Re:I use Netscape 4.7 because....
on
Netscape 6.1
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· Score: 2, Interesting
First off, try 0.9.3-- in my experience, it is definitely faster and more stable than 0.9.2. I've been using Mozilla for a while now and while it used to be true that 4.7 rendered faster than Mozilla, I don't think it is any more. At least on my Windows machine, Mozilla is inching towards the rendering speed of IE-- something Netscape 4 hasn't been able to come close to for quite some time. I'm not sure about my Linux boxes because I don't have Netscape 4 installed on those (Mozilla & Konqueror only).
I'd give Mozilla 0.9.3 before sticking with 4.7-- not only is it prettier but its definitely surpassed 4.7 at this point on stability, speed, and rendering accuracy/quality.
I've read quite a number of technical reviews of both the athlon and p4 and for some reason I remember reading more than once that the bus the p4 uses has 3.2GB/sec of bandwidth whereas the EV6 bus tops out (at least right now) at 2.1GB/sec.
Doesn't this mean that the bus is more a problem now for AMD than it is for Intel? Or am I totally wrong?:)
For my work, mostly. Most of the programming I do is for the Windows environment in either VC++ or VB, and although I could probably get everything running under vmware or win4lin or something similar, it would require far too much extra time and effort than just having a box running windows, especially when I have enough machines that to sacrifice a box to windows isnt that big of a deal...
I love how some "Linux users" think they're so high and mighty that they can spot a "Windows user" so easily. First off, I've been using Linux since 93 and Windows since 95. Second, I care because I have 6 machines at home and I don't ever feel the need to leave any of them but the server on 24/7. That means that I wait for them to boot when I want to use them. Thus, boot time makes a difference. Second, I know there's exactly 27 seconds because I timed it specifically because I care about boot time. I hardly ever re-boot my systems, but I boot several of them each day.
It's jerkoffs like you that go and spout off without knowing anything that give slashdot its incredible reputation. Maybe you oughta think next time before you go and try to be the tough guy.
raw sockets have been around since Win2k. this isn't the only place I've seen someone comment on XP's evil use of raw sockets.
and if its not that they are new, but XP's "use", of them, I'd certainly love to know what's so nightmarish about it, especially considering its identical to Win2k's use.
I've been testing XP extensively for my software company since Beta 1, and at this point (RC2), it is very close to replacing 2K as the OS on my windows box. Your points are totally right, but you miss a couple. First, the OS boots a lot faster. My main windows box is much faster than the test box running XP (athlon 700 vs k6-400) and yet it takes a full 27 secs longer to boot than the slower box running XP. Big deal, I know, but everything about the OS seems much faster to me-- application launch, ui responsiveness, disk access. Second, XP seems much more stable. While Win2k is definitely the most stable released OS from microsoft, I've definitely had a few crashes on it. Yet since installing RC1, I've had 0 crashes on the XP box. While not quite scientific, I've had to use to XP enough by now that I'm almost convinced I'll be upgrading to it because it is already far ahead (or so it seems to me;) of Win2k in the exact things that made me go from Win98 to Win2k in the first place-- speed and stability.
Because my company is a member of MSDN, i've been testing the XP betas and now RCs and based on my experiencese, I'll be using XP. I only have one Windows machine anyway and because XP is a) much faster, b) much more stable, c) vastly improved feature-wise, I won't have much problem plunkin down the $150 or whatever for it. I've used 2k since it came out, and although a vast improvement over 98 or NT4, it now pales in comparison to XP in the exact things that made it better than its predecessors-- stability, speed, and features. Sure, I'm not super-thrilled about the whole product activation thing, but it doesn't bother me all that much either. There are solutions for large IT organizations so that every PC does not have to be individually activated and for anyone else, I can't really see the problem. I had to go through the product activation process during setup of RC1 for the first time, and it was rather quick and painless.
I think the bottom line is that the people on here that are bitching about this really don't know much about XP-- everything they "know" is based on news articles or press releases. I've used XP pretty extensively since Beta 1 and I find it to hands-down be the fastest, most stable, and most feature-complete OS to ever come out of Redmond. And thats quite something, I think, considering it hasn't even completed the Beta process yet.
I've used the Linksys products as well as the D-Link products and now I own the D-Link ones. The access point was 179 and the pc card was 89. Far off from what you quote and beyond that, you can network between two 802.11 cards in p2p mode bringing the cost to as low as $180. A bit far off from your $500 figure....
Where the hell are you paying $60 for a 3com NIC?! Either you live far from civilization or you're just getting fucked, cuz I see the 3com 905c retail for around $30 everywhere I go in Vegas.
I wonder if it cost that much more because of that "free" win98 upgrade?
IIRC, 1992 was when work began for the first iteration of WinCE and I believe MIPS was the only CPU supported initially, with MS adding the other CPUs as they went along...
I think it'd be tough to really guage this.. For example, I use mostly Linux machines at home. However, only 1 of 6 machines in my office is linux and i rarely touch it. On top of that, most of the time that I read slashdot is during a slow few minutes at work, so I'd say 75% of my hits to slashdot are from windows yet my OS of choice is Linux...
Panasonic has had a laptop line for as long as I can remember (= at least a couple years;) that is geared specifically at being rugged. My last boss had one and would prove all the time just how tough it was-- I can remember him dropping it from ~5 feet, sliding it across a desk onto the floor, and even putting the fucker under the leg of his desk.
Panasonic did a demo for abc news at some recent computer show (pc expo maybe?) for their new model of this series where they actually ran over the fucker. I can't imagine how much more rugged I'd need my laptop to be...
What security is their with a single-user operating system? Clearly there is some, but not even close to that required on a multi-user system. I guarantee these type of viruses affect the Win9x line of OSs much more than the NT/2k line. Win NT/2k have (essentially) all of the same security safeguards in place as any UNIX that would prevent a virus like this from damaging the system, provided the system is being used safely and correctly (like any UNIX system must be).
I've been using Outlook for far too long and get far too much functionality out of it to switch to another app because macro viruses for it are spreading. I've got the ultimate in Outlook macro virus protection-- it's called a BRAIN.
First off, the only way to make macro capabilities even worth a damned was to include functionality that could also possibly be used for - *gasp* - viruses! Oh no! Shit man, big deal. Why is it that I can look at the attachments on my emails and plainly see an attachment that ends with.vbs, yet somehow others cannot? These viruses are the tamest you could ask for-- don't run the damned script file and you won't be infected! Oh wow! True genius, I know!
I certainly understand that these viruses are capable of creating better disguised files (such as spreadsheets with autorun macros), but every Office app has an option to NOT autorun macros. IIRC, this is the default option (at least on Office 2000-- havent touched XP). And beyond that, that virus started off at some point as a script file. It took some jackass who wasn't paying attention to get it going.
As well, the only reason this is even an issue is because of the number of people that use Outlook. Say someone wrote a "macro virus" for some Linux GUI mail client which supported scripting of some kind (Python, for arguments sake). It could disguise itself into other files, send random files to random people and generally spread itself just like these Outlook ones do. The only reason we'd never see news about something like that is because there arent the numbers of people using such clients that are using Outlook clients and as such, I imagine there aren't very many virus kiddies out there looking to target the Linux geeks of the world.
Now, don't get me wrong. I'm no GO MICROSOFT! guy or anything, but at the same time I realize that when it comes to them, many people on this site don't even give a second thought before finding them guilty of murder...
Know why Adobe doesn't sell the eBook software in Russia (and several other similar countries)? Because Russian law requires that if they were to sell this software that utilizes encryption to "protect" the eBooks, they must make available a tool which allows the legal licensees of the software to make unencrypted backups of the eBooks. And because Adodbe does not sell the software in Russia but it is still possible for a Russian citizen to purchase the software, Elcomsoft is perfectly within their rights in Russia to sell a product that allows someone that owns the eBook software to make unencrypted backups.
While this might be a little immoral if used by the nefarious eBook warez kiddies out there, it is a precedent in the US to not deny legitimate access to a technology simply because it has a possible illegitimate use. Regardless, the creation and distribution of this software happened entirely in Russia and the US is way out of line on this one.
AFAIK, the Communicator is Nokia's product resulting from the Symbian partnership between them and Psion (and others?)... So I'm sure that keyboard is the typical thumb-type Psion keyboard...
Kyocera is the company that bought out (or was born from, whatever) Qualcomm. If you notice, all of the old Qualcomm phones are now Kyocera phones. And yah, you can buy that phone for Sprint PCS service in the US. I was in the SprintPCS store the other day and the sales guy was trying to sell me one. It runs the Palm OS and has 8mb of ram, but like every other Palm device, it didn't impress me enough.
Using the Windows Media Encoder, I took a DivX movie and encoded into the windows media video format and it came in at right about 20MB for the 95 minute movie. Granted, its 15fps at 160x120 (or something like that, cant remember exactly) and not incredible sound, but it is all very watchable. During a car ride, I was able to watch the whole movie on less than a whole battery charge and it wasn't as painful as I expected at that low quality. And particularly since I can fit 4 or 5 of these on my compactflash card, it works out really well. Considering the limitations of the Pocket PC devices (small display and not-so-speedy CPU), I'm fairly happy with the quality and size of the video they play.
Most of the servers on EFnet that I used to use patched their IRCd's so that getting ops on a split was impossible. Guess that either there are enough servers out there that havent been patched like this or there are just enough stupid script kiddies out there that just don't understand this...
I used EFnet for a couple years, but I also visited at least a couple of other networks. As time went on and EFnet became more and more overrun by script kiddies, I spent more time checking out those other networks. And now that EFnet is collapsing because of the high volume of feuding script kiddies, I'm not the least bit surprised or concerned. I think anyone else out there that ever used EFnet for longer than 10 mins could see this coming...
Targus recently started making fold-up keyboards, at least for the Compaq and HP Pocket PC machines. I wanna say that I saw one for a Palm as well. But regardless, these things are great. They fold up into the size of the PDA itself (well, a little thicker), and are quite easy to carry around with the PDA itself when folded (Targus even makes a case with a specific compartment for the keyboard). It takes less than 5 seconds to unfold and flip up the stand and connector. The Pocket PC connects at the top of the keyboard and then rests back at an angle against a little stand. This setup is *very* convenient for actual typing (as the keyboard folds out to the size of a typical laptop keyboard) and the stand makes actually viewing the thing while typing convenient. The *only* complaint about using this setup is that you have to run an app on the Pocket PC before the keyboard will be recognized and you have to run it each time you want to use the keyboard. I was pretty skeptical about buying a Pocket PC machine after the horrible WinCE 2.x devices, and I came close to buying a Psion 5mx for this reason. However, I am glad now that I chose the PocketPC/foldaway keyboard setup rather than the Psion 5mx. It has all the convenience of the keyboard (folding out to a laptop-size keyboard is a HUGE advantage), plus the better multimedia and Internet capabilities of the Pocket PC OS.
WinCE 2.x and before was pretty bad, for sure. MS tried to duplicate the Windows desktop too closely and totally misfired. However, they totally rectified this with WinCE 3.0 (aka Pocket PC). 3.0 was built from scratch targeted for handheld devices and it hits right on the money. 2.x and before did have bloated memory usage, but I really don't think the same is true of 3.0. I can be playing MP3 files with Media Player, editing a spreadsheet with Pocket Excel, checking email, and even surfing the web with no noticeable slowdown between the apps. All on 32MB of ram. And considering half of that ram is used for storage, the device is really only using 16mb for actual ram. I know even at the high end, Palms only have 8mb, and this is typically more than enough. But try running more than one application. Or doing anything related to multimedia. Or a hundred other things that the Pocket PC handhelds can do that the Palms can't.
The Palms are just PDAs. The Pocket PCs are handheld computers. Big difference in capabilities, why shouldn't there be a noticeable difference in memory usage?
I'm definitely not a real estate expert, but from what I was told by a good friend of mine (who is a real estate guru), when you own a piece of "land", you also legally own all of the airspace directly above it and all of the land below it, to the center of the earth. This takes care of the he's-drilling-on-my-land or his-tree-is-hanging-into-my-yard problems.
Technically you're right about the "space" we own constantly changing, but from a legal standpoint, I guarantee you that theory wouldn't hold much water.
This is the same everywhere, for every type of ISP, be it dial-up, cable, or DSL. However, the chimps working for Cox out here in Vegas have got to be the gems of them all. Their support routine consists of:
1. Have customer reset modem.
2. If service is not restored, schedule technician appointment.
After having problems for a couple days on end, I would get to the point that I would start the conversation with "I already reset the modem and it still does not work", at which point the carefully trained chimps would jump straight to #2. After an average hold time of 10-15 mins, I would be on the phone for under 60 seconds with a tech, saying only "Yah, 1-3pm tomorrow is fine."
I challenge anyone to show me a smarter group of "technical support specialists". Perhaps, though, all ISPs hire from the same pool of technical support chimps?
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First off, try 0.9.3-- in my experience, it is definitely faster and more stable than 0.9.2. I've been using Mozilla for a while now and while it used to be true that 4.7 rendered faster than Mozilla, I don't think it is any more. At least on my Windows machine, Mozilla is inching towards the rendering speed of IE-- something Netscape 4 hasn't been able to come close to for quite some time. I'm not sure about my Linux boxes because I don't have Netscape 4 installed on those (Mozilla & Konqueror only).
I'd give Mozilla 0.9.3 before sticking with 4.7-- not only is it prettier but its definitely surpassed 4.7 at this point on stability, speed, and rendering accuracy/quality.
I could be wrong, but...
:)
I've read quite a number of technical reviews of both the athlon and p4 and for some reason I remember reading more than once that the bus the p4 uses has 3.2GB/sec of bandwidth whereas the EV6 bus tops out (at least right now) at 2.1GB/sec.
Doesn't this mean that the bus is more a problem now for AMD than it is for Intel? Or am I totally wrong?
For my work, mostly. Most of the programming I do is for the Windows environment in either VC++ or VB, and although I could probably get everything running under vmware or win4lin or something similar, it would require far too much extra time and effort than just having a box running windows, especially when I have enough machines that to sacrifice a box to windows isnt that big of a deal...
Heh, ass.
I love how some "Linux users" think they're so high and mighty that they can spot a "Windows user" so easily. First off, I've been using Linux since 93 and Windows since 95. Second, I care because I have 6 machines at home and I don't ever feel the need to leave any of them but the server on 24/7. That means that I wait for them to boot when I want to use them. Thus, boot time makes a difference. Second, I know there's exactly 27 seconds because I timed it specifically because I care about boot time. I hardly ever re-boot my systems, but I boot several of them each day.
It's jerkoffs like you that go and spout off without knowing anything that give slashdot its incredible reputation. Maybe you oughta think next time before you go and try to be the tough guy.
raw sockets have been around since Win2k. this isn't the only place I've seen someone comment on XP's evil use of raw sockets.
and if its not that they are new, but XP's "use", of them, I'd certainly love to know what's so nightmarish about it, especially considering its identical to Win2k's use.
I've been testing XP extensively for my software company since Beta 1, and at this point (RC2), it is very close to replacing 2K as the OS on my windows box. Your points are totally right, but you miss a couple. First, the OS boots a lot faster. My main windows box is much faster than the test box running XP (athlon 700 vs k6-400) and yet it takes a full 27 secs longer to boot than the slower box running XP. Big deal, I know, but everything about the OS seems much faster to me-- application launch, ui responsiveness, disk access. Second, XP seems much more stable. While Win2k is definitely the most stable released OS from microsoft, I've definitely had a few crashes on it. Yet since installing RC1, I've had 0 crashes on the XP box. While not quite scientific, I've had to use to XP enough by now that I'm almost convinced I'll be upgrading to it because it is already far ahead (or so it seems to me ;) of Win2k in the exact things that made me go from Win98 to Win2k in the first place-- speed and stability.
Because my company is a member of MSDN, i've been testing the XP betas and now RCs and based on my experiencese, I'll be using XP. I only have one Windows machine anyway and because XP is a) much faster, b) much more stable, c) vastly improved feature-wise, I won't have much problem plunkin down the $150 or whatever for it. I've used 2k since it came out, and although a vast improvement over 98 or NT4, it now pales in comparison to XP in the exact things that made it better than its predecessors-- stability, speed, and features. Sure, I'm not super-thrilled about the whole product activation thing, but it doesn't bother me all that much either. There are solutions for large IT organizations so that every PC does not have to be individually activated and for anyone else, I can't really see the problem. I had to go through the product activation process during setup of RC1 for the first time, and it was rather quick and painless.
I think the bottom line is that the people on here that are bitching about this really don't know much about XP-- everything they "know" is based on news articles or press releases. I've used XP pretty extensively since Beta 1 and I find it to hands-down be the fastest, most stable, and most feature-complete OS to ever come out of Redmond. And thats quite something, I think, considering it hasn't even completed the Beta process yet.
I've used the Linksys products as well as the D-Link products and now I own the D-Link ones. The access point was 179 and the pc card was 89. Far off from what you quote and beyond that, you can network between two 802.11 cards in p2p mode bringing the cost to as low as $180. A bit far off from your $500 figure....
IIRC, IE 5 (or maybe its 5.5) is the most standards-compliant browser available... I sure as hell know it isnt Netscape or Mozilla (at least yet)...
Where the hell are you paying $60 for a 3com NIC?! Either you live far from civilization or you're just getting fucked, cuz I see the 3com 905c retail for around $30 everywhere I go in Vegas.
I wonder if it cost that much more because of that "free" win98 upgrade?
IIRC, 1992 was when work began for the first iteration of WinCE and I believe MIPS was the only CPU supported initially, with MS adding the other CPUs as they went along...
I think it'd be tough to really guage this.. For example, I use mostly Linux machines at home. However, only 1 of 6 machines in my office is linux and i rarely touch it. On top of that, most of the time that I read slashdot is during a slow few minutes at work, so I'd say 75% of my hits to slashdot are from windows yet my OS of choice is Linux...
Panasonic has had a laptop line for as long as I can remember (= at least a couple years ;) that is geared specifically at being rugged. My last boss had one and would prove all the time just how tough it was-- I can remember him dropping it from ~5 feet, sliding it across a desk onto the floor, and even putting the fucker under the leg of his desk.
Panasonic did a demo for abc news at some recent computer show (pc expo maybe?) for their new model of this series where they actually ran over the fucker. I can't imagine how much more rugged I'd need my laptop to be...
What security is their with a single-user operating system? Clearly there is some, but not even close to that required on a multi-user system. I guarantee these type of viruses affect the Win9x line of OSs much more than the NT/2k line. Win NT/2k have (essentially) all of the same security safeguards in place as any UNIX that would prevent a virus like this from damaging the system, provided the system is being used safely and correctly (like any UNIX system must be).
I've been using Outlook for far too long and get far too much functionality out of it to switch to another app because macro viruses for it are spreading. I've got the ultimate in Outlook macro virus protection-- it's called a BRAIN.
.vbs, yet somehow others cannot? These viruses are the tamest you could ask for-- don't run the damned script file and you won't be infected! Oh wow! True genius, I know!
First off, the only way to make macro capabilities even worth a damned was to include functionality that could also possibly be used for - *gasp* - viruses! Oh no! Shit man, big deal. Why is it that I can look at the attachments on my emails and plainly see an attachment that ends with
I certainly understand that these viruses are capable of creating better disguised files (such as spreadsheets with autorun macros), but every Office app has an option to NOT autorun macros. IIRC, this is the default option (at least on Office 2000-- havent touched XP). And beyond that, that virus started off at some point as a script file. It took some jackass who wasn't paying attention to get it going.
As well, the only reason this is even an issue is because of the number of people that use Outlook. Say someone wrote a "macro virus" for some Linux GUI mail client which supported scripting of some kind (Python, for arguments sake). It could disguise itself into other files, send random files to random people and generally spread itself just like these Outlook ones do. The only reason we'd never see news about something like that is because there arent the numbers of people using such clients that are using Outlook clients and as such, I imagine there aren't very many virus kiddies out there looking to target the Linux geeks of the world.
Now, don't get me wrong. I'm no GO MICROSOFT! guy or anything, but at the same time I realize that when it comes to them, many people on this site don't even give a second thought before finding them guilty of murder...
Know why Adobe doesn't sell the eBook software in Russia (and several other similar countries)? Because Russian law requires that if they were to sell this software that utilizes encryption to "protect" the eBooks, they must make available a tool which allows the legal licensees of the software to make unencrypted backups of the eBooks. And because Adodbe does not sell the software in Russia but it is still possible for a Russian citizen to purchase the software, Elcomsoft is perfectly within their rights in Russia to sell a product that allows someone that owns the eBook software to make unencrypted backups.
While this might be a little immoral if used by the nefarious eBook warez kiddies out there, it is a precedent in the US to not deny legitimate access to a technology simply because it has a possible illegitimate use. Regardless, the creation and distribution of this software happened entirely in Russia and the US is way out of line on this one.
AFAIK, the Communicator is Nokia's product resulting from the Symbian partnership between them and Psion (and others?)... So I'm sure that keyboard is the typical thumb-type Psion keyboard...
Kyocera is the company that bought out (or was born from, whatever) Qualcomm. If you notice, all of the old Qualcomm phones are now Kyocera phones. And yah, you can buy that phone for Sprint PCS service in the US. I was in the SprintPCS store the other day and the sales guy was trying to sell me one. It runs the Palm OS and has 8mb of ram, but like every other Palm device, it didn't impress me enough.
Here is some good info on the phone...
Using the Windows Media Encoder, I took a DivX movie and encoded into the windows media video format and it came in at right about 20MB for the 95 minute movie. Granted, its 15fps at 160x120 (or something like that, cant remember exactly) and not incredible sound, but it is all very watchable. During a car ride, I was able to watch the whole movie on less than a whole battery charge and it wasn't as painful as I expected at that low quality. And particularly since I can fit 4 or 5 of these on my compactflash card, it works out really well. Considering the limitations of the Pocket PC devices (small display and not-so-speedy CPU), I'm fairly happy with the quality and size of the video they play.
Most of the servers on EFnet that I used to use patched their IRCd's so that getting ops on a split was impossible. Guess that either there are enough servers out there that havent been patched like this or there are just enough stupid script kiddies out there that just don't understand this...
So what?
I used EFnet for a couple years, but I also visited at least a couple of other networks. As time went on and EFnet became more and more overrun by script kiddies, I spent more time checking out those other networks. And now that EFnet is collapsing because of the high volume of feuding script kiddies, I'm not the least bit surprised or concerned. I think anyone else out there that ever used EFnet for longer than 10 mins could see this coming...
Targus recently started making fold-up keyboards, at least for the Compaq and HP Pocket PC machines. I wanna say that I saw one for a Palm as well. But regardless, these things are great. They fold up into the size of the PDA itself (well, a little thicker), and are quite easy to carry around with the PDA itself when folded (Targus even makes a case with a specific compartment for the keyboard). It takes less than 5 seconds to unfold and flip up the stand and connector. The Pocket PC connects at the top of the keyboard and then rests back at an angle against a little stand. This setup is *very* convenient for actual typing (as the keyboard folds out to the size of a typical laptop keyboard) and the stand makes actually viewing the thing while typing convenient. The *only* complaint about using this setup is that you have to run an app on the Pocket PC before the keyboard will be recognized and you have to run it each time you want to use the keyboard. I was pretty skeptical about buying a Pocket PC machine after the horrible WinCE 2.x devices, and I came close to buying a Psion 5mx for this reason. However, I am glad now that I chose the PocketPC/foldaway keyboard setup rather than the Psion 5mx. It has all the convenience of the keyboard (folding out to a laptop-size keyboard is a HUGE advantage), plus the better multimedia and Internet capabilities of the Pocket PC OS.
WinCE 2.x and before was pretty bad, for sure. MS tried to duplicate the Windows desktop too closely and totally misfired. However, they totally rectified this with WinCE 3.0 (aka Pocket PC). 3.0 was built from scratch targeted for handheld devices and it hits right on the money. 2.x and before did have bloated memory usage, but I really don't think the same is true of 3.0. I can be playing MP3 files with Media Player, editing a spreadsheet with Pocket Excel, checking email, and even surfing the web with no noticeable slowdown between the apps. All on 32MB of ram. And considering half of that ram is used for storage, the device is really only using 16mb for actual ram. I know even at the high end, Palms only have 8mb, and this is typically more than enough. But try running more than one application. Or doing anything related to multimedia. Or a hundred other things that the Pocket PC handhelds can do that the Palms can't.
The Palms are just PDAs. The Pocket PCs are handheld computers. Big difference in capabilities, why shouldn't there be a noticeable difference in memory usage?
I'm definitely not a real estate expert, but from what I was told by a good friend of mine (who is a real estate guru), when you own a piece of "land", you also legally own all of the airspace directly above it and all of the land below it, to the center of the earth. This takes care of the he's-drilling-on-my-land or his-tree-is-hanging-into-my-yard problems.
Technically you're right about the "space" we own constantly changing, but from a legal standpoint, I guarantee you that theory wouldn't hold much water.
This is the same everywhere, for every type of ISP, be it dial-up, cable, or DSL. However, the chimps working for Cox out here in Vegas have got to be the gems of them all. Their support routine consists of:
1. Have customer reset modem.
2. If service is not restored, schedule technician appointment.
After having problems for a couple days on end, I would get to the point that I would start the conversation with "I already reset the modem and it still does not work", at which point the carefully trained chimps would jump straight to #2. After an average hold time of 10-15 mins, I would be on the phone for under 60 seconds with a tech, saying only "Yah, 1-3pm tomorrow is fine."
I challenge anyone to show me a smarter group of "technical support specialists". Perhaps, though, all ISPs hire from the same pool of technical support chimps?