They were taking DNA samples in real time from people for access control.
The guy went to extreme measures to defeat the real time DNA sampler.
No matter what they try, no matter what measures they try to take and enforce, there will always be people that will find ways around it.
Personally, I will tell them to stick their chips up their asses. When it gets to that point, I'm leaving civilization and heading for an island somewhere, I'll live off of coconuts and iguana stew.
I was at Fry's the other day and I looked at DL blank media. FIFTY DOLLARS for 15 blanks.
Sure, the DL burners are cheap, Fry's had some down to the $40 range. BUT, they screw you on the media.
I was looking just out of curiosity, I don't need one. Sure I would like to back up 8+ gigs on a disc but they had 120gig hard drives for TWENTY dollars (after rebate)
My MO is buy big, cheap hard drives, back up to them, remove them and store them in a fireproof safe.
And for the nay-sayers, I have old full heigh 5.25 hard drives from the 80's that still boot and the data is still perfectly intact. Drives over 20 years old that I've made no serious effort to pamper. They are just on the floor in a closet with other old junk. And they still work.. BTW, one of them is a Maxtor 133megabyte (still works fine) drive that cost $1,900 new. Like an idiot, I traded a Tek Oscope for it back in the mid 80's..
I have a bookmark folder named "Evil assholes" I just put that link in there. I knew Gate$ was evil incarnate but this is even lower than I thought he could go.
Bill Gate$ lives in a tunnel he burrowed under a pile of whale shit in The Marianas trench...
I mean, as it comes, without having to PURCHASE additional software such as MS Office, Word, etc..
As distributed, what can you do with it? Word processing? Financial stuff? Photo & image manipulation (Paint prog?) Spreadsheets? Desktop publishing? Multimedia editing / DVD authoring & burning? Webpage authoring / editing?
I'm curious. Can Vista do any of these things as it comes or do you have to dish out more cash separately for each desired application, on top of the price to purchase the OS??
This, like all other "undefeatable" biometric systems will get hacked six ways to Sunday.
Even the mighty RFID chip under the skin will fail as hackers and evil doers don't take no for an answer.
In the end, when the people are BEGGING to be protected from the evil doers, BIG BROTHER will step in with the ultimate biometric system, the "Soul Sucker Chip" whereby part of your soul is taken and stored in the Universal Comparator, aka "The Approver". Every transaction, every movement will be handled by the "The Approver". When you wish to do something, to go somewhere, to buy/sell/trade something, to read something, to speak something, what is left of your soul will be compared to the database and "The Approver" will determine instantly if your requested action is permitted.
Finally, people will be safe and secure. And only when people are totally safe and totally secure will they have "true freedom"(TM)
Many scumbag corporations, especially utility companies hide in concrete and brick towers without windows and when you call about a problem with service or billing a computer decides if it should route your call to India or Pakistan. And when the idiot on the other end just doesn't get it, and you are at the point of killing them if you could, they just grin and hang up on you knowing that you have no power what-so-ever, that they control you and the situation 100%.
Many years ago when everything was made here, serviced here, answered here, there was accountability. Now, they have you by the short hairs and they know it.
What can you do? Nothing. Bitch a little but in the end you still have to dish out the bucks and take what they give you, even if you don't like it at all..
I have no land line because SBC ass raped me with a truck mounted, 400hp chain saw for 6 years over ISDN and DSL accounts.
Without going into great detail, they were screwing me for $300-$600 PER MONTH at my small business with 2 lines, an ISDN and later a DSL (replaced the ISDN) accounts. They kept billing me for multiple DSL accounts when I only had one. They would charge me $200 to install an additional DSL account when it didn't even exist. ONE account was valid. It should have run me $70 a month + $45ea for the two biz voice lines... When I would call up to complain about the bogus charges, they would add another DSL account and bill me to install that one. At one time they were billing me for 4 DSL accounts at the same time, still while I only had the one. When I finally got someone to understand that they charged me to disconnect the non existant accounts plus they charged me $200 each for terminating a non existant contract.
They really had it in for me. They were doing the same thing to me at my house too.
Finally, I told them to go f*ck themselves and I personally cut all the landlines with a pair of bolt cutters and stripped all the wires from my home and office. I would stick those wires up their asses if I could get to them but they are in concrete bunkers with armed guards. I wonder why??
Now I do cell phones only (paid for by cash) and Road Runner (also paid in person with cash)
SBC still hounds me with collection agencies for those bogus charges. And when I demanded to have copies of all their records they claimed that they only keep records for 3 months. Bullshit. 5 years ago I cut the wires and they are still harassing me.
DTV? Same story.. I signed on with them when they were brand new and the premiums were owned by USSB. Part of the deal when I signed on as a new customer was that I got 4 months free of USSB. Ok, that was fine with me. But, at the end of the four months, the USSB service stayed on. I didn't pay attention to it because I don't watch movies. I wouldn't have known if they turned it off or not anyway.
Well, they left USSB turned on for two additional months and billed me for it. I called and disputed it and they claimed it was my problem because I didn't call and tell them to terminate the service after the 4 months. They said the offer was set so that if you took no action they would leave it on and begin billing you unless you called and told them not to do so. Well, I never saw that part of the offer.
So they claimed I owed them $70 for the USSB and I told them I wasn't going to pay it. They then cut off my DTV for the USSB payments. DTV bills a month in advance. After they cut off my DTV they billed me for the next month, which was stupid because it was turned of and I was getting nothing at all anymore. I refused to pay either bill so they turned me into the collection hounds who keep reselling the so-called "debt" (of which there is no debt) and upping the fee. Last I heard from these shitheels they were trying to get me for $2700 for a $70+$40 bill (a bogus bill at that)
All of these scumbags can eat shit and die in the woods. I will never, ever have a land line telephone or a DTV system ever again, not even if it was free.
Road Runner has always been fair to me, never overbilled me, and the QOS is excellent! I just wish they had a better channel selection. My complaint with TW cable is that the educational channels are spread out among all the various package levels. The crappy "educational" channels like The Discovery Channel (sucky, endless reruns of American Chopper) are in the basic package. If you want to get the GOOD STUFF, namely The Science Channel, you have to subscribe to the Uber-Pak for $90 a month where you get 199 channels of crap to get the ONE channel you want.
Dishnet has channels but still, you have to sub to the Uber-Pak for Uber-Bux but the rub is that they require you to stay connected to a line line.
Pretty much so, I'm SOL... Always have been, always will be.. And just like Benny Hill, I always get the short end of the stick.... Oh well.. At least I can still make it my lifetime career to warn people of what toilet slime SBC and DTV is..
However, bad/no credit history + no land line = no satellite service.
No digital cable in my area = no BBCA = no Benny Hill
The satellite companies do credit checks on potential customers and people that live by cash alone and have no land line phones are discriminated against.
For the past 20 years I've lived without any type of bank account what-so-ever, no loans, no CC's, nothing. Living strictly by green cash carried in my pocket.
When you live outside the loop, when you are the reclusive oddball outsider, no one will take you as a customer or do business with you. They don't like anyone that they can't steal their souls..
Absolutely we want boobies.. Boobies = Mmmmm good!
And yes, the Puritans over here are very anal about it all. I have to admit though, I am against pornography on TV or the internet where little eyes could stumble across it. Benny Hill though, was/is not porno, it's mature/adult entertainment, and should be shown during a time frame that young eyes don't happen onto it. Leave kids to be kids, there's plenty of time for them to be adults WHEN THEY BECOME ADULTS... I say this as a father and a grandfather..
Um, could have been, I dunno. All I know is that it used to play on an indie station here in the US in the early 80's and it was borderline raunchy fun. Now it's on BBC America which the crappy little hick cable co here doesn't carry.:(
I just spent two days hauling off a decommissioned Data General MV-30000.. Now it's sitting in my living room. It was replaced by blades running windows. You wouldn't belive how much I paid for it..:)
All the big iron is going the way of the dinosaur. Too big, too expensive, too complicated.
Born in 1934 in New York City, Moog paid for his studies at Queens College and Columbia University by building and marketing theremins, which are played by passing the hand through and around vibrating radio tubes. Theremins were used create the spooky "eww-woo-woo" sounds on the soundtracks of science fiction films such as "The Day the Earth Stood Still."
Um, no. Theremins are not played by "passing the hand through and around vibrating radio tubes."
There are two ANTENNAS protruding from the cabinet and you wave you hands around the antennas.
FFS, how can someone be so blinking ignorant?
I saw an old film of the Theremin being played by Termen and I fell in love with it. I have found schematics and other instructions to build one with tubes. I'm currently scrounging around garage sales for the stuff I need to build one as they were originally designed. I've read that the tube based ones sound much better than the IC based ones..
The reason that some BMW's and VW's have problems is that they are NOT MADE IN GERMANY WITH GERMAN PARTS!! Damn! The Germans have bought into this globalization outsourcing crap too. They have parts made by whoever can make them the cheapest, usually in China.. Besides, BMW and VW are not exactly at the top of the quality and performance list anyway.
I own a 1975 Mercedes.. Actually, I own two of them.
NEW Mercedes are shit. They are Dodge/Chrysler with a Mercedes badge on the grill.
They are assembled in Mexico using parts made in CHINA..
I know this for a fact. I would not have a new Mercedes if it were free. Well, yes I would, but I would sell it right away and buy several CLASSIC Mercedes plus stick some cash in my pocket..
My 1975 Mercedes was manufactured in Stuttgart by the people that DID put pride and quality into everything they design and touch. There are no non-German parts in my car. I went through it over the past 10 years that I've owned it, found and replaced non-German parts with what they call "New Old Stock" or NOS aka NIB (New in Box) parts that I've gotten either from ebay or from scrounging wrecking yards.. I try like hell to avoid buying newly manufactured parts as they are almost always made in some third world country..
The transmission shop was well known as a rip off and is now out of business. I did not know that when I rolled in there. The locals all clued me in on this fact after this ordeal was over with.
Their warranty was of no consequence due to the fact that they were theives and are out of business now.
The part, I don't remember what it was, this was 16 years ago but I *think* it was the throwout bearing on a 5 speed manual. Dropping the transmission was very easy, not complicated at all, I watched them drop it, it took them about 15 minutes once they got it up in the air. They had the power tools and experience to drop it in minutes with almost not effort.
They pulled it down on the floor and told me that they would have to examine it and told me to go on to work, they would call me.
They called me a few hours later and told me the gears inside were chewed up. I knew better and told them right there on the phone that they were thieves and told them I knew they were trying to rip me off.
There were a lot of FU's said back and forth, I went there and more FU's ensued along with some finger displays and some ass kicking challenges. They dumped the transmission in the trunk and told me to get fukd, there was no charge.
I called my dad and described the symptoms to him, he knew what the problem was, bought the part and drove up to where I was working 500 miles away on subcontract work.
He and I repaired the transmission in the parking lot of where I was staying, the bearing was EASY to change. It only took a few minutes to replace the bearing. He opened the gearbox and inspected it, there was no damage AND he said they had NOT opened the gearbox for inspection, there is no way they could have made the diagnosis of "broken gears", they were scamming me plain and simple.
We used a floor jack to put the transmission back in and bolt it up. All in all I think it took us less than two hours counting breaks.
There was no beer involved. Neither one of us drinks. There WAS free soda waters involved though... It was hot and dirty but not very difficult or hard. I was shocked how easy it really was to do it. Sort of like how I was shocked the first time my dad showed me how to do disc brakes. That is, easy if you don't have to turn the discs. Drum brakes on the other hand are a pain in the ass.
My downtime was three days. I caught rides with co-workers so it was no big deal. I paid my dad back the $24 for the part he bought for me and helped him with some stuff when I got back so we are all square.
Don't be so quick to rally to the side of the rip off artist. Transmission repair shops are notorious as rip off joints. MOST people aren't capable of doing the work themselves or diagnosing the problem. They take advantage of this.
Another example of auto repair rip off, I did some work for a guy that owned a small auto repair shop a few years ago. When I finished the work the man told me that he was going to pay me cash because he had "just fucked a guy on an air conditioner repair" he told me that a guy brought in a pretty recent (but out of warranty) pick up truck, turns out a hose had come loose under the dash. He said he had to take the dash out to get to it which was a pain in the ass and it took him all day to do it but he told the man that the blower had broken and charged him $2,400 for parts and labor. There were no parts involved, just about 6 hours labor to remove the dash and reconnect the loose hose. That's what the shop owner TOLD ME..
A few years later I met a guy that worked at a transmission repair shop (his wife worked with my wife), he told me that transmission "repair" shops are the biggest scams running.
*Typical* lifespan of a *German built* engine is 500,000 miles without major repair or overhaul.. (does not apply to a NEW one, NEW Mercedes are built in MEXICO with Chinese parts...)
It's not unusual for an older Mercedes to run over 1 million miles without overhaul if it's well cared for and pampered.
Mine is garage kept, I drive it like an old man (pisses my son off) and I have a second one in storage for spare parts (saved from the crusher)..
I have every intention of driving this car for the rest of my life which should be about 30 more years.
And if they ever come out with flying cars, I'm moving to the woods. People can't drive normal cars without crashing. You think putting idiots in the AIR is a good idea??
Me. I'll have no parts of these new cars. They suck. Assembled in Mexico from Chinese parts. Garbage. OVERPRICED garbage..
My car is 30 years old and it still runs fine and looks fine. How is that? It was made in Germany where they appreciate and exercise quality control.
I have several trucks that are 20 years old or older.
Guess what? I can fix them all myself. There is nothing in any of them that I can't troubleshoot or repair.
I wouldn't have one of these new cars that you can't work on without $100,000 car-o-scope and a PHD.. Screw that. I've never taken a car to be repaired by someone else except one time when I was traveling and had no tools. Son of a bitches told me the transmission was blown and it was going to cost me $800 to have it fixed. I told them to stick up their ass. They put the transmission in the trunk and I called a tow truck to bring it home for me. My dad came out to help me with it. The repair cost $24 in parts and took one day. That was the LAST time I ever took anything to someone else for repair. And that means anything.
I get the service manuals, schematics, tools and test equipment for every thing I own, what tools or skills I don't have, my dad can cover as he's good with cars.
Bottom line, I'll never purchase a new car, ever, for any reason. The older the vehicle, the better I like it.
Slashdot Mirror
Das Spraycan
Jack Shulman and American Computer Co. of the 90's.
r g/web/19970106064603/http://www.compamerica.com/
w ww.compamerica.com )
Remember that? He claimed to be making chips from crashed UFO technology..
http://www.compamerica.com/">http://web.archive.o
(above link doesn't display properly, copy & paste it into your broswer --> http://web.archive.org/web/19970106064603/http://
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/pages/acc.html
and here's his website where he still claims outrageous bullshit..
http://compamerica.com/about_us.htm
You need to see Gattaca and here
They were taking DNA samples in real time from people for access control.
The guy went to extreme measures to defeat the real time DNA sampler.
No matter what they try, no matter what measures they try to take and enforce, there will always be people that will find ways around it.
Personally, I will tell them to stick their chips up their asses. When it gets to that point, I'm leaving civilization and heading for an island somewhere, I'll live off of coconuts and iguana stew.
shut up Darl.. No one cares if we misspell your name.
Go back under your bridge now..
a lot of really, really good blowjobs.
Daryl buys chapstick by the case..
I was at Fry's the other day and I looked at DL blank media. FIFTY DOLLARS for 15 blanks.
Sure, the DL burners are cheap, Fry's had some down to the $40 range. BUT, they screw you on the media.
I was looking just out of curiosity, I don't need one.
Sure I would like to back up 8+ gigs on a disc but they had 120gig hard drives for TWENTY dollars (after rebate)
My MO is buy big, cheap hard drives, back up to them, remove them and store them in a fireproof safe.
And for the nay-sayers, I have old full heigh 5.25 hard drives from the 80's that still boot and the data is still perfectly intact. Drives over 20 years old that I've made no serious effort to pamper. They are just on the floor in a closet with other old junk. And they still work.. BTW, one of them is a Maxtor 133megabyte (still works fine) drive that cost $1,900 new. Like an idiot, I traded a Tek Oscope for it back in the mid 80's..
I have a bookmark folder named "Evil assholes"
I just put that link in there.
I knew Gate$ was evil incarnate but this is even lower than I thought he could go.
Bill Gate$ lives in a tunnel he burrowed under a pile of whale shit in The Marianas trench...
Thanks..
Skynet
(well, actually skeptical minds)
Just what does Windows Vista do, Out Of the Box??
I mean, as it comes, without having to PURCHASE additional software such as MS Office, Word, etc..
As distributed, what can you do with it?
Word processing?
Financial stuff?
Photo & image manipulation (Paint prog?)
Spreadsheets?
Desktop publishing?
Multimedia editing / DVD authoring & burning?
Webpage authoring / editing?
I'm curious. Can Vista do any of these things as it comes or do you have to dish out more cash separately for each desired application, on top of the price to purchase the OS??
Thanks but no thanks.
Skype works great on my Suse box. The M$ program never will see the light of day on any of my machines.
This, like all other "undefeatable" biometric systems will get hacked six ways to Sunday.
Even the mighty RFID chip under the skin will fail as hackers and evil doers don't take no for an answer.
In the end, when the people are BEGGING to be protected from the evil doers, BIG BROTHER will step in with the ultimate biometric system, the "Soul Sucker Chip" whereby part of your soul is taken and stored in the Universal Comparator, aka "The Approver". Every transaction, every movement will be handled by the "The Approver". When you wish to do something, to go somewhere, to buy/sell/trade something, to read something, to speak something, what is left of your soul will be compared to the database and "The Approver" will determine instantly if your requested action is permitted.
Finally, people will be safe and secure. And only when people are totally safe and totally secure will they have "true freedom"(TM)
after 7 years. Even after 40 million years of storage you can still eat dirt.
Doesn't mean it tastes good or is healthy for you..
People do stupid things.
I have no burning desire to eat a 7 year old sandwhich.
Or dirt...
because they know we can't f*cking kill them!
Many scumbag corporations, especially utility companies hide in concrete and brick towers without windows and when you call about a problem with service or billing a computer decides if it should route your call to India or Pakistan. And when the idiot on the other end just doesn't get it, and you are at the point of killing them if you could, they just grin and hang up on you knowing that you have no power what-so-ever, that they control you and the situation 100%.
Many years ago when everything was made here, serviced here, answered here, there was accountability. Now, they have you by the short hairs and they know it.
What can you do? Nothing. Bitch a little but in the end you still have to dish out the bucks and take what they give you, even if you don't like it at all..
I have no land line because SBC ass raped me with a truck mounted, 400hp chain saw for 6 years over ISDN and DSL accounts.
Without going into great detail, they were screwing me for $300-$600 PER MONTH at my small business with 2 lines, an ISDN and later a DSL (replaced the ISDN) accounts. They kept billing me for multiple DSL accounts when I only had one. They would charge me $200 to install an additional DSL account when it didn't even exist. ONE account was valid. It should have run me $70 a month + $45ea for the two biz voice lines... When I would call up to complain about the bogus charges, they would add another DSL account and bill me to install that one. At one time they were billing me for 4 DSL accounts at the same time, still while I only had the one. When I finally got someone to understand that they charged me to disconnect the non existant accounts plus they charged me $200 each for terminating a non existant contract.
They really had it in for me. They were doing the same thing to me at my house too.
Finally, I told them to go f*ck themselves and I personally cut all the landlines with a pair of bolt cutters and stripped all the wires from my home and office. I would stick those wires up their asses if I could get to them but they are in concrete bunkers with armed guards. I wonder why??
Now I do cell phones only (paid for by cash) and Road Runner (also paid in person with cash)
SBC still hounds me with collection agencies for those bogus charges. And when I demanded to have copies of all their records they claimed that they only keep records for 3 months. Bullshit. 5 years ago I cut the wires and they are still harassing me.
DTV? Same story.. I signed on with them when they were brand new and the premiums were owned by USSB. Part of the deal when I signed on as a new customer was that I got 4 months free of USSB.
Ok, that was fine with me.
But, at the end of the four months, the USSB service stayed on. I didn't pay attention to it because I don't watch movies. I wouldn't have known if they turned it off or not anyway.
Well, they left USSB turned on for two additional months and billed me for it. I called and disputed it and they claimed it was my problem because I didn't call and tell them to terminate the service after the 4 months. They said the offer was set so that if you took no action they would leave it on and begin billing you unless you called and told them not to do so.
Well, I never saw that part of the offer.
So they claimed I owed them $70 for the USSB and I told them I wasn't going to pay it. They then cut off my DTV for the USSB payments. DTV bills a month in advance. After they cut off my DTV they billed me for the next month, which was stupid because it was turned of and I was getting nothing at all anymore.
I refused to pay either bill so they turned me into the collection hounds who keep reselling the so-called "debt" (of which there is no debt) and upping the fee.
Last I heard from these shitheels they were trying to get me for $2700 for a $70+$40 bill (a bogus bill at that)
All of these scumbags can eat shit and die in the woods. I will never, ever have a land line telephone or a DTV system ever again, not even if it was free.
Road Runner has always been fair to me, never overbilled me, and the QOS is excellent!
I just wish they had a better channel selection.
My complaint with TW cable is that the educational channels are spread out among all the various package levels. The crappy "educational" channels like The Discovery Channel (sucky, endless reruns of American Chopper) are in the basic package. If you want to get the GOOD STUFF, namely The Science Channel, you have to subscribe to the Uber-Pak for $90 a month where you get 199 channels of crap to get the ONE channel you want.
Dishnet has channels but still, you have to sub to the Uber-Pak for Uber-Bux but the rub is that they require you to stay connected to a line line.
Pretty much so, I'm SOL... Always have been, always will be.. And just like Benny Hill, I always get the short end of the stick.... Oh well..
At least I can still make it my lifetime career to warn people of what toilet slime SBC and DTV is..
Yes indeed.
However, bad/no credit history + no land line = no satellite service.
No digital cable in my area = no BBCA = no Benny Hill
The satellite companies do credit checks on potential customers and people that live by cash alone and have no land line phones are discriminated against.
For the past 20 years I've lived without any type of bank account what-so-ever, no loans, no CC's, nothing.
Living strictly by green cash carried in my pocket.
When you live outside the loop, when you are the reclusive oddball outsider, no one will take you as a customer or do business with you.
They don't like anyone that they can't steal their souls..
Absolutely we want boobies.. Boobies = Mmmmm good!
And yes, the Puritans over here are very anal about it all. I have to admit though, I am against pornography on TV or the internet where little eyes could stumble across it. Benny Hill though, was/is not porno, it's mature/adult entertainment, and should be shown during a time frame that young eyes don't happen onto it.
Leave kids to be kids, there's plenty of time for them to be adults WHEN THEY BECOME ADULTS...
I say this as a father and a grandfather..
That said, bring on the boobies!!
Um, could have been, I dunno. :(
All I know is that it used to play on an indie station here in the US in the early 80's and it was borderline raunchy fun. Now it's on BBC America which the crappy little hick cable co here doesn't carry.
put Benny Hill online..
Thanks Beeb...
I just spent two days hauling off a decommissioned Data General MV-30000.. Now it's sitting in my living room. It was replaced by blades running windows. :)
You wouldn't belive how much I paid for it..
All the big iron is going the way of the dinosaur.
Too big, too expensive, too complicated.
Born in 1934 in New York City, Moog paid for his studies at Queens College and Columbia University by building and marketing theremins, which are played by passing the hand through and around vibrating radio tubes. Theremins were used create the spooky "eww-woo-woo" sounds on the soundtracks of science fiction films such as "The Day the Earth Stood Still."
Um, no. Theremins are not played by "passing the hand through and around vibrating radio tubes."
There are two ANTENNAS protruding from the cabinet and you wave you hands around the antennas.
FFS, how can someone be so blinking ignorant?
I saw an old film of the Theremin being played by Termen and I fell in love with it. I have found schematics and other instructions to build one with tubes. I'm currently scrounging around garage sales for the stuff I need to build one as they were originally designed.
I've read that the tube based ones sound much better than the IC based ones..
2. Aim at foot.
3. Pull trigger.
The reason that some BMW's and VW's have problems is that they are NOT MADE IN GERMANY WITH GERMAN PARTS!! Damn! The Germans have bought into this globalization outsourcing crap too. They have parts made by whoever can make them the cheapest, usually in China.. Besides, BMW and VW are not exactly at the top of the quality and performance list anyway.
I own a 1975 Mercedes.. Actually, I own two of them.
NEW Mercedes are shit. They are Dodge/Chrysler with a Mercedes badge on the grill.
They are assembled in Mexico using parts made in CHINA..
I know this for a fact. I would not have a new Mercedes if it were free. Well, yes I would, but I would sell it right away and buy several CLASSIC Mercedes plus stick some cash in my pocket..
My 1975 Mercedes was manufactured in Stuttgart by the people that DID put pride and quality into everything they design and touch. There are no non-German parts in my car. I went through it over the past 10 years that I've owned it, found and replaced non-German parts with what they call "New Old Stock" or NOS aka NIB (New in Box) parts that I've gotten either from ebay or from scrounging wrecking yards.. I try like hell to avoid buying newly manufactured parts as they are almost always made in some third world country..
The transmission shop was well known as a rip off and is now out of business. I did not know that when I rolled in there. The locals all clued me in on this fact after this ordeal was over with.
Their warranty was of no consequence due to the fact that they were theives and are out of business now.
The part, I don't remember what it was, this was 16 years ago but I *think* it was the throwout bearing on a 5 speed manual. Dropping the transmission was very easy, not complicated at all, I watched them drop it, it took them about 15 minutes once they got it up in the air. They had the power tools and experience to drop it in minutes with almost not effort.
They pulled it down on the floor and told me that they would have to examine it and told me to go on to work, they would call me.
They called me a few hours later and told me the gears inside were chewed up. I knew better and told them right there on the phone that they were thieves and told them I knew they were trying to rip me off.
There were a lot of FU's said back and forth, I went there and more FU's ensued along with some finger displays and some ass kicking challenges.
They dumped the transmission in the trunk and told me to get fukd, there was no charge.
I called my dad and described the symptoms to him, he knew what the problem was, bought the part and drove up to where I was working 500 miles away on subcontract work.
He and I repaired the transmission in the parking lot of where I was staying, the bearing was EASY to change.
It only took a few minutes to replace the bearing.
He opened the gearbox and inspected it, there was no damage AND he said they had NOT opened the gearbox for inspection, there is no way they could have made the diagnosis of "broken gears", they were scamming me plain and simple.
We used a floor jack to put the transmission back in and bolt it up. All in all I think it took us less than two hours counting breaks.
There was no beer involved. Neither one of us drinks.
There WAS free soda waters involved though...
It was hot and dirty but not very difficult or hard.
I was shocked how easy it really was to do it.
Sort of like how I was shocked the first time my dad showed me how to do disc brakes. That is, easy if you don't have to turn the discs. Drum brakes on the other hand are a pain in the ass.
My downtime was three days. I caught rides with co-workers so it was no big deal. I paid my dad back the $24 for the part he bought for me and helped him with some stuff when I got back so we are all square.
Don't be so quick to rally to the side of the rip off artist. Transmission repair shops are notorious as rip off joints. MOST people aren't capable of doing the work themselves or diagnosing the problem. They take advantage of this.
Another example of auto repair rip off, I did some work for a guy that owned a small auto repair shop a few years ago. When I finished the work the man told me that he was going to pay me cash because he had "just fucked a guy on an air conditioner repair" he told me that a guy brought in a pretty recent (but out of warranty) pick up truck, turns out a hose had come loose under the dash. He said he had to take the dash out to get to it which was a pain in the ass and it took him all day to do it but he told the man that the blower had broken and charged him $2,400 for parts and labor. There were no parts involved, just about 6 hours labor to remove the dash and reconnect the loose hose. That's what the shop owner TOLD ME..
A few years later I met a guy that worked at a transmission repair shop (his wife worked with my wife), he told me that transmission "repair" shops are the biggest scams running.
Well, my 1975 Mercedes was built in Stuttgart.
*Typical* lifespan of a *German built* engine is 500,000 miles without major repair or overhaul.. (does not apply to a NEW one, NEW Mercedes are built in MEXICO with Chinese parts...)
It's not unusual for an older Mercedes to run over 1 million miles without overhaul if it's well cared for and pampered.
Mine is garage kept, I drive it like an old man (pisses my son off) and I have a second one in storage for spare parts (saved from the crusher)..
I have every intention of driving this car for the rest of my life which should be about 30 more years.
And if they ever come out with flying cars, I'm moving to the woods. People can't drive normal cars without crashing. You think putting idiots in the AIR is a good idea??
Me. I'll have no parts of these new cars.
They suck. Assembled in Mexico from Chinese parts.
Garbage. OVERPRICED garbage..
My car is 30 years old and it still runs fine and looks fine. How is that? It was made in Germany where they appreciate and exercise quality control.
I have several trucks that are 20 years old or older.
Guess what? I can fix them all myself. There is nothing in any of them that I can't troubleshoot or repair.
I wouldn't have one of these new cars that you can't work on without $100,000 car-o-scope and a PHD..
Screw that. I've never taken a car to be repaired by someone else except one time when I was traveling and had no tools.
Son of a bitches told me the transmission was blown and it was going to cost me $800 to have it fixed.
I told them to stick up their ass.
They put the transmission in the trunk and I called a tow truck to bring it home for me. My dad came out to help me with it. The repair cost $24 in parts and took one day. That was the LAST time I ever took anything to someone else for repair. And that means anything.
I get the service manuals, schematics, tools and test equipment for every thing I own, what tools or skills I don't have, my dad can cover as he's good with cars.
Bottom line, I'll never purchase a new car, ever, for any reason. The older the vehicle, the better I like it.