When a domestic appliance goes wrong, you can ring a repair man. When your car breaks down you can call the garage. But when your computer system goes wrong, who do you call?
...there's no computer equivalent of a qualified service engineer who you can get to come around and fix things.
A quick look in the yellow pages under Computers, Repair will show a list of what are supposed to be qualified computer repair shops in town.
If you are smart enough to find the Appliances, Repair section, why can't you find the computer repair? I know for a fact that there's a computer repair shop in my town that can fix most anything that can go wrong with your PC. I was a tech there for about 5 years.
Now I run into the problem that when they have a problem with their PC, they call their ISP, because they have FREE tech support (for help with the internet connection only, but that doesn't stop them) I know this, because I now work for my local ISP and helpdesk.
But the fact still remains, this guy is an idiot when he makes this claim of no one to repair your PC.
I work for my ISP as helpdesk/tech support. I get calls all the time, 'Yeah, I got this pop-up from Norton says that Internet Explorer is trying to access the internet, what should I do?'
If these PCs became zombies, than the users that operate them would have no clue how to operate a software firewall. Instead, they need AV software, and some computer training, and possibly a hardware firewall.
Easiest to implement would be a DSL/Cable modem and firewall combo that the ISP setup and configures. They can leave the documentation for the end user to configure ports and such if they can figure it out on their own, otherwise, it's full on blocking all incoming ports.
I'm all for the computer equivilent of a drivers license before they are allowed to hook up their PC to the internet.
The way it needs to be solved definitively, is using quick trial, with immediate execution by firing squad.
This crap of stringing out trials over years, and then getting off with probation, and a promise to try and pay back those that lost money needs to stop.
Virus writers should not end up with high paying programming jobs just becuase they've 'proven' themselves. Phishing rings shouldnt' be allowed to turn into 'security advisors'.
Speedy executions will send out the message that we're not fscking around anymore. These scams ARE going to severly ruin the internet, and most likely within our lifetime.
As far as I know, it's OC-3 from the routers to the CEC boxes. From there, the customers copper line from the telco plugs into a port on a card, and then their line to their house plugs into another port with POTS, and ADSL on it.
So bandwidth is only limited by how far from the CEC they are. There's very few places in the county that can't run 2 STB.
I remember when they were first installing them, they were windows based. Then after awhile, they moved to linux.
We started with the Fujitsu boxes. Now they have a slim blue box (can't remember the brand) and they are testing a tiny black one that's no bigger than most 5 port hubs.
I work for the local Telco/ISP, and we rolled this out over 3 years ago.
Runing a Myrio system. Hardware is MainStreets or something like that.
It's ADSL to the house with a modem. From there, the customer can have up to 2 STB, and unlimited PCs with 3M down, 128k up bandwidth for internet.
Each STB requires 3M, so if they have low quality lines, they can only have one box.
The STB is a linux based PC booting from the NIC, with software loaded on a smart card type drive.
We even have a PPV video on demand system. You can choose the movie you want, and it's streamed from our servers to you. You can stop it, rewind, fast forward, etc. for up to 24 hours. Each movie is streamed out individually to each customer.
The people that get hit will learn, and never get hit again.
Unfortunately, for everyone that learns, there's 2 more suckers born that fall for it.
Phishing scams, and scams in general have been around as long as greed. And they will continue to be around until capitalism, and materialism are wiped out.
As far as paying the bills, I do. Utility bills and such at least. The one that's bothering me is calling about a 10 year old sprint bill that I'd swear was paid 10 years ago. It's now up to $1,200 after all their fees. Last I talked to them, I was going to try and pay them as soon as possible.
Also have some medical bills from being in the emergency room from an asthma attack last winter, and other problems. Who can afford those?
Whichout regulation, what kind of defense does The Quality Paperback Club in Mechanicsburg, PA have when enough people report them for harrasement?
They seem to be calling my house 3-4 times a day every single day, sometimes leaving a messege, other times not. They start their prerecorded messege before my machine is even done with it's announcement. It's a machine calling, and leaving a messege.
You may be asking why a paperback book club would be making automated calls to me, well, they're not! It's a bill collector using a calling service from out of the county (accent sounds like maybe India) Just yesterday, the collection agency called me from their own offices, left a message, then withing 5 seconds their calling service called.
They are using VOIP service into the US to make calls without having to pay long distance charges, and faking their number on caller ID
I called once on this practise, and was told that as far the the FCC is concerned, there's nothing they can do. I have to put up with the calls, and the poor owner of the book club has to fight with complaints from uninformed targets of this harrasement.
I feel that if it's a service, and device used to make calls to a standard telephone system, then they should be under the same rules and regulations as anyone else that uses the telephone service.
They've found a loophole, and are abusing it to their full advantage. How long do we have to put up with this?
I didn't see anything specific, but I think it's sold as a case only. No drive. So you're looking at the 6000yen, plug the cost of whatever size drive you want.
The reason I say this, is that it says it will hold up to an 80 gig drive.
There needs to be some sort of karma bounus formula added to slashdot code.
For every article, whoever is the first to post any of the standard replies (I for one welcome... overlords, could you imagine a beowulf cluster, in Solviet Russia, etc, etc,) get's a bonus, but it's based on how long of a time has elapsed since the article appears, and they repy.
I can see it now, slashdotters sitting at the keyboard just itching to reply, but waiting as long as they can, wondering if someone else will do it first.
Oh, and a special bonus for combining two or more.
I am THE helpdesk for the larger ISP in my town (of only 3)
I get calls like this daily:
lUser: "Your internet keeps crashing! I want it fixed now!"
Me: "Excuse me?? What exactly do you mean crashing?"
l: "When I click on internet, I get 'internet has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down' messege, and then it closes. Your internet keeps crashing!"
Or something like "I can't connect to the internet, it keeps saying page cannot be displayed"
"Are you connecting to the internet before opening the browser"
"That's what I'm doing, I try to connect, and all I get is page can not be displayed."
"Ok try start -> connection to -> My ISP"
That always leads to the following, or some just calling and compain about the following:
"I clicked on that, and then it went away, the internet won't open up"
"Ok, now that you are connect to the internet, what do you want to do??"
..... long pause... "Well, I want it to open up"
on and on about how the internet is now connected, do what ever you want to do on the internet now. Then I I finaally just say "Click on the big blue E on the destop, that will open the internet"
"Ohhhhh, yeah, there it is, thanks."
Trust me, 90% of my customers belive that the internet is the E on their desktop, and that's it. There is nothing else, you can't do anything if you can't do it in that program.
I even got one that was upset becuase when he turned on his computer, he actually HAD to click on the blue E to open the internet. He was expecting his PC to just turn on the internet when it came on, and he could do whatever. After all, that's what the PC is for, browsing teh intarweb.
Some cannot be helped, it's best to just make money off them cleaning their systems, and send them back into the cess pool.
From experience, I know that this doesn't always work.
A hospital collection company had reported me owing them $6000. I called the collection agency, and talked with a lady there. Gave her my SSN and the reference number listed on my credit report. She says that under that account, I'm not listed anywhere, so it's obviously a mistake. She couldn't give me anymore information about it (privacy of the person who really owes the money, etc.)
I asked her to have them take it off my credit report. She told me that they can't. In order to clear it up, I have to contact the credit bureau and tell them.
I called the credit bureau, they said they can't remove anything without the reporting company doing it. Which is the way it should be, but the collection agency didn't want to do anything about it.
I eneded up following the instructions on the website for the bureau to file a dispute. EXACTLY 30 days later, it was gone. (They have 30 days to respond back that it is, or isn't your bill)
As it turns out, it was my moms hospital stay. The bill was in dispute between the hospital, and the insurance company. I asked the collection agency why it ended up on my credit report, and was told that they didn't give the bureau my SSN, but instead, they (Experian) looked up my mom, and since I have the same name as my dad, would have assumed the the totally different SSNs for 2 different people were really the same person, and therefore was married to my mom. The credit bureau said that this was total BS, they only list something as reported from a collection agency under the SSN they give. So they would have had to submit a listing for my specific SSN, as owing this money.
So basically, both parties involved blamed the other, and neither would own up to anything, including fixing it.
It's the same reason I don't feel for anyone in the expensive beach houses in Florida. You have a thin stip of land jutting out into an ocean constantly active with hurricanes. Just like the rich people in California building stilt houses on the side of mountians in earthquake zones.
People, this is why YOUR insurance premiums are so high! Rich people feel the need to build expensive houses in very unstable locations.
Used to be the same here. I work for the local telco which is also an ISP. I am the helpdesk, and I did it from home.
My DSL was paid for, plus, I had use of 3 static IPs, and they didn't say a word about what I was doing with it. I paid for that privalege by being on call 24 hours within reason. (If anything went down, I would just turn on the phone and field calls untill it was fixed)
Now, I was moved into an office, and will be losing my free DSL. Also brought in the phone, and extender. But now they pay if something goes down durring the weekend, or after hours. I can no longer take calls at home, and our out sourced 24/7 helpdesk is expensive.
My co-worker used to have free DSL at home, even tho he was an office worker. Since all the shakedown in spending this last month, he was cut off also. PHB called him and said he's have to start paying since he was a full time employee, and didn't work from home. Boss told him to report to the office if he needed to do anything, and log the overtime. Within one week, the very same PHB called him afterhours, and asked him to look into something from home for him. If it wasn't for the fact that this particular boss has had it in for him, he was about to say no. But instead, he just charged them 2 hours over time for 15 minutes of work.
I mean come on, we work for the ISP, and they can't even cut us some slack with free DSL????
Guess that's one of the things we live with in our particular situation being a county owned telco, and ISP. The county commisioners, and therefore, the public are our ultimate bosses. And it's their tax money that pays for our free internet. But you can bet that the county commissioners get free highspeed DSL (faster than the standard public issue) as well as loaded digital TV over ADSL.
I agree totally, hourly workers that don't get paid for such services, should refuse to do anything after hours from home.
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When a domestic appliance goes wrong, you can ring a repair man. When your car breaks down you can call the garage. But when your computer system goes wrong, who do you call?
...there's no computer equivalent of a qualified service engineer who you can get to come around and fix things.
A quick look in the yellow pages under Computers, Repair will show a list of what are supposed to be qualified computer repair shops in town.
If you are smart enough to find the Appliances, Repair section, why can't you find the computer repair? I know for a fact that there's a computer repair shop in my town that can fix most anything that can go wrong with your PC. I was a tech there for about 5 years.
Now I run into the problem that when they have a problem with their PC, they call their ISP, because they have FREE tech support (for help with the internet connection only, but that doesn't stop them) I know this, because I now work for my local ISP and helpdesk.
But the fact still remains, this guy is an idiot when he makes this claim of no one to repair your PC.
Believe me, this is not the answer.
I work for my ISP as helpdesk/tech support. I get calls all the time, 'Yeah, I got this pop-up from Norton says that Internet Explorer is trying to access the internet, what should I do?'
If these PCs became zombies, than the users that operate them would have no clue how to operate a software firewall. Instead, they need AV software, and some computer training, and possibly a hardware firewall.
Easiest to implement would be a DSL/Cable modem and firewall combo that the ISP setup and configures. They can leave the documentation for the end user to configure ports and such if they can figure it out on their own, otherwise, it's full on blocking all incoming ports.
I'm all for the computer equivilent of a drivers license before they are allowed to hook up their PC to the internet.
The way it needs to be solved definitively, is using quick trial, with immediate execution by firing squad.
This crap of stringing out trials over years, and then getting off with probation, and a promise to try and pay back those that lost money needs to stop.
Virus writers should not end up with high paying programming jobs just becuase they've 'proven' themselves. Phishing rings shouldnt' be allowed to turn into 'security advisors'.
Speedy executions will send out the message that we're not fscking around anymore. These scams ARE going to severly ruin the internet, and most likely within our lifetime.
FTTH is rolling out this year.
As far as I know, it's OC-3 from the routers to the CEC boxes. From there, the customers copper line from the telco plugs into a port on a card, and then their line to their house plugs into another port with POTS, and ADSL on it.
So bandwidth is only limited by how far from the CEC they are. There's very few places in the county that can't run 2 STB.
Of course, we are fairly small.
I remember when they were first installing them, they were windows based. Then after awhile, they moved to linux.
We started with the Fujitsu boxes. Now they have a slim blue box (can't remember the brand) and they are testing a tiny black one that's no bigger than most 5 port hubs.
I work for the local Telco/ISP, and we rolled this out over 3 years ago.
Runing a Myrio system. Hardware is MainStreets or something like that.
It's ADSL to the house with a modem. From there, the customer can have up to 2 STB, and unlimited PCs with 3M down, 128k up bandwidth for internet.
Each STB requires 3M, so if they have low quality lines, they can only have one box.
The STB is a linux based PC booting from the NIC, with software loaded on a smart card type drive.
We even have a PPV video on demand system. You can choose the movie you want, and it's streamed from our servers to you. You can stop it, rewind, fast forward, etc. for up to 24 hours. Each movie is streamed out individually to each customer.
The people that get hit will learn, and never get hit again.
Unfortunately, for everyone that learns, there's 2 more suckers born that fall for it.
Phishing scams, and scams in general have been around as long as greed. And they will continue to be around until capitalism, and materialism are wiped out.
Why is this site still up?
Does no one in authority care to do anything about it?
It's no wonder phishing scams are so popular, and make so much money. No one does anything to stop them.
I don't have VOIP, they are calling my land line.
As far as paying the bills, I do. Utility bills and such at least. The one that's bothering me is calling about a 10 year old sprint bill that I'd swear was paid 10 years ago. It's now up to $1,200 after all their fees. Last I talked to them, I was going to try and pay them as soon as possible.
Also have some medical bills from being in the emergency room from an asthma attack last winter, and other problems. Who can afford those?
Whichout regulation, what kind of defense does The Quality Paperback Club in Mechanicsburg, PA have when enough people report them for harrasement?
They seem to be calling my house 3-4 times a day every single day, sometimes leaving a messege, other times not. They start their prerecorded messege before my machine is even done with it's announcement. It's a machine calling, and leaving a messege.
You may be asking why a paperback book club would be making automated calls to me, well, they're not! It's a bill collector using a calling service from out of the county (accent sounds like maybe India) Just yesterday, the collection agency called me from their own offices, left a message, then withing 5 seconds their calling service called.
They are using VOIP service into the US to make calls without having to pay long distance charges, and faking their number on caller ID
I called once on this practise, and was told that as far the the FCC is concerned, there's nothing they can do. I have to put up with the calls, and the poor owner of the book club has to fight with complaints from uninformed targets of this harrasement.
I feel that if it's a service, and device used to make calls to a standard telephone system, then they should be under the same rules and regulations as anyone else that uses the telephone service.
They've found a loophole, and are abusing it to their full advantage. How long do we have to put up with this?
I didn't see anything specific, but I think it's sold as a case only. No drive. So you're looking at the 6000yen, plug the cost of whatever size drive you want.
The reason I say this, is that it says it will hold up to an 80 gig drive.
yeah, off topic, but....
... overlords, could you imagine a beowulf cluster, in Solviet Russia, etc, etc,) get's a bonus, but it's based on how long of a time has elapsed since the article appears, and they repy.
There needs to be some sort of karma bounus formula added to slashdot code.
For every article, whoever is the first to post any of the standard replies (I for one welcome
I can see it now, slashdotters sitting at the keyboard just itching to reply, but waiting as long as they can, wondering if someone else will do it first.
Oh, and a special bonus for combining two or more.
I see it everyday.
..... long pause... "Well, I want it to open up"
I am THE helpdesk for the larger ISP in my town (of only 3)
I get calls like this daily:
lUser: "Your internet keeps crashing! I want it fixed now!"
Me: "Excuse me?? What exactly do you mean crashing?"
l: "When I click on internet, I get 'internet has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down' messege, and then it closes. Your internet keeps crashing!"
Or something like "I can't connect to the internet, it keeps saying page cannot be displayed"
"Are you connecting to the internet before opening the browser"
"That's what I'm doing, I try to connect, and all I get is page can not be displayed."
"Ok try start -> connection to -> My ISP"
That always leads to the following, or some just calling and compain about the following:
"I clicked on that, and then it went away, the internet won't open up"
"Ok, now that you are connect to the internet, what do you want to do??"
on and on about how the internet is now connected, do what ever you want to do on the internet now. Then I I finaally just say "Click on the big blue E on the destop, that will open the internet"
"Ohhhhh, yeah, there it is, thanks."
Trust me, 90% of my customers belive that the internet is the E on their desktop, and that's it. There is nothing else, you can't do anything if you can't do it in that program.
I even got one that was upset becuase when he turned on his computer, he actually HAD to click on the blue E to open the internet. He was expecting his PC to just turn on the internet when it came on, and he could do whatever. After all, that's what the PC is for, browsing teh intarweb.
Some cannot be helped, it's best to just make money off them cleaning their systems, and send them back into the cess pool.
From experience, I know that this doesn't always work.
A hospital collection company had reported me owing them $6000. I called the collection agency, and talked with a lady there. Gave her my SSN and the reference number listed on my credit report. She says that under that account, I'm not listed anywhere, so it's obviously a mistake. She couldn't give me anymore information about it (privacy of the person who really owes the money, etc.)
I asked her to have them take it off my credit report. She told me that they can't. In order to clear it up, I have to contact the credit bureau and tell them.
I called the credit bureau, they said they can't remove anything without the reporting company doing it. Which is the way it should be, but the collection agency didn't want to do anything about it.
I eneded up following the instructions on the website for the bureau to file a dispute. EXACTLY 30 days later, it was gone. (They have 30 days to respond back that it is, or isn't your bill)
As it turns out, it was my moms hospital stay. The bill was in dispute between the hospital, and the insurance company. I asked the collection agency why it ended up on my credit report, and was told that they didn't give the bureau my SSN, but instead, they (Experian) looked up my mom, and since I have the same name as my dad, would have assumed the the totally different SSNs for 2 different people were really the same person, and therefore was married to my mom. The credit bureau said that this was total BS, they only list something as reported from a collection agency under the SSN they give. So they would have had to submit a listing for my specific SSN, as owing this money.
So basically, both parties involved blamed the other, and neither would own up to anything, including fixing it.
Looking at the pictures of everything, I don't they have any unused post-it notes anymore.
And we want to tell these people why???
It's the same reason I don't feel for anyone in the expensive beach houses in Florida. You have a thin stip of land jutting out into an ocean constantly active with hurricanes. Just like the rich people in California building stilt houses on the side of mountians in earthquake zones.
People, this is why YOUR insurance premiums are so high! Rich people feel the need to build expensive houses in very unstable locations.
Used to be the same here. I work for the local telco which is also an ISP. I am the helpdesk, and I did it from home.
My DSL was paid for, plus, I had use of 3 static IPs, and they didn't say a word about what I was doing with it. I paid for that privalege by being on call 24 hours within reason. (If anything went down, I would just turn on the phone and field calls untill it was fixed)
Now, I was moved into an office, and will be losing my free DSL. Also brought in the phone, and extender. But now they pay if something goes down durring the weekend, or after hours. I can no longer take calls at home, and our out sourced 24/7 helpdesk is expensive.
My co-worker used to have free DSL at home, even tho he was an office worker. Since all the shakedown in spending this last month, he was cut off also. PHB called him and said he's have to start paying since he was a full time employee, and didn't work from home. Boss told him to report to the office if he needed to do anything, and log the overtime. Within one week, the very same PHB called him afterhours, and asked him to look into something from home for him. If it wasn't for the fact that this particular boss has had it in for him, he was about to say no. But instead, he just charged them 2 hours over time for 15 minutes of work.
I mean come on, we work for the ISP, and they can't even cut us some slack with free DSL????
Guess that's one of the things we live with in our particular situation being a county owned telco, and ISP. The county commisioners, and therefore, the public are our ultimate bosses. And it's their tax money that pays for our free internet. But you can bet that the county commissioners get free highspeed DSL (faster than the standard public issue) as well as loaded digital TV over ADSL.
I agree totally, hourly workers that don't get paid for such services, should refuse to do anything after hours from home.