It might actually be nice, to force Web AdminDUHstrators to not rely upon plugins for everything. It might be nice to actually see web sites using HTML for a change. It might be nice to browse without having to see Flash ads screaming at me to BUY BUY NOW YOU BASTARD!
And you would be able to provide a link to some document about this?
While it was quite difficult to reach a mile a minute pre-railroad, even the most swaybacked nag can reach 15 MPH, so unless the cluelessness of the people involve was legendary (granted, we ARE talking about politicians here) believing 15 MPH fatal would be rather trivial to disprove.
And those who don't understand what is being talked about are doomed to make asses of themselves.
In the early days of trains, it was believed that any attempt to exceed 60 MPH (one mile a minute) would cause such undue stresses upon the human body that it would fall apart, violently.
This was, of course, disproved when trains routinely exceeded 60 MPH.
I was not speaking of some stupid law, but rather a stupid belief in a non-existant physical law.
Sound echos. All sound. A duck's quack is sound. Therefor, a duck's quack will echo. QED.
What magical properties would cause a duck's quack not to reflect off a flat surface, or to magically cancel itself out?
This sounds much like the "If you exceed 60 MPH, you will explode" myth that was commonplace back before trains exceeded 60 MPH - the blitherings of people who don't know what they are talking about - much like someplace else we all know of.
Point me to one physicist who would published any public work saying "A duck's quack won't echo." Just one.
What next - somebody trying to evaluate the efficacy of NaCl in trapping avians when applied to their aft flight surfaces?
The maximum transmissivity is 50% - in other words, at its "light" setting, it STILL blocks half the light coming in.
At its "dark" setting, it transmits 20%.
So what you have is not "clear" and "krylon black", but rather "dark" and "darker". While this is useful, it still would be darker than clear.
And for all the people who will post about "I want this on my car" - no, you don't. Many municipalities have a legal limit of about 90% on car windows - pass less than this and the nice police officer can ticket you. Since 50% < 90%, if the cop wants to give you grief he can.
OK, then point #2 is a non-issue. I'm glad to hear that the Thames is clean - I am a quarter of the world away, so I have no direct experience with it.
First - they make a big deal about how this car can "go over 100MPH on land". SO WHAT! Sitting in my garage I have a car that can go over 130MPH - more if I pull the civilian chip from the engine and put a cop chip in.
Second - is the Thames as polluted as some of the other major rivers near population centers (sorry, centres)? If so, then I damn sure wouldn't want to go hotrodding around on it in an open boat - talk about your shitty experiences!
Third - for the cost of this vehicle, I can stop working for several years, and not have to commute at all. Alternatively, I can work somewhere that isn't as crowded, and not have to deal with the commute. I could also buy a damn fine car, a damn fine boat, a damn fine boat trailer for the boat, a damn fine truck to tow the boat trailer, and probably still have money left over for a damn fine camper for the damn fine truck to stay in.
This vehicle seems to be target to the same crowd as the H2 Hummer is - folks with far more money than common sense.
...so fraught with assurances of anonymity, and so littered with the maladjusted and juvenile, that there are no social repercussions for acting like a jackass.
One of the things that sucks about this sort of thing is how it affects those of us who use Wine to run the program. Case in point: I own HL1 and BlueShift. HL1 installs quite happily under Wine, and runs. BlueShift installs but won't run - in order to run it under Wine you have to use a cracked version. So once again you have a legitimate user being forced to use a cracked game in order to play that which they own.
One of the questions WRT HL2 I have is "Will I be able to play it under Linux?" - either via a native version or under Wine. This news makes me think the answer is a big "NO!". Considering that Valve has committed to a Linux server version, it is hard for me to accept that there will be enough demand for a server that runs under Linux, but not for a client that runs under Linux.
All applications need scripting, scripting needs to be cross-application (one script controlling more than one app) and that scripting needs to be available to the common user if they wish to use it.
This is one of the areas where I feel Windows fell down on the job - while COM allows all applications to make their functionality available to scripting languages, Windows does not provide a default scripting language that is universally available. Yes, Visual Basic will script things, but it is not a default part of a standard Windows install.
DOS had scripting of a sort (batch files), and people used that feature. However, DOS could not script every application, and batch files were missing key elements needed to make them anything more than linear sequences of commands. (Yes, batch files did have IF, GOTO, and so on, but try looping over a set of files, or taking the output of one file and using it on the command line of another file).
Unix has many scripting languages available to it (Perl, Python, TCL, in addition to bash, tch, et. al.), and at least one of them will usually be installed by default on a modern system. They can script command line apps like nobody's business, but unfortunately the more modern GUI apps provide much less scriptablity. CORBA and Kparts might help this if they were more commonly available. This is an area Unix-like environments (including MacOS) need to really improve in.
Granted, J. Random User may not want to get his hands dirty writing scripts, but think about it - if you, the person JRU turns to for help, could KNOW that scripts were available, how much better you could help the poor guy out.
I just answer the door with the lower receiver for my AR-15 in one hand, and a cleaning cloth in the other. Continue to polish the receiver as you talk to them.
The nice thing is there is no way they can claim you threatened them, as you only had a PART of the weapon at the door.
Well, he has done the first part of a reverse engineering process - he has worked out, by inspection of the target, what is being done.
However, he now needs to write the specifications for the hardware, and publish THAT, so that somebody else, somebody who has not seen the binary driver, can write a program based upon the specifications.
Should this not be done, then this code, while interesting to individuals, would be pure poison to anybody who has any intention of distributing this code in a commercial way (e.g. a distro).
And writing a specification for the chip, by inspecting the code, is far more difficult than simply reverse compiling the binary.
No, the phone system runs at 8 kSamples/second, which means you have a maximum theoretical Nyquist bandwidth of 4 kHz. The actual bandwidth of the phone system is less than 3 kHz - it runs from about 300 Hz to 3 kHz.
Now this is something a veteran embedded software engineer can really get excited about!
Most wireless systems are becoming little more than a means of shoving TCP/IP packets over the air, with voice crammed in the cracks. As a result, you need hard realtime processing, but you also need UI, protocol stack, and layer 7 (applications). And while a big box can get away with multiple processors, a phone cannot.
Having a hardware partitioned, hard realtime PLUS Linux system WITH full virtual memory (not uCLinux without virtual memory) is VERY compelling for an embedded developer.
Of course, this trend has been going on for some time - Xilinx with their 2 or 4 PowerPC-core Vertex 2Pro FPGAs, the various Strongarm/DSP, PowerPC/DSP and MIPS/DSP hybrid chips from Motorola et. al., plus things like the K.U. Realtime extensions and Monte Vista kernels.
I definitely will be keeping an eye on this at work....
There are 2 problems with a distributed grid, irrespective of the power systems used.
The first problem is synchronization - the power you feed back into the grid has to be at the same phase as the grid. Get out of phase with the grid, and things start to smoke. So, whatever your generator makes has to be turned into 60 Hz (US) or 50 Hz (Europe) sine waves IN PHASE with the power company - this requires more equipment.
The second problem is cut-off. Consider this scenario - a storm-blown limb brings down the power line for your neighborhood. Charley from the Power Company comes out to fix it. Now, Charley KNOWS that the end on the upstream side is hot, so he is careful about it. Charley figures your side is dead and grabs it. Now Charely is dead.
Your system has to shut down, and stop feeding the grid, if it detects that the grid is down. Still more complexity.
Now, whatever you buy MUST meet those requirements. THEN, your electric company has to provide you with a power meter that can record power flowing in BOTH directions. Then you can hook up your (biomass|solar|Mr. Fusion|Cowboy Neil).
I'm about to make a general statement - as such, while it is true much of the time, it is not ALWAYS true. Pointing to such cases as a means to disprove my statement fails to disprove it.
Wine is a double-edged sword - in the short run it enables people to move away from Windows, but in the long run it keeps them tied to it.
Consider this gedanken experiment - suppose a version of Wine were to be released tomorrow that ran every Windows application (not drivers, just apps). You could go to the store and buy any Windows program and install it under Wine with the same probability of success that you would have under Windows.
On the one hand, many people could and would move away from running Windows. However, the applications vendors would have little motivation to write native apps - why split your development efforts for no measurable gain?
Now, unless your goal is Free Software a la RMS, you've "won" - you've broken the monopoly hold Microsoft has on the OS market.
Microsoft still controls the ABI. Microsoft can still change the ABI at will, breaking Wine. So long as Microsoft controls the ABI, Wine will always be a second-class citizen.
IBM played this game with the Win16 ABI under OS/2. Microsoft changed the ABI to the Win32 ABI and did not license it to IBM.
Wine should only be used as a stop-gap - if Wine becomes the preferred way of doing things then we may as well simply run Windows.
In addition to being poorly engineered, they are also spamvertised rather heavily - I think I got three or four spams proclaiming I'd won a free RoboSweep just today.
Is double-entry bookkeepping necessary for personal finance?
Is computerized bookkeepping necessary for personal finance? After all, you could just use a shoebox and rubberbands - that's all some people use.
However, the nice thing about DE is that you can immediately see if you've screwed up somewhere, as it will show up as an imbalance.
You can directly see how much money flows through your credit cards.
You can directly print out what is tax deductable, and should the Infernal Robbery System ask to see the records, quickly dispatch them with your Report, +5 of Audit Slaying.
Maybe you could write a sort of "Why-To" - explain to people why to use a double-entry system like Gnucash as opposed to single-entry systems out there.
You could give folks some good advice as to what sort of accounts to set up so that when tax time comes around, they can better track what's what.
There are three types of people calling tech support:
Users who are clueless and know they are clueless.
Users who are clueful and know they are clueful.
Users who are clueless but think they are clueful.
Group 1 users aren't too bad - they can usually be handled with the troubleshooting script. They will generally do what you tell them to do (within the limits of their understanding of your instructions). As long as you treat them reasonably well they will treat you reasonably well.
Group 2 users are a bit worse simply because their problems are NOT going to be handled by the script - if they were they wouldn't be calling you. However, once you identify them as being in group 2, you can "kick it up a notch" and use "the big words" to quickly find the problem (assuming the problem can quickly be found). However, the problem arises if they user is in Group 2 and the tech support person your standard Tier-1 meatware text-to-speech unit - the user will want to skip over the script (because he's already run it) and that leaves the meatpuppet floundering.
The group that causes the problems for ALL of us is group 3 - the luser who thinks he is a tech:god. Look at this guy from the tech support person's perspective:
He won't follow the script.
He wants to "be transferred to somebody who knows what the fuck he is talking about"
In other words, to the tech support person Group 3 looks just like Group 2.
If a Tier-1 person passes one of these jokers on to Tier-2, when it comes out that the moron didn't have something plugged in (as step 4 of the script checks), the Tier-1 guy gets dinged for it. Now, if you were the Tier-1 guy, would you be really willing to transfer somebody like this to Tier-2?
Of course, these Group 3's make it harder for us Group 2's to get anything done. So how do we Group 2's work around this?
Establish a relationship with your tech support: If you have a tech support group you need to work with on a regular basis, try to get to know them by name, and be known to them by name. IF you prove to the Tier-2 guys that you really are Group 2, they MAY give you a direct number to them. Example: I have just such a relationship with my ISP - they know that when I call them and say "router 3 is down", they need to fix it, not ask me to reboot Windows.
However, this is not always an option - if the organization is large, or you contact them infrequently you won't be able to do this, so:
Start out like a Group 1 user. Let Mr. Tier-1 drive the conversation. Play dumb. If he says to reboot Windows and you are running Linux, just say "OK, give me a minute" and lie. Follow his script. Remember, Group 2 and Group 3 look alike to him, so the only way to not be taken for a Group 3 blowhard is to look like a Group 1.
Accept the fact that you are going to have to run the rat's maze of Tier-1 support, take a deep breath, and get over it. Eventually, when you hit the end of the script you will be transferred to a Tier-2 support, and can start to "use the big words".
When you make it to Tier-2, don't suddenly act like a Group 2 - remember, that will just make them think you are a Group 3. Instead, slowly ramp your way up:
Them: "Did you reboot your modem?" You: "Yes, I rebooted the modem, and tried to ping the gateway, and got no response." That way, the guy on the other end slowly comes to the realization that you actually know what you are doing, and are NOT simply trying to impress him.
Yes, this is time consuming, even time wasting. But in the long run you are more likely to get your problem fixed this way then by coming across all arrogant.
Final story: I've been on both sides of the phone - I frequently have to do Tier-3 type support on my projects (and sometimes Tier-1, before I cracked the whip over the service manager and told him in no uncertain terms that I would NOT accept his people dropping calls on me cold
Does nobody else here remember the various articles about the way the racing games take liberties with the real physics of cars - how frequently the car's center of gravity is placed several meters below the car, the tires have coefficients of friction that are stickier than duct tape, etc.?
Yes, I want to make my multi-tens of thousands of dollars buying decisions based upon that information....
Slashdot Mirror
It might actually be nice, to force Web AdminDUHstrators to not rely upon plugins for everything. It might be nice to actually see web sites using HTML for a change. It might be nice to browse without having to see Flash ads screaming at me to BUY BUY NOW YOU BASTARD!
And you would be able to provide a link to some document about this?
While it was quite difficult to reach a mile a minute pre-railroad, even the most swaybacked nag can reach 15 MPH, so unless the cluelessness of the people involve was legendary (granted, we ARE talking about politicians here) believing 15 MPH fatal would be rather trivial to disprove.
Hell, even WIND will routinely exceed 15 MPH.
And those who don't understand what is being talked about are doomed to make asses of themselves.
In the early days of trains, it was believed that any attempt to exceed 60 MPH (one mile a minute) would cause such undue stresses upon the human body that it would fall apart, violently.
This was, of course, disproved when trains routinely exceeded 60 MPH.
I was not speaking of some stupid law, but rather a stupid belief in a non-existant physical law.
This sounds like a load to me.
Sound echos. All sound. A duck's quack is sound. Therefor, a duck's quack will echo. QED.
What magical properties would cause a duck's quack not to reflect off a flat surface, or to magically cancel itself out?
This sounds much like the "If you exceed 60 MPH, you will explode" myth that was commonplace back before trains exceeded 60 MPH - the blitherings of people who don't know what they are talking about - much like someplace else we all know of.
Point me to one physicist who would published any public work saying "A duck's quack won't echo." Just one.
What next - somebody trying to evaluate the efficacy of NaCl in trapping avians when applied to their aft flight surfaces?
I didn't see in the article if this also applies to LAN games, or only to games played on public servers.
IF this only applies to public servers, and I can still play HL on my LAN against my friends without this nonsense, then I suppose it is not so bad.
HOWEVER, if this will require me to have Steam installed just to play on my LAN, for-freaking-getaboutit.
The maximum transmissivity is 50% - in other words, at its "light" setting, it STILL blocks half the light coming in.
At its "dark" setting, it transmits 20%.
So what you have is not "clear" and "krylon black", but rather "dark" and "darker". While this is useful, it still would be darker than clear.
And for all the people who will post about "I want this on my car" - no, you don't. Many municipalities have a legal limit of about 90% on car windows - pass less than this and the nice police officer can ticket you. Since 50% < 90%, if the cop wants to give you grief he can.
Good. Now it is officially Thursday - the latest security issues under Windows have been announced.
Yet more for the
Official
So
Happy
It's
Thursday
movement.
OK, then point #2 is a non-issue. I'm glad to hear that the Thames is clean - I am a quarter of the world away, so I have no direct experience with it.
First - they make a big deal about how this car can "go over 100MPH on land". SO WHAT! Sitting in my garage I have a car that can go over 130MPH - more if I pull the civilian chip from the engine and put a cop chip in.
Second - is the Thames as polluted as some of the other major rivers near population centers (sorry, centres)? If so, then I damn sure wouldn't want to go hotrodding around on it in an open boat - talk about your shitty experiences!
Third - for the cost of this vehicle, I can stop working for several years, and not have to commute at all. Alternatively, I can work somewhere that isn't as crowded, and not have to deal with the commute. I could also buy a damn fine car, a damn fine boat, a damn fine boat trailer for the boat, a damn fine truck to tow the boat trailer, and probably still have money left over for a damn fine camper for the damn fine truck to stay in.
This vehicle seems to be target to the same crowd as the H2 Hummer is - folks with far more money than common sense.
Just like Slashdot....
One of the things that sucks about this sort of thing is how it affects those of us who use Wine to run the program. Case in point: I own HL1 and BlueShift. HL1 installs quite happily under Wine, and runs. BlueShift installs but won't run - in order to run it under Wine you have to use a cracked version. So once again you have a legitimate user being forced to use a cracked game in order to play that which they own.
One of the questions WRT HL2 I have is "Will I be able to play it under Linux?" - either via a native version or under Wine. This news makes me think the answer is a big "NO!". Considering that Valve has committed to a Linux server version, it is hard for me to accept that there will be enough demand for a server that runs under Linux, but not for a client that runs under Linux.
All applications need scripting, scripting needs to be cross-application (one script controlling more than one app) and that scripting needs to be available to the common user if they wish to use it.
This is one of the areas where I feel Windows fell down on the job - while COM allows all applications to make their functionality available to scripting languages, Windows does not provide a default scripting language that is universally available. Yes, Visual Basic will script things, but it is not a default part of a standard Windows install.
DOS had scripting of a sort (batch files), and people used that feature. However, DOS could not script every application, and batch files were missing key elements needed to make them anything more than linear sequences of commands. (Yes, batch files did have IF, GOTO, and so on, but try looping over a set of files, or taking the output of one file and using it on the command line of another file).
Unix has many scripting languages available to it (Perl, Python, TCL, in addition to bash, tch, et. al.), and at least one of them will usually be installed by default on a modern system. They can script command line apps like nobody's business, but unfortunately the more modern GUI apps provide much less scriptablity. CORBA and Kparts might help this if they were more commonly available. This is an area Unix-like environments (including MacOS) need to really improve in.
Granted, J. Random User may not want to get his hands dirty writing scripts, but think about it - if you, the person JRU turns to for help, could KNOW that scripts were available, how much better you could help the poor guy out.
I just answer the door with the lower receiver for my AR-15 in one hand, and a cleaning cloth in the other. Continue to polish the receiver as you talk to them.
The nice thing is there is no way they can claim you threatened them, as you only had a PART of the weapon at the door.
Well, he has done the first part of a reverse engineering process - he has worked out, by inspection of the target, what is being done.
However, he now needs to write the specifications for the hardware, and publish THAT, so that somebody else, somebody who has not seen the binary driver, can write a program based upon the specifications.
Should this not be done, then this code, while interesting to individuals, would be pure poison to anybody who has any intention of distributing this code in a commercial way (e.g. a distro).
And writing a specification for the chip, by inspecting the code, is far more difficult than simply reverse compiling the binary.
No, the phone system runs at 8 kSamples/second, which means you have a maximum theoretical Nyquist bandwidth of 4 kHz. The actual bandwidth of the phone system is less than 3 kHz - it runs from about 300 Hz to 3 kHz.
Now this is something a veteran embedded software engineer can really get excited about!
Most wireless systems are becoming little more than a means of shoving TCP/IP packets over the air, with voice crammed in the cracks. As a result, you need hard realtime processing, but you also need UI, protocol stack, and layer 7 (applications). And while a big box can get away with multiple processors, a phone cannot.
Having a hardware partitioned, hard realtime PLUS Linux system WITH full virtual memory (not uCLinux without virtual memory) is VERY compelling for an embedded developer.
Of course, this trend has been going on for some time - Xilinx with their 2 or 4 PowerPC-core Vertex 2Pro FPGAs, the various Strongarm/DSP, PowerPC/DSP and MIPS/DSP hybrid chips from Motorola et. al., plus things like the K.U. Realtime extensions and Monte Vista kernels.
I definitely will be keeping an eye on this at work....
There are 2 problems with a distributed grid, irrespective of the power systems used.
The first problem is synchronization - the power you feed back into the grid has to be at the same phase as the grid. Get out of phase with the grid, and things start to smoke. So, whatever your generator makes has to be turned into 60 Hz (US) or 50 Hz (Europe) sine waves IN PHASE with the power company - this requires more equipment.
The second problem is cut-off. Consider this scenario - a storm-blown limb brings down the power line for your neighborhood. Charley from the Power Company comes out to fix it. Now, Charley KNOWS that the end on the upstream side is hot, so he is careful about it. Charley figures your side is dead and grabs it. Now Charely is dead.
Your system has to shut down, and stop feeding the grid, if it detects that the grid is down. Still more complexity.
Now, whatever you buy MUST meet those requirements. THEN, your electric company has to provide you with a power meter that can record power flowing in BOTH directions. Then you can hook up your (biomass|solar|Mr. Fusion|Cowboy Neil).
I'm about to make a general statement - as such, while it is true much of the time, it is not ALWAYS true. Pointing to such cases as a means to disprove my statement fails to disprove it.
Wine is a double-edged sword - in the short run it enables people to move away from Windows, but in the long run it keeps them tied to it.
Consider this gedanken experiment - suppose a version of Wine were to be released tomorrow that ran every Windows application (not drivers, just apps). You could go to the store and buy any Windows program and install it under Wine with the same probability of success that you would have under Windows.
On the one hand, many people could and would move away from running Windows. However, the applications vendors would have little motivation to write native apps - why split your development efforts for no measurable gain?
Now, unless your goal is Free Software a la RMS, you've "won" - you've broken the monopoly hold Microsoft has on the OS market.
<voice person="Charles Gray">Or have you?</voice>
Microsoft still controls the ABI. Microsoft can still change the ABI at will, breaking Wine. So long as Microsoft controls the ABI, Wine will always be a second-class citizen.
IBM played this game with the Win16 ABI under OS/2. Microsoft changed the ABI to the Win32 ABI and did not license it to IBM.
Wine should only be used as a stop-gap - if Wine becomes the preferred way of doing things then we may as well simply run Windows.
In addition to being poorly engineered, they are also spamvertised rather heavily - I think I got three or four spams proclaiming I'd won a free RoboSweep just today.
Yet another reason to avoid them.
Is double-entry bookkeepping necessary for personal finance?
Is computerized bookkeepping necessary for personal finance? After all, you could just use a shoebox and rubberbands - that's all some people use.
However, the nice thing about DE is that you can immediately see if you've screwed up somewhere, as it will show up as an imbalance.
You can directly see how much money flows through your credit cards.
You can directly print out what is tax deductable, and should the Infernal Robbery System ask to see the records, quickly dispatch them with your Report, +5 of Audit Slaying.
Maybe you could write a sort of "Why-To" - explain to people why to use a double-entry system like Gnucash as opposed to single-entry systems out there.
You could give folks some good advice as to what sort of accounts to set up so that when tax time comes around, they can better track what's what.
s/it's/its/g
It's been too long a day....
The company that purchased the licenses wouldn't happen to have it's corporate headquarters just outside of Seattle, WA, USA, would it?
Group 1 users aren't too bad - they can usually be handled with the troubleshooting script. They will generally do what you tell them to do (within the limits of their understanding of your instructions). As long as you treat them reasonably well they will treat you reasonably well.
Group 2 users are a bit worse simply because their problems are NOT going to be handled by the script - if they were they wouldn't be calling you. However, once you identify them as being in group 2, you can "kick it up a notch" and use "the big words" to quickly find the problem (assuming the problem can quickly be found). However, the problem arises if they user is in Group 2 and the tech support person your standard Tier-1 meatware text-to-speech unit - the user will want to skip over the script (because he's already run it) and that leaves the meatpuppet floundering.
The group that causes the problems for ALL of us is group 3 - the luser who thinks he is a tech:god. Look at this guy from the tech support person's perspective:
In other words, to the tech support person Group 3 looks just like Group 2.
If a Tier-1 person passes one of these jokers on to Tier-2, when it comes out that the moron didn't have something plugged in (as step 4 of the script checks), the Tier-1 guy gets dinged for it. Now, if you were the Tier-1 guy, would you be really willing to transfer somebody like this to Tier-2?
Of course, these Group 3's make it harder for us Group 2's to get anything done. So how do we Group 2's work around this?
If you have a tech support group you need to work with on a regular basis, try to get to know them by name, and be known to them by name. IF you prove to the Tier-2 guys that you really are Group 2, they MAY give you a direct number to them. Example: I have just such a relationship with my ISP - they know that when I call them and say "router 3 is down", they need to fix it, not ask me to reboot Windows.
However, this is not always an option - if the organization is large, or you contact them infrequently you won't be able to do this, so:
Let Mr. Tier-1 drive the conversation. Play dumb. If he says to reboot Windows and you are running Linux, just say "OK, give me a minute" and lie. Follow his script. Remember, Group 2 and Group 3 look alike to him, so the only way to not be taken for a Group 3 blowhard is to look like a Group 1.
Accept the fact that you are going to have to run the rat's maze of Tier-1 support, take a deep breath, and get over it. Eventually, when you hit the end of the script you will be transferred to a Tier-2 support, and can start to "use the big words".
Them: "Did you reboot your modem?"
You: "Yes, I rebooted the modem, and tried to ping the gateway, and got no response."
That way, the guy on the other end slowly comes to the realization that you actually know what you are doing, and are NOT simply trying to impress him.
Yes, this is time consuming, even time wasting. But in the long run you are more likely to get your problem fixed this way then by coming across all arrogant.
Final story: I've been on both sides of the phone - I frequently have to do Tier-3 type support on my projects (and sometimes Tier-1, before I cracked the whip over the service manager and told him in no uncertain terms that I would NOT accept his people dropping calls on me cold
Does nobody else here remember the various articles about the way the racing games take liberties with the real physics of cars - how frequently the car's center of gravity is placed several meters below the car, the tires have coefficients of friction that are stickier than duct tape, etc.?
Yes, I want to make my multi-tens of thousands of dollars buying decisions based upon that information....