kind?
Join Safari.Oreilly.com; for as little as $10 a month you can have 5 "book points" (each book in your "bookshelf" is worth 1 points, some big ones are 2 pts.) I've had it for about 6 months now, and have read a LOT of books I otherwise wouldn't have bought. Plus, with a bit of effort (and some diminishment in quality (i.e. page #s, no index) you can cut-and-paste all of the HTML in your word processor and then go print it on your company and/or school's printers. (Tip: Print 2-pages per side, double sided, the books take up 1/4 of the space)
I know this is OT, but the above post just reminded me of this line from the movie:
Robin Williams: "Excuse me sir, but considering that the VP is such a VIP, shouldn't we put his PC on the QT, otherwise the VC might make us MIA and then we'll all be put on KP."
(PC in this case is referring to "Press Conference")