However, I do think that the license-plate-reading device is not necessarily kosher. It can be misused. Let's say it scans all plates for drivers with a DUI history or just a penchant for speeding, and the cop uses that info to follow you waiting for that twitchy foot to push you above the magic number. This is a legitimate concern. It would be good to have some legislation surrounding these systems that prohibit misue like this. It should only be scanning against plates that have something active against them - eg: stolen, warrants, missing child, etc.
But if it scans the plates and throws up a "This car is stolen!," or a "This guy has a warrant!" alarm, that's a different issue. There is no intrusion. People not currently enaged in breaking--or wanted by--the law are filtered thru, never making it to the officers screen, and the ones that are get tagged. I like the idea of this system as well. It makes it much harder to drive after you've been connected to a crime, and would lower the amount of time someone could lead their day-to-day life with outstanding warrants, or drive with suspended licenses, etc. At the same time, I'm not sure how effective it would really be, and it would need to be tested in a city for quite a while before seeing more widespread use.
An eventual outcome could be that crime (or certain types of crime, anyways) goes down, as the risk of being caught is much higher. That's probably not very likely, but something more likely would be that the time it takes to find someone you're looking for is dramatically lower. However, it could also have the opposite effect. If someone knows they have active warrants, they may be more likely to escalate to avoid being caught, for example only use stolen cars/plates for a short period of time, and steal another car to replace it. These are certainly higher stakes of course, so maybe fewer people would be willing to go that far.
Yeah, I actually wrote the tool I'm using, but it's basically the exact same principle as rsnapshot. I didn't like that with rsnapshot you could only do all your backups on the same intervals. I wanted different intervals for different areas. For example, I keep daily of my/home for a couple weeks, and weekly of/etc for a couple months, and weekly of my ldap database for several weeks, etc.
Mine is just a bash script, with three variables at the top (source, target, and number to keep), and it creates, eg,/backup/home.2007-01-05-03-00. I just run it from cron on whatever interval. Not quite as refined, but simple, effective, and lets me do different intervals for each backup.
That's what we do, using rsync and hardlinks to make differential backups. It takes up much less space - eg, if you do daily backups and keep two weeks worth, it takes up 100% of the original space plus whatever data has changed during in the 14 days. The best part about that method is that it's simple to restore. I don't know if you've ever tried to restore from tapes - especially when you're doing incremental backups - but it's not the funnest thing to do. Restoring from the hard drive is simple, because you just have to copy files. It's trivial to restore that file that Bob in accounting deleted last week and just realized it today.
I think if you wanted to keep monthly archives forever, using hard drives would get expensive. It might make sense to use a tape drive to do a full backup on a monthly basis, and use the hard drive for regularly-performed short-term backups.
Just because some clueless users run everything as administrator doesn't make Windows less secure. The problem with Windows security is not Windows, it's the people who use it. As an experiment, I've been running XP on my desktop at home as a limited-access user for the past few months. For the most part, it works fine. I can get work done, I'm happy. The problem comes with XP's terrible privilege escalation. You can do 'run as..' to install programs, which is fine (and has existed since NT, or at least 2000). What you can't do is browse network shares as another user, change settings (video, networking), and other things like that. At work, where most users are just regular users (no admin/power user capabilities), I often navigate to system32 (since the "Run" dialog doesn't allow you to run-as) and then do run-as on cmd.exe in order to start/stop services, or something like that (limited, of course, to the few tasks that can actually be performed on the command line).
Luckily at home, I'm not on a domain, so I can use fast user switching to log in as an administrator (note, though, I had to make a second administrator account, because 'administrator' doesn't show up on the fast user switching screen if you make other users).
It's not totally the users, it's the incredible inconvenience that has been programmed in to Windows that almost forces people to be administrator to fully use their computer.
Contrast this to say, KDE, where if I want to change a video setting for example, it tells you the settings that can't be changed, and has a button that says "Administrator mode" and asks you to enter credentials that have access to the settings - WITHOUT logging out. The only I've noticed that windows does anywhere near this sort of user friendliness is when you try to run an executable named install.exe or setup.exe, it automatically pops up the Run-as dialog instead of trying to run it.
In a world where everything is free, I sometimes wonder. In cases where you've paid for a service, you have every right to demand that your data is restored if lost. Not that the company is guaranteed to help you, but at least you can insist that they do something. If they don't, you always have the option of a lawsuit. Most EULA's (you know, the things you agree to when you sign up for the service - even if you pay them) or contracts specifically say you acknowledge that they're not responsible for loss of data, or liable for any damages you suffer because of it.
It sucks for the end user, but it means the company doesn't get sued out of business if they make one little mistake.
When digg first came out, it was great.. news was always posted days ahead of/. (and probably still is), and it had lots of stuff I probably wouldn't otherwise have looked at (eg, tech stuff not on/.). However, as time went on, I found two problems.. constantly, stories that just weren't interesting would get pushed to the top (eg, any stories about digg itself always got a huge number of diggs), lots of viral content (even if it was a year or two old.. but apparently 'new' to the digg crowd) would get pushed to the top, etc. (There is a bunch of other stories that would always seem to get up there too, I can't remember now).
The other problem was it was just news overload.. so much stuff to read every day, between digg and/., you could honestly spend several hours EVERY DAY just reading news. So I basically gave up on digg, and just go to/. - despite its problems - for my news fix. I've heard of reddit but never visited, just because it came out after the point I decided to stick to one source for my tech news headlines.
So like other people are saying, don't assume everyone reads all three of those sites, it's fine to post interesting content. Just ignore it if you saw it somewhere else before, or stick to just one.
If this is an issue for you, you should be using another port.. but more importantly, if you have on-the-road users sending email, USE SSL! Not only is it a different port (that almost certainly isn't blocked), but it encrypts the email. This is extra important when you consider how much WiFi networks are used. While you're at it, make sure you use SSL-enabled POP3 and IMAP, for the same reasons.
It amazes me how many sys admins would scoff at using telnet to log into a server, make sure all their web apps run on https, and then check their email with plain-text POP3.
That's a broken analogy because you're not losing out on anything by giving back.. the closest parallel would be "Do you give one of its a puppy back to the owner?"
You could have law enforcement jam cell phones ONCE. After that, people would simply get FRS/GMRS radios, or CB, or something using the same frequency as police radios, or smoke signals or flares... Protests have been around since before we had cell phones, and they certainly aren't going to be stopped by disabling the ability to broadcast at a certain frequency.
It's the same thing with the scary terrorists. If you block cell phone signals in an attempt to prevent them from remotely setting off a bomb, they'll use one of the other bazillion possible ways to set off a bomb (including a suicide bomber standing next to it).
Comparisons of number of bugs are NEVER fair. The situation is even worse in a closed-source environment, because we may never actually see all the bugs that get fixed. Even in open source, we sometimes fix bugs in the code with filing a report. Sometimes bugs are filed for a misspelling in the user interface. Sometimes 4 or 5 bugs are reported based on behaviour alone, and upon inspection, there's really one root problem (maybe even something simple) that's causing all of those bugs, so one fix goes in and 5 bugs get closed. Does that count as 1 bug or 5? Do these studies of # of bugs take that into consideration?
Even calling something "severe" or not is a judgement call. I've seen many times a bug filed as severe only to have a developer look at it and refile it as trivial.
On top of all of this, it's not hard to "game" this system to make your company/project look better. Just raise your standards for what can be classified as a major vs minor bug (eg, file everything a bit lower than it normally would be). This standard is going to be set differently by different management teams and companies, so it's already skewed to try to compare. Someone trying to look like they have fewer bugs may also ask their team to refrain from filing bugs if they can (kind of like factories do with workplace accidents - they have incentive systems for employees/supervisors, part of that "We've gone X days without an accident" thing.. what really happens, is employees won't report accidents if they can get away with it because then they lose their incentives). At another company, they may have a policy to file bugs for EVERYTHING, so every change to the code requires a bug/feature ticket. What happens when you compare the # of "bugs" in these two companies?
Although the potential for fraud is there, we can already block caller ID with star-eighty-six and nobody seems to be abusing that too much.
Blocking is not the same thing as 'spoofing'. If I can call you and it looks like I'm calling from the local police department, that's quite a different thing than "BLOCKED ID" calling you. If I say "Hi, this is Officer Farva," which one do you think gives me more credibility?
Ok, this is a good idea. It makes sense. However.. phones are often used to connect to and use IVR systems, this will screw up some of those systems. Think of a company directory, "Enter the first 3 letters of the person's last name using your keypad.". Granted, it's a pretty limited problem, but it doesn't seem like anyone has pointed it out yet.
The predictive text input on LG phones is fast and complete enough that I can send proper English texts faster than abbreviating with conventional ABC input. It's different for different manufacturers, I know Motorola's is next to unusable and I hear Samsung's is iffy, but mine is great.
I have a motorola razr (first phone telus offered with bluetooth), and the predictive text input on it is great. After you type a few words, it usually gives a suggestion (which it shows you by completing the remaining letters in a different color, with an up arrow indicating to press up to select that word). As you're typing it also shows a bunch of partial words and suggestions at the bottom of the screen, which you can select with left/right. It's handy for words it doesn't know, because you can prompt it on the first few letters and it usually picks the most english-like words to figure out how to complete it. I think it also learns, as it seems to make suggestions based on words I use most often.
That said, one of my friends has a GSM razr (mine is CDMA), and it has an amazingly different interface on it.. so I'm not sure if the text input is the same.
My previous two phones were Samsungs (SPH A540, and another flip one - I can't think of the model, but it was from 2000ish). Both of them had "T9" input, which was predictive. The A540 was better than the old one, but both were quite usable. It was definately easier on both to use T9 (well, once you understood it) as opposed to ABC input. I've never really understood why people talk short form the way they do.. predictive can be confusing (if you're expecting ABC, and it starts making words..) but once you figure out what it's doing and how to use it, it's MUCH faster.
So now you can just walk up to any console, type your login name and get access. We can still log who does what, and casual visitors can't just get access unless they know a valid login name. Because there are no secrets from each other anybody can use anybody else's login if the wish. In 6 months I haven't seen anybody do that, because there is no need to.
You mean, you haven't seen anyone do it because you 1) have the hope/assumption that everyone is honest, and 2) wouldn't be able to see it if they were semi-smart at all.
What I mean by that, is if the guy getting paid minimum wage out back wants to see what his supervisor makes, he just logs on as someone in accounting or HR (or whoever has access). Since they'd normally need to access accounting data, nothing would look out of the ordinary.
It's a nice bubble to live in, but people (in general) do not remain honest all the time. Things happen.. People get angry, fed up, etc etc. I don't want to come off sounding like a paranoid nut, but there are so many deeper issues with doing a setup like this. If someone does download sensitive data and say, sells it to your competitors, you wouldn't be able to know who did it - since it's likely that the perpetrator would have just logged on to another account. If someone downloads child porn, and the feds come knocking, you wouldn't be able to help them.
I think part of what you're going for can be accomplished using passwords.. as long as you treat them the right way. Make it clear that it's not a matter of mistrust or IT trying to be control freaks.. it's simply a matter of accountability. My guess is you're going to run into major (legal?) problems in the future when some kind of incident happens, especially if you don't take due dilligence, like having passwords.
What you can easily do with an open-source PBX such as asterisk, is have a special handler for 911. Dial it normally, but when you see 911 being dialed, run a script that does something - eg, sends an IM or page/SMS to key staff, telling them which room called 911. If you have an electronic display board, you could have it display the message there. You could even stick a little 2x20 char LCD beside your fire panel that shows where the emergency was ("911 call @ Room 203 / Take stairs on right, turn left"). The LCD (or VFD) could be done for $100 in parts and 15 minutes of scripting, if you're familiar with asterisk.
Why not just use freePBX? It's the web frontend/configuration that Trixbox uses. It can be installed on basically any distro (I run it on debian), so you can pick the one you're most comfortable with. Having it installed separately also means you can upgrade components separately.
Yes, Asterisk can do all of the above (and more). FreePBX (disclaimer: I'm one of the devs) is a GUI/config for asterisk that provides those capabilities out of the box.
As far as voice recognition, some work has been started with integrating voice recoginition and asterisk, using both open source (ie, Sphinx) and proprietary voice recoginition engines. Voice recoginition is a hard thing to do, and if not done almost perfectly, it's basically usless.
Re:The problem with wireless devices...
on
USB To Go Wireless
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· Score: 1
One of my friends' mother was in the hospital with cancer. He had a DSL line installed for her so she could use her laptop to use email, IM, etc. She unfortunately passed away several months later due to complications. He cancelled the DSL account, and then a month later, noticed that there was still a charge from Bell on his credit card. He called bell, and they told him they had no record of his account anymore, and no record of the charges, and he should take it up with his credit card company. Again the next month, the charge showed up again. He again called Bell and got the same story. Eventually, after talking to several people, he finally found someone that saw the charge going through, but couldn't do anything about it because there was no account to cancel the charge from. (He did eventually get it cancelled after getting his credit card company talking to Bell and going through a lot of hassle).
--
My favourite story of messed up billing systems is this:
I had a customer using a Bell dial-up line with an unlimited internet account (no high-speed available). They pretty much stayed connected all the time. After having this account for over a year, they noticed a $200 bill one month (for something that's supposed to be $22), which was because of several "over usage" per-minute charges. They had actually been getting these over usage charges for a few months, but only the $200 amount triggered someone to notice it (government organization..).
Now, apparently "unlimited" accounts actually give you 744 hours per month (24*31). So it IS actually possible to go over that, if you connect during say, the 31st day, and stay connected until the next day, which is what the rep on the phone explained was happening. Of course, you can only stay connected for 12 hours at a time. So the maximum overusage you should possibly be able to get is 12 hours. They were being charged several hours. I saw the usage for one month, it went something like this:
I should also mention that if you connect with a second modem while your account is already connected, your first account gets booted off - so it's not possible to have multiple simultaneous connections to the same account.
The reps explained this to them by telling them that they were being charged every time they "logged in" (which they either implied meant, logged in to any website on the internet, or my client took it as that) and because they had a few computers connected to this one connection, it meant that 3 or 4 people could all "log in" to websites at the same time, and be charged by bell for overusage on their dialup. I explained over and over that Bell could had no idea when they "logged in" to a website and either way that had NOTHING to do with connecting to the ISP, but the Bell reps stuck with their story. My final solution was "get another ISP" (even suggesting a few alternate local ones). This went on for months, I believe they got most of the charges reversed, but Bell would do the exact same thing the next month. As far as I know, they're STILL using Bell, and probably still being charged. What can you do.
Slashdot Mirror
An eventual outcome could be that crime (or certain types of crime, anyways) goes down, as the risk of being caught is much higher. That's probably not very likely, but something more likely would be that the time it takes to find someone you're looking for is dramatically lower. However, it could also have the opposite effect. If someone knows they have active warrants, they may be more likely to escalate to avoid being caught, for example only use stolen cars/plates for a short period of time, and steal another car to replace it. These are certainly higher stakes of course, so maybe fewer people would be willing to go that far.
There's a great script on voip-info.org to use to torture telemarketers.
Yeah, I actually wrote the tool I'm using, but it's basically the exact same principle as rsnapshot. I didn't like that with rsnapshot you could only do all your backups on the same intervals. I wanted different intervals for different areas. For example, I keep daily of my /home for a couple weeks, and weekly of /etc for a couple months, and weekly of my ldap database for several weeks, etc.
/backup/home.2007-01-05-03-00. I just run it from cron on whatever interval. Not quite as refined, but simple, effective, and lets me do different intervals for each backup.
Mine is just a bash script, with three variables at the top (source, target, and number to keep), and it creates, eg,
That's what we do, using rsync and hardlinks to make differential backups. It takes up much less space - eg, if you do daily backups and keep two weeks worth, it takes up 100% of the original space plus whatever data has changed during in the 14 days. The best part about that method is that it's simple to restore. I don't know if you've ever tried to restore from tapes - especially when you're doing incremental backups - but it's not the funnest thing to do. Restoring from the hard drive is simple, because you just have to copy files. It's trivial to restore that file that Bob in accounting deleted last week and just realized it today.
I think if you wanted to keep monthly archives forever, using hard drives would get expensive. It might make sense to use a tape drive to do a full backup on a monthly basis, and use the hard drive for regularly-performed short-term backups.
Luckily at home, I'm not on a domain, so I can use fast user switching to log in as an administrator (note, though, I had to make a second administrator account, because 'administrator' doesn't show up on the fast user switching screen if you make other users).
It's not totally the users, it's the incredible inconvenience that has been programmed in to Windows that almost forces people to be administrator to fully use their computer.
Contrast this to say, KDE, where if I want to change a video setting for example, it tells you the settings that can't be changed, and has a button that says "Administrator mode" and asks you to enter credentials that have access to the settings - WITHOUT logging out. The only I've noticed that windows does anywhere near this sort of user friendliness is when you try to run an executable named install.exe or setup.exe, it automatically pops up the Run-as dialog instead of trying to run it.
It sucks for the end user, but it means the company doesn't get sued out of business if they make one little mistake.
When digg first came out, it was great .. news was always posted days ahead of /. (and probably still is), and it had lots of stuff I probably wouldn't otherwise have looked at (eg, tech stuff not on /.). However, as time went on, I found two problems .. constantly, stories that just weren't interesting would get pushed to the top (eg, any stories about digg itself always got a huge number of diggs), lots of viral content (even if it was a year or two old .. but apparently 'new' to the digg crowd) would get pushed to the top, etc. (There is a bunch of other stories that would always seem to get up there too, I can't remember now).
.. so much stuff to read every day, between digg and /., you could honestly spend several hours EVERY DAY just reading news. So I basically gave up on digg, and just go to /. - despite its problems - for my news fix. I've heard of reddit but never visited, just because it came out after the point I decided to stick to one source for my tech news headlines.
The other problem was it was just news overload
So like other people are saying, don't assume everyone reads all three of those sites, it's fine to post interesting content. Just ignore it if you saw it somewhere else before, or stick to just one.
If this is an issue for you, you should be using another port.. but more importantly, if you have on-the-road users sending email, USE SSL! Not only is it a different port (that almost certainly isn't blocked), but it encrypts the email. This is extra important when you consider how much WiFi networks are used. While you're at it, make sure you use SSL-enabled POP3 and IMAP, for the same reasons.
It amazes me how many sys admins would scoff at using telnet to log into a server, make sure all their web apps run on https, and then check their email with plain-text POP3.
That's a broken analogy because you're not losing out on anything by giving back.. the closest parallel would be "Do you give one of its a puppy back to the owner?"
You could have law enforcement jam cell phones ONCE. After that, people would simply get FRS/GMRS radios, or CB, or something using the same frequency as police radios, or smoke signals or flares... Protests have been around since before we had cell phones, and they certainly aren't going to be stopped by disabling the ability to broadcast at a certain frequency.
It's the same thing with the scary terrorists. If you block cell phone signals in an attempt to prevent them from remotely setting off a bomb, they'll use one of the other bazillion possible ways to set off a bomb (including a suicide bomber standing next to it).
Comparisons of number of bugs are NEVER fair. The situation is even worse in a closed-source environment, because we may never actually see all the bugs that get fixed. Even in open source, we sometimes fix bugs in the code with filing a report. Sometimes bugs are filed for a misspelling in the user interface. Sometimes 4 or 5 bugs are reported based on behaviour alone, and upon inspection, there's really one root problem (maybe even something simple) that's causing all of those bugs, so one fix goes in and 5 bugs get closed. Does that count as 1 bug or 5? Do these studies of # of bugs take that into consideration?
Even calling something "severe" or not is a judgement call. I've seen many times a bug filed as severe only to have a developer look at it and refile it as trivial.
On top of all of this, it's not hard to "game" this system to make your company/project look better. Just raise your standards for what can be classified as a major vs minor bug (eg, file everything a bit lower than it normally would be). This standard is going to be set differently by different management teams and companies, so it's already skewed to try to compare. Someone trying to look like they have fewer bugs may also ask their team to refrain from filing bugs if they can (kind of like factories do with workplace accidents - they have incentive systems for employees/supervisors, part of that "We've gone X days without an accident" thing.. what really happens, is employees won't report accidents if they can get away with it because then they lose their incentives). At another company, they may have a policy to file bugs for EVERYTHING, so every change to the code requires a bug/feature ticket. What happens when you compare the # of "bugs" in these two companies?
Blocking is not the same thing as 'spoofing'. If I can call you and it looks like I'm calling from the local police department, that's quite a different thing than "BLOCKED ID" calling you. If I say "Hi, this is Officer Farva," which one do you think gives me more credibility?
..that people want phones in order to make phone calls?? Psh..
Ok, this is a good idea. It makes sense. However.. phones are often used to connect to and use IVR systems, this will screw up some of those systems. Think of a company directory, "Enter the first 3 letters of the person's last name using your keypad.". Granted, it's a pretty limited problem, but it doesn't seem like anyone has pointed it out yet.
The predictive text input on LG phones is fast and complete enough that I can send proper English texts faster than abbreviating with conventional ABC input. It's different for different manufacturers, I know Motorola's is next to unusable and I hear Samsung's is iffy, but mine is great.
.. so I'm not sure if the text input is the same.
I have a motorola razr (first phone telus offered with bluetooth), and the predictive text input on it is great. After you type a few words, it usually gives a suggestion (which it shows you by completing the remaining letters in a different color, with an up arrow indicating to press up to select that word). As you're typing it also shows a bunch of partial words and suggestions at the bottom of the screen, which you can select with left/right. It's handy for words it doesn't know, because you can prompt it on the first few letters and it usually picks the most english-like words to figure out how to complete it. I think it also learns, as it seems to make suggestions based on words I use most often.
That said, one of my friends has a GSM razr (mine is CDMA), and it has an amazingly different interface on it
My previous two phones were Samsungs (SPH A540, and another flip one - I can't think of the model, but it was from 2000ish). Both of them had "T9" input, which was predictive. The A540 was better than the old one, but both were quite usable. It was definately easier on both to use T9 (well, once you understood it) as opposed to ABC input. I've never really understood why people talk short form the way they do.. predictive can be confusing (if you're expecting ABC, and it starts making words..) but once you figure out what it's doing and how to use it, it's MUCH faster.
Good timing for this.. I actually just saw this on The Hour (last night's full show), but boingboing also covered it: Dell gets presidential product placement?. There's a youtube link there.
So now you can just walk up to any console, type your login name and get access. We can still log who does
what, and casual visitors can't just get access unless they know a valid login name. Because there are no secrets from each other anybody
can use anybody else's login if the wish. In 6 months I haven't seen anybody do that, because there is no need to.
You mean, you haven't seen anyone do it because you 1) have the hope/assumption that everyone is honest, and 2) wouldn't be able to see it if they were semi-smart at all.
What I mean by that, is if the guy getting paid minimum wage out back wants to see what his supervisor makes, he just logs on as someone in accounting or HR (or whoever has access). Since they'd normally need to access accounting data, nothing would look out of the ordinary.
It's a nice bubble to live in, but people (in general) do not remain honest all the time. Things happen.. People get angry, fed up, etc etc. I don't want to come off sounding like a paranoid nut, but there are so many deeper issues with doing a setup like this. If someone does download sensitive data and say, sells it to your competitors, you wouldn't be able to know who did it - since it's likely that the perpetrator would have just logged on to another account. If someone downloads child porn, and the feds come knocking, you wouldn't be able to help them.
I think part of what you're going for can be accomplished using passwords.. as long as you treat them the right way. Make it clear that it's not a matter of mistrust or IT trying to be control freaks.. it's simply a matter of accountability. My guess is you're going to run into major (legal?) problems in the future when some kind of incident happens, especially if you don't take due dilligence, like having passwords.
..and the only thing more fun than reading an EULA is listening to it read in a synthetic text-to-speech voice!
What you can easily do with an open-source PBX such as asterisk, is have a special handler for 911. Dial it normally, but when you see 911 being dialed, run a script that does something - eg, sends an IM or page/SMS to key staff, telling them which room called 911. If you have an electronic display board, you could have it display the message there. You could even stick a little 2x20 char LCD beside your fire panel that shows where the emergency was ("911 call @ Room 203 / Take stairs on right, turn left"). The LCD (or VFD) could be done for $100 in parts and 15 minutes of scripting, if you're familiar with asterisk.
Why not just use freePBX? It's the web frontend/configuration that Trixbox uses. It can be installed on basically any distro (I run it on debian), so you can pick the one you're most comfortable with. Having it installed separately also means you can upgrade components separately.
Followme, which has been greatly improved in the upcoming 2.2 release
Yes, Asterisk can do all of the above (and more). FreePBX (disclaimer: I'm one of the devs) is a GUI/config for asterisk that provides those capabilities out of the box.
As far as voice recognition, some work has been started with integrating voice recoginition and asterisk, using both open source (ie, Sphinx) and proprietary voice recoginition engines. Voice recoginition is a hard thing to do, and if not done almost perfectly, it's basically usless.
4. Power
Swear at it.
If you do that on Bell Canada's system (well, I haven't tried in about a year, but it did then) it will drop you directory to an operator.
Oh Bell..I have so many stories.
....
One of my friends' mother was in the hospital with cancer. He had a DSL line installed for her so she could use her laptop to use email, IM, etc. She unfortunately passed away several months later due to complications. He cancelled the DSL account, and then a month later, noticed that there was still a charge from Bell on his credit card. He called bell, and they told him they had no record of his account anymore, and no record of the charges, and he should take it up with his credit card company. Again the next month, the charge showed up again. He again called Bell and got the same story. Eventually, after talking to several people, he finally found someone that saw the charge going through, but couldn't do anything about it because there was no account to cancel the charge from. (He did eventually get it cancelled after getting his credit card company talking to Bell and going through a lot of hassle).
--
My favourite story of messed up billing systems is this:
I had a customer using a Bell dial-up line with an unlimited internet account (no high-speed available). They pretty much stayed connected all the time. After having this account for over a year, they noticed a $200 bill one month (for something that's supposed to be $22), which was because of several "over usage" per-minute charges. They had actually been getting these over usage charges for a few months, but only the $200 amount triggered someone to notice it (government organization..).
Now, apparently "unlimited" accounts actually give you 744 hours per month (24*31). So it IS actually possible to go over that, if you connect during say, the 31st day, and stay connected until the next day, which is what the rep on the phone explained was happening. Of course, you can only stay connected for 12 hours at a time. So the maximum overusage you should possibly be able to get is 12 hours. They were being charged several hours. I saw the usage for one month, it went something like this:
Disconnect time: 1/5 12:45 Minutes: 9999.99
Disconnect time: 1/5 12:46 Minutes: 9999.99
Disconnect time: 1/5 12:47 Minutes: 9999.99
Disconnect time: 1/6 12:03 Minutes: 634.2
Disconnect time: 1/7 8:34 Minutes: 9999.99
Disconnect time: 1/7 8:35 Minutes: 9999.99
I should also mention that if you connect with a second modem while your account is already connected, your first account gets booted off - so it's not possible to have multiple simultaneous connections to the same account.
The reps explained this to them by telling them that they were being charged every time they "logged in" (which they either implied meant, logged in to any website on the internet, or my client took it as that) and because they had a few computers connected to this one connection, it meant that 3 or 4 people could all "log in" to websites at the same time, and be charged by bell for overusage on their dialup. I explained over and over that Bell could had no idea when they "logged in" to a website and either way that had NOTHING to do with connecting to the ISP, but the Bell reps stuck with their story. My final solution was "get another ISP" (even suggesting a few alternate local ones). This went on for months, I believe they got most of the charges reversed, but Bell would do the exact same thing the next month. As far as I know, they're STILL using Bell, and probably still being charged. What can you do.