Intel is just trying to make themselves appear the only way to work with media, you know...marketing. Basically they're riding on coattails here. Viiv isn't ANY different than an AMD system similarly equipt. It's only "certified" to be able to do what they say it will. AMD could do the same thing, but they don't try forcing vendors to buy into their CRAP.
Oh, and no, I don't like Intel. I've been lied to enough by that company over the years.
There's actually several solutions. The easiest is to find a different ISP that won't do that. You know, like the independants that have better service, better support, and usually cost the same if not close enough to the same to not matter. Independants usually also expect that "hey, the customer is paying me for their connectivity I shouldn't charge someone else for that same product". Besides, if you think about it, that's like selling a ferrari to someone but putting a governor on it that won't let it go faster than 35mph. Then selling the codes to the oil companies to turn off the governor first time they fill up.
The other option, start writing letters to congress. It won't be long now and the republican control will be lost in the house. I'm pretty much middle of the road with conservative leanings, but I'm absolutely HATING what's happening in this country with Bush in office and that's due, in part, to republican control of the house. This is an election year....this is the time they take complaints from constituants seriously.
Actually, I think Phantomware would be better. I think Phantomware fits even better than vaporware. I mean it is, after all, the definition of vaporware, and.... well, phantom sounds better than vapor. Partly because we can prove the existance of vapor, but not of a phantom heh
Yup, My parents saw the future coming so gave me one for christmas when I was 8:) There were games for it tho. Not very many as I recall, but they did buy one that was like pacman. Can't remember the specific name of it now though. It was cartridge based.
Either rate, you couldn't have a v20 or a c64 without learning atleast to program a little bit...well, you could, just not use it very much.
For me, it's not even a fact of superior product or better corperate activity. It's about Sony questionable business tactics. Regardless of the fact that it's 2 different divisions. The guys up top knew what was going on atleast to some degree and decided to go forward with it anyway.
Sony has a history of developing "better" products but proprietary products that won't work with standards. People just want to use what they've got....period. Like some comments have stated "I just spent $1000 on the complete Star Trek collection....." People are going to want to play all of their media. They aren't going to care about the technicalities of it.
Growing up we had both Beta and VHS. We bought the beta practically as soon as it came out. But tapes were so expensive (even rentals) that we hardly ever used it. VHS came out and changed that. All we wanted was inexpensive home entertainment. It was cheaper to go out and get a VHS player after the fact and save $4 on each tape rental than to pay more for harder to find beta formats. Of course, that decision was taken from us completely eventually. I truly believe the same will happen here. Sony's format is not going to go over well with the public. The public doesn't even like paying more for better DSL. They would rather spend 3 hours a month on the phone with SBC/AT&T, complain about it all the time, and save that $1-4 rather than to be able to forget about it and just use it.
Shouldn't we be able to trust them now? Oh wait, since it took them 2 weeks to get the definitions out for a keylogging virus...I guess the answer to that is no.
Personally, after seeing Symantec corp take 2 weeks to release the definitions for a keylogger a customers network had...All symantec products I have out there are going to go away.
My choices are getting narrowed down quickly. McAfee lost out a few years back with the Nimda virus and failing to return phone calls....at all, not just late by a few hours or even a few days, a week later I heard from them. By that time I had already moved on since more than half my customer base was infected the DAY of the outbreak, not a week later.
But then, both of those 2 are really good at annoying the ever loving crap out of a user, which inturn causes the user to ignore all those little popups. I've even been guilty of it because I see them like 80 times a day. JUST DO YOUR JOB! You don't have to tell us what a wonderful job you are doing, just tell us when you need us to do something.
Ok, first off, every AOL customer I talk to, basically we take away. For several reasons.
1) things work without all the advertising from US (can't control other sites, but WE aren't hammering them.
2) We're cheaper
3) We have better spam and virus filters
4) We actually CARE about what our customers want
5) We don't provide worthless tools and pass them off as keeping you safe (this counts against "others" also)
Perfect example of the last one. I have a system on my bench right now. It was purchased 4 months ago with "AOL protection already installed and setup. Today I found 10 viruses, and about 349 spy/adware items on the system (per adaware scan). Due to the huge amount of CRAP on the system, I may be forced to reload it due to the huge amount of damage done to the system. It could probably be cleaned up, but laborwise....cheaper to backup and reload.
This isn't the first time either. My shop averages about 3 a week that come in for malware problems that have AOL, SBC, Earthlink, or "others" installed that simply aren't doing their jobs. These are ISP related tools that aren't working. I'm not counting the stuff like spybot or whatever that is purchased that isn't doing it's job either.
Little things like THIS is only going to tick AOL users off more when they can't get their mailing lists anymore. I have about 200 customers running mailing lists and they are all small and free mailing lists. One of them is a quilting list for pete's sake with like 50 people on it, and 35 of them are on AOL. I expect to see quite a few new customers when AOL pulls this....I'm counting the days.
Switch! There's plenty of independant ISPs out there that have NO intention of charging for crap like that. The telcos can't control bandwidth when the bandwidth isn't purchased from them. So why don't we just buy bandwidth from non ILECs....in otherwords, buy from OTHER places. SCR can service almost all of CA and we will never pull this kind of crap. Nor will our upstream providers. The customer pays us for the bandwidth, the sites they go to pay for THEIR bandwidth. I don't see the problem. I'm making my money and I'm not a greedy @#$%@#$%.
There are over 5000 Independant ISPs in this nation, pick one and switch. Most charge the same as the ILECs and they don't even route their support overseas if you need help. Plus, they'll actually be happy to help instead of feel like support is a burden they shouldn't have to bare.
If more people did this, the more honest companies out there would quickly start seizing control and the ILECs would lose even more power because the independants don't have the $ to do anything but bend over and take it. Help us help you by using our services so we can afford to invest in R&D and/or new tech to avoid this kind of crap in the future.
Other than starting the Linux Kernel and giving us an option to free us from the yoke that is Gates and Jobs? Gates and Jobs donate and do all the things they do for tax purposes, not out of the goodness of their hearts. Linus has created a FREE kernel and maintained it for over a decade expecting nothing in return. It asked how our heroes were, I don't consider Jobs or Gates my heroes, or even anti-heroes. All Gates does is take money away from me and my clients with little in return other than aggrevation. All Jobs does is keep to his own little world instead of taking a real chance like allowing OS X to run on Non-apple Intel hardware.
Macromedia Dreamweaver & Macromedia Flash are a part of Macromedia Studio. Seems to me to be an artifically inflated list or they don't really know WTF Macromedia Studio is. Atleast there's an "Other" option.
It also kind of seems like Novell's digging for people to market to since you're REQUIRED to enter your name and email address. That's what's keeping me from filling out the survey. I've already spoken with their salesmen and "I don't want to waste my time if you're only going to buy 2 or 3 licenses a month...." was repeated to me on several occasions.
If you were hired on as a Network Administrator of a Microsoft network, that's one thing. If you hired on as support or something like that, they can't honestly expect you to handle that job without training. You may even want to bring that to their attention. Something like "I don't mind doing it, but I'm going to need the training or it could get all kinds of screwed up"
The other option is say, "Look, I don't have the time to teach myself all this stuff and I don't know it. Why not hire a consultant that knows what they're doing to handle the heavy work?" My company has retainers and whatnot where we can be hired on in several levels. Basically you buy the hours you need for a year and you can use them however you see fit. Regular appointments can be scheduled or call as needed and it's really not that expensive when you're talking about network health. Usually what we end up doing is coming in to fix a major snaffu and make sure things are good to go. We then maintain everything for awhile while giving some basic training to one person in the company on how to handle day to day tasks and reduce the hours we come in for awhile to see how things go. Not really meaning to plug my company, but we can do alot of work remotely as well. I'm sure others can so there's always an option available before things get outta hand.
Either rate, if you're not willing and/or able to handle it, you're not doing your employer or yourself any favors because it could be a bad spot on your record if you were let go or left under not-so-good terms. The key point is flat out tell them your concerns. If they don't go with them and still want only you to handle the work, then they have noone to blame if your lack of knowledge screws something up.
Decent computer? Hmm, I suppose using MSI or Asus motherboards with Intel or nVidia Chipsets with AMD and Intel CPUs with nVidia Graphics. You don't get more "common" than that. The only off the wall thing I use is Turtle Beach sound cards and those used to be common enough and do have good support for just about anything. Difference is, I don't go updating drivers the day something new comes out. I don't feel that should be necessary. Any problems that I've had in the past couple of years has been caused by copy protection. Previous to that it was rushed to market products.
But yeah, the copy protection in EVERYTHING literally just punishes the person who legally purchased a product and doesn't do anything to stop piracy. Last problems I had was with Starforce that was installed by Silent Hunter III (which is the one I returned due to the protection). It literally caused my system to lock up consistantly and after installation of SF, the system would no longer shut down or reboot properly. Forcing me to hold the power button to shut it off or hit the reset button when I was would a restart.
Point still remains that games aren't worth what they are asking at present. They have some serious nerve to say that we should be paying more for a product that many are already feeling is over valued. Look at Valve's new crap now. I would pay $30 for HL2 and CS:S, that's all I would want, MAYBE DoD. But to get that I would have to spend $60+ and gain a whole crapload of stuff I DON'T want. When you get down to it, CS:S and DoD are literally nothing more than MODs for the game anyway. I won't go into the history here as I'm sure many of you are already aware of it.
First thing's first. Second hand market does so well because, well, $60 for a game that you beat in 2 days.....I can understand that. I pay less than that for my television service and it lasts and entire month. I sat down with American McGee's Alice after paying $55 for it at a local store on a Friday evening. Saturday night I had it beaten already. I bought Diablo 2 the day it came out for $65. I came home, spent 4 hours working on it to make it even work on a standard system. When I say standard it was an asus board, intel chip, nvidia video. NOTHING worked beyond the ingame vids. After that 4 hours of mucking around with it, I got it to run. I then played it an astounding 2 hours. Since then it has sat on my shelf. So not only did it waste $200 worth of my time ($50/hr instore labor, not gonna use onsite labor even thought I should) and I'm out the money for the game, but I didn't even get as much play time as I did repair time with it because the game sucked so badly. Tribes 2, again, the day it came out. Nothing but system lockups and other anomolies. The only game producer I know of that actually consistantly puts out games that don't crash constantly (not to say they don't have issues, but atleast they do RUN out of the box) is Id Software.
Let's not forget about companies like Valve. I bought HL way back when and though I wasn't happy with it's netcode the single player was worth playing....for awhile. Until you go to the alien planet, but that's another story. So I start playing CS online with it and get used to the game play. Valve all of a sudden releases their new netcode. I have to say "thanks for trying to fix your mistakes" but they took it too far. The new netcode was horrible and nothing ticks someone off more than getting killed by someone when you're halfway across the map from where they shot. Basically, their new updates made THAT game worthless to me and has since sat on a shelf.
Everything said up until now has just been examples. I could fill an entire office full of paper with the various issues I've had over the year.
I used to spend anywhere from $2-5k on games a year. Not hardware, just the game titles themselves. However over the years, the games take longer to be released (understandable since there's more to do....in some ways), they are lower quality, and quite frankly rushed to market. Imagine if Ford put a vehicle out there with bad tires on it.....oh wait..... Point being, products are being put out before they are ready. This frustrates and angers the person who paid for the product.
Why on EARTH should we pay $50-80 for a game that we'll have to spend days, weeks, or even months helping fix flaws in the game before we can even use it for what we intended...stress/frustration relief. That's like selling someone a car that backfires any time you give it gas, the windows will only roll halfway down, and every so often it evacuates the cooling system on it's own. "Oh, well, you can bring it into the shop and we'll fix that for you. We found that problem". Of course that problem causes another problem so you have to wait to get that one fixed. Or better still, you buy a car that won't move. The engine will run, all electronics work, but it just sits there in your driveway. 3 months later, the automanufacturer delivers the transmission to your house but you have to install it yourself.
Don't get me wrong, I understand software flaws and they can happen. But if the flaws are there from the day it was published as ready...that's just wrong. And going back to one of my earlier statements, I once spent $2-5k/yr on games. Last year I spent a whole $150 buying games. Why? Because I refuse to pay for something that is suppose to be for entertainment but I have to work (unpaid mind you) to be able to properly use it.
If the game producing industry doesn't get their heads out of their ***** then they're going to soon find themselves in the same boat as the Recording and Movie industry. People don't mind paying top dol
Couple of things I thought should be said here. First off, the people that are asking those questions over and over again, won't read this book. They don't WANT to know. When a person doesn't want to know something the blinders come on and trying to take them off....well, you might as well back a badger into a corner and try to take it's pelt with a pair of tweesers.
However, if that didn't dissuade you from trying, the things I see that people need to understand MORE than anything else is basic terminology. The whole computer is not called a Modem, CPU, CD-ROM, or disk drive. If people can use proper terminology (or atleast close enough that the tech can figure it out) then support calls would be cut in half.
To help you explain things to a child, we compare things to something they already understand. In the case of computers (and the fact that I went to school for automechanics) I find computers can relate very well to cars in the average user's mind. Ie, the CPU is the engine, the keyboard and mouse are the pedals, steering wheel, and shifter and the monitor is the windshield. I'm sticking with the basic aspects for a reason. You may even want to make note that "you know what these are in a car, basic knowledge similar to that will make your computing world so much easier and rewarding."
As the years have gone on with thousands of different machines out there from just one vendor alone, it's difficult for any one vendor to stock everything. On my ISP side, I keep spare parts of any mission critical components I have in place. IE RAID controllers, RAM, CPUs, motherboards, and NICs (not so much a problem these days with dual NICs on most server boards. But that's also my own preference since we custom build here and my equipment is required for 24/7 operation. To me it doesn't matter if I don't use the part before I decom the server, I had it just incase. It's a peice of mind thing even if it was a $1000 card.
As a Whitebox manufacturer, if someone is building a server for a specific need that is 24/7 operation, I might even recommend to them to consider buying redundant/spare parts. Problem is I might get taken up on that option 1 time out of 100. People don't want to spend money when they don't have to. They've relied on the computer manufacturer building a quality component. But let's face it, unless it's custom built (by someone who cares and actually QAs each machine) then it's assembly line produced and thus has lower QA on it.
Part of the reason for this, I believe, is places like Dell saying "4 hour time to delivery" as an option when you buy equipment from them. They assume that EVERYONE does that. Point of fact, more often than not Dell can't/won't do it either.
The other part is....god forbid the all mighty dollar. "Why should we spend $1500 to have spare parts lying around that we may or may not need?" "We have 100 servers, that would be $150k in parts that will probably never be used. That's just too much, forget spare parts." That's where bighats with small brains should leave it to the IT dept. to deal with. 100 servers...what's really the odds of all 100 of them going down at once AND it being the same components? I mean really. Having 2-5 spares of each component is all that's needed. If you're not using close to or the same arch for each box, that's another issue and things like this should have been considered.
Either rate, if there are mission critical services running, not keeping parts available is playing russian roulette. We spend hundreds of thousands a month on redundant 'net lines, we backup our data daily, we even keep it off-site. But god forbid keeping spare parts available.
I don't know how many of you may have watched the History channel show last night on the little ice age, but things like that just show us we don't know jack about the weather, how it's affected, and how it affects us. A massive volcano errupted in the early 1800s that cause "The year without a Summer" in 1816. So much ash, sulfer, and sulfuric acid in the air the sun's rays simply couldn't get to the earth. People freezing to death in August, snow on the ground in July, freshly shorn sheep froze to death in June.
One of my employees had the same "tinfoil" thing going on. When she was 8 she had to get glasses. Each year her eyesight got worse and worse until she was 16 and her parents finally let her get contacts. Now her perscription stays about the same (rarely, but sometimes improves).
That got me on a search one night, partly because I have 20/40 vision and I have glasses, but they hurt to wear so I end up never wearing them. I don't recall where I saw the particular articles about eyesight and how optometrists would adjust things, but I think it was new scientists.
Anyway, the article talked about how in some countries optometrists were changing the way they have the focal point center in the eye. For a very long time now, they would have the focal point just before the retina. To me that always seemed kind of silly since the retina is what "sees". They have studies that were showing that doing that was causing the eyes to adjust the other direction usually making matters worse than better. While the people they studied with the adjustment to focusing the light directly to the retina had stable eyesight, and sometimes improving eyesight.
Kind of makes you wonder in ways. I mean, if you have blurry vision because your eyes aren't focusing light correctly, wouldn't the idea of focusing light directly where it should go be the way to do things and not just before? Oh well, doctors aren't always right and it's always a good idea to get second opinions and educate yourself anyway. I know when I get my next pair of glasses (probably won't) I'll specifically ask them to focus the light on my retina, not before it.
After some quick looking I found this. It's similar to what I read elsewhere. Since I'm shortsighted...hmmmmm
Several valid points are brought up by the comments you guys have all made. Granted, the vallejodsl.com domain is just redirecting actually. Our actual site is scronline.com which pulls up correctly, and when you go to vallejodsl.com it just pulls the same data. I had intended to setup that domain to redirect but I haven't done it as of yet. Which vallejodsl.com wasn't really intended for anything other than to see if it could improve ranking for scronline.com, but to be perfectly honest I'm not even worried about vallejodsl.com. The main goal is and always has been to increase rank on scronline.com
Sure, the site doesn't look that good. It's a design that was done in 2000-2001 that has only had minor SEO upgrades (also under different ownership at the time). It's in the process of a rebuild now. Sure I waited too long to rewrite the site and it's very dated, but the point still remains that there is code that should have been getting pulled. We have been growing it organically as opposed to artifically inflating everything. No matter what that doesn't change the fact that doing the same search on Yahoo or even *gasp* MSN, scronline.com would show up as the 4th link (yahoo) and 2nd link (msn).
As far as the comments stating that I'm not using it properly, I used Google in an every day use finding drivers, server and desktop issues, you name it since something like 1998. I was just using my domain as an example. However, when you go to google and search for something and it doesn't show up until 5 or 6 pages in, turn around and go to yahoo and the same thing shows up as the 4th result, it calls into question the ability of the search. Particularly when you see that for over 6-8 months.
I won't disagree that internet search has vastly improved due to Google. There's no arguing that point in the least, however I believe that google is overrated and isn't staying true to it's core business. When it takes years to fix known flaws in a search engine but they are turning out beta after beta of other programs, what is one to think?
Most people know how overrated google has become. Why then do we keep writting about only the good things? I don't read Cringely very often, but I've never seen even him have anything really negative to say about google. What's up with this? Is it just because they put out some nifty tools that raise large amounts of privacy concerns? Is it because it was ONCE a killer search engine?
Why aren't poor search results being reported? For example, in the city of Vallejo, CA we are the only facilities based DSL provider and we even own vallejodsl.com, but up until today (which is the first time I've done this search in 2 months) we weren't even on the first 5 pages. We don't participate in the shadey SEO practices so we were shoved so far back we weren't visible even when actualy looking specifically for a vallejo based DSL provider. I've been given huge amounts of excuses for why that could be, but when 80% of the results were blackhat SEO tactics that shoved us back I could care less about them. We are a well established company (15 years in business) and there should be no reason why we should have been so low on the results. We have plenty of backlinks but google only lists like 36 while others list as many 3000. We stood in that "state" for well over 2 years regardless of what we did on our end.
I still have a hard time understanding why people are considering google the greatest thing to happen to the internet since TCP/IP. Google's core business is search, that's where it got it's start. If it can't maintain it's core, then why should we be thanking them for giving us other tools? And to be perfectly honest, google is a noun not a verb and it drives me insane when langauge gets twisted for marketing purposes and it should bother everyone else too. Being mindless is what these people count on, so why are we caving to it. Blog anyone? IT'S A WEB LOG! Calling it a blog puts a buzzword to something that's been around for a decade but someone just wanted to make money off the idea so they had to create a word that people liked saying.
I can't disagree with that. Personally, just about every mainstream AV/Security company has irritated the ever-loving-crap out of me lately. But there is a difference between techs and tech savvy people vs. Joe the average user. I don't think it's so much that they want it easy, it's more that there's alot of laziness going on. I'm mean, I can't even tell you how many customers are calling us for net support and they just don't read the screen.
notification: "Your Norton needs to update some of it's program files would you like to run liveupdate to update your progam now?"
Customer: "I have this yellow screen on my computer and I can't do anything with it being there"
support: "What does the window say?"
Customer reads off the window
support: "That's to help you keep your antivirus up to date and keep your information current so you are protected. Just click yes and follow the instructions"
Customer: "Oh, so I just close it then?"
One thing I have to give credit to MS for is the way they are applying automatic updates. "Download and ask me to install..." is a great way to do it. When the user shuts the computer down, updates that are downloaded are installed. I don't see why that can't be done with AV software as well. Definitions are one thing and don't require a reboot, engine updates are another. If they would just do it instead of nagging alot of the problems would go away. I have to agree it's a pain to take the time to download the updates to turn around and reboot your computer...you just booted the damn thing up.
BUUUUUUT like you say. The crap out these days is resource hungry. Either rate, I would like it if they would get their heads out of their butts and just do what needs to be done and quit jerking everyone around with excuses or "look at me!! I must stay in your head!! Remember my name!! Buy more from me!!"
Well, that's funny. I don't see ANY nagware out of mcafee and that's part of the problem. I see it updating whenever it's an active subscription, but after that it just doesn't do anything. This is the online/newest version not the old stuff that did nag all the time. The problem I see with McAfee is everything is all online. While that's a good way to do it, customers sign up, then change ISPs, then change...., and a year later they don't remember what information they used for online registration. The client doesn't even show their email address used so you have to take guesses at it. In several cases they have to buy a brand new AV client simply because they don't have access to the old email address.
Furthermore, I've had cases where their antivirus would keep the anti-spam from working and thus mail would never get delivered. It would just sit there fighting each other. Let's not even talk about the thousands of machines that come into my shop that won't even boot because McAfee is damaged. Boot into safe, uninstall McAfee and the system will boot properly.
I don't disagree that you would see McAfee for years after it's gone (by whatever method), but that's partly because of the poor way they keep the customer informed and handle the account/licensing. Their products are in desperate need of a complete revamping. I even get about 300 "spam from your network" emails because of their crap client a day. Not a single one of them come from my ISP, they just spoof an email address on domains run/hosted by us or spoof our domain in the EHLO statement.
That's not to say Symantec is any better. Up until the 2006 version I was pleased with Norton, but now it's just so in your face that you have to wait 5 minutes after boot up before really doing anything because of a popup screen that says "Norton is up and working properly" kind of crap and will sit there for 30 seconds or until you physically close the window yourself. I've had quite a few times their stupid little popups gets right in my way, or even kicked me out of a game I was playing
Mainstream AV is too intrusive (but I can understand why since users just keep ignoring what it's saying) and in several cases ineffectual. They are all bringing a false sense of security and allow users to think they don't still have to follow good security on their own like....I don't know....not opening email attachments they aren't expecting.
On that note, I'll bet money on the fact that more than 70% of the computers that were infected with the most recent outbreak of the sober virus were all computers purchased with McAfee OEM with only 90 days of service and probably half of those weren't even activated the other half were unknowingly (or uncaring) expired. Gotta love it when OEMs use McAfee as the default OEM product by default.
The thing to remember about nag screens, they are there for a reason. Users always "oh, I just clicked close on that" and then complain about "why do I get viruses", "why do people do that", "is there anything I can do to go after these people?", and my personal favorite "what can I do to keep this from happening again?".
Actually, the FCC backed the Telcos so they don't HAVE to share their infrastructure. Depending on the telco, they will let the current companies continue to provide service, but they won't allow any new ISPs to gain service. So basically what's out there now is all that will be out there as far as DSL is concerned. Many providers have gotten skittish and instead of researching are freaking out that they're going to be put out of business, but I don't see that happening any time in the near future.
However, that doesn't change the fact that there's wireless, BoPL coming, and who knows what else. Wireless is getting ready to get a major boost with the 802.11i standard which will push so much bandwidth over a single channel it's not even funny. Over 800mpbs from a single unit.
I just find it a bit aggrevating that the consumer instantly assumes that an independant company is going to be more expensive and/or lower quality of service when 99 times out of a 100 it's quite the opposite. Sure some are a little bit more expensive, but look at what you get out of that. For starters you're talking to english speaking people in the U.S. instead of someone trying to sound american in India. Even going so far as to say "my name is Steve". SBC business class DSL forces you to use PPPoE instead of a truly routed product, what's up with that? You're paying a premium for what you would expect to be a routed product and you're not getting it.
ahhh, well, there's a few tricks there that we've learned. Many times SBC/ASI testers don't have the equipment needed to resolve the issues. Specifically bridge tap locating equipment. In my area there's like 3 trucks with that equipment out of 15. So when the tech is onsite and doesn't have the equipment, even if they suspect a bridge tap they write on the report "no bridge tap found" and that's pretty much the end of that.
Surprising that they didn't have access to the RT, though. Must be some "special" deal they have working with SBC or something. Granted, you have to have be added to the RT if you're not already. Maybe they just weren't willing to do that for just one customer.
There's a few things here that I should mention. First, Speakeasy is a bit too large to be considered an independant ISP in my humble opinion, however they are independant in the strictest sense. The fact that they wouldn't try to work out issues on your line shows that they aren't being responsible to the customer but to the bottom line. SBC probably put a bridge tap on your line which could have easily been removed if they wanted to find/resolve the problem. For that matter they should have been willing to work with you on moving you to an RT also if that was something that could be done at the time.
Speakeasy customers do not have access to SBC's remote terminals. By law, SBC doesn't have to share them.)
Actually, they do have access. If you are required to have an SBC line to get DSL from a provider, then they are using SBC's transport, plain and simple. The ONLY provider that I know of that has their own transports is Covad which is part of the reason they ended up going bankrupt a few years back. Building that from the ground up is extremely expensive.
Also, it's not really "law" that SBC doesn't have to share their lines, it's regulation. A little different, but that's playing with symantics. However, SBC and the other Telcos have found that kicking us off their networks would be a VERY bad idea since smaller ISPs are what is driving the DSL market up, not necessarily because of anything that they themselves are doing.
Now as far as transferring service, most ISPs will be happy to see if they can hash out a way to keep you from having downtime. Be it running a new line, using the ISP switch tools within SBC's ISP tools, whatever the case might be.
What it boils down to is finding an ISP that is responsible to the customer and not the stock holder. Speaking as a board member of CISPA (California ISP Association) I can say that every one of the CISPA members would go the extra mile to extend service to you or anyone else in the coverage areas and do everything possible to solve any problem that would arise. Let's face it, smaller independant ISPs HAVE to have something to trump the multi-billion dollar marketing budget of the large/corperate ISPs.
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Intel is just trying to make themselves appear the only way to work with media, you know...marketing. Basically they're riding on coattails here. Viiv isn't ANY different than an AMD system similarly equipt. It's only "certified" to be able to do what they say it will. AMD could do the same thing, but they don't try forcing vendors to buy into their CRAP.
Oh, and no, I don't like Intel. I've been lied to enough by that company over the years.
There's actually several solutions. The easiest is to find a different ISP that won't do that. You know, like the independants that have better service, better support, and usually cost the same if not close enough to the same to not matter. Independants usually also expect that "hey, the customer is paying me for their connectivity I shouldn't charge someone else for that same product". Besides, if you think about it, that's like selling a ferrari to someone but putting a governor on it that won't let it go faster than 35mph. Then selling the codes to the oil companies to turn off the governor first time they fill up.
The other option, start writing letters to congress. It won't be long now and the republican control will be lost in the house. I'm pretty much middle of the road with conservative leanings, but I'm absolutely HATING what's happening in this country with Bush in office and that's due, in part, to republican control of the house. This is an election year....this is the time they take complaints from constituants seriously.
Actually, I think Phantomware would be better. I think Phantomware fits even better than vaporware. I mean it is, after all, the definition of vaporware, and .... well, phantom sounds better than vapor. Partly because we can prove the existance of vapor, but not of a phantom heh
Yup, My parents saw the future coming so gave me one for christmas when I was 8 :) There were games for it tho. Not very many as I recall, but they did buy one that was like pacman. Can't remember the specific name of it now though. It was cartridge based.
Either rate, you couldn't have a v20 or a c64 without learning atleast to program a little bit...well, you could, just not use it very much.
For me, it's not even a fact of superior product or better corperate activity. It's about Sony questionable business tactics. Regardless of the fact that it's 2 different divisions. The guys up top knew what was going on atleast to some degree and decided to go forward with it anyway.
Sony has a history of developing "better" products but proprietary products that won't work with standards. People just want to use what they've got....period. Like some comments have stated "I just spent $1000 on the complete Star Trek collection....." People are going to want to play all of their media. They aren't going to care about the technicalities of it.
Growing up we had both Beta and VHS. We bought the beta practically as soon as it came out. But tapes were so expensive (even rentals) that we hardly ever used it. VHS came out and changed that. All we wanted was inexpensive home entertainment. It was cheaper to go out and get a VHS player after the fact and save $4 on each tape rental than to pay more for harder to find beta formats. Of course, that decision was taken from us completely eventually. I truly believe the same will happen here. Sony's format is not going to go over well with the public. The public doesn't even like paying more for better DSL. They would rather spend 3 hours a month on the phone with SBC/AT&T, complain about it all the time, and save that $1-4 rather than to be able to forget about it and just use it.
Shouldn't we be able to trust them now? Oh wait, since it took them 2 weeks to get the definitions out for a keylogging virus...I guess the answer to that is no.
Personally, after seeing Symantec corp take 2 weeks to release the definitions for a keylogger a customers network had...All symantec products I have out there are going to go away.
My choices are getting narrowed down quickly. McAfee lost out a few years back with the Nimda virus and failing to return phone calls....at all, not just late by a few hours or even a few days, a week later I heard from them. By that time I had already moved on since more than half my customer base was infected the DAY of the outbreak, not a week later.
But then, both of those 2 are really good at annoying the ever loving crap out of a user, which inturn causes the user to ignore all those little popups. I've even been guilty of it because I see them like 80 times a day. JUST DO YOUR JOB! You don't have to tell us what a wonderful job you are doing, just tell us when you need us to do something.
Ok, first off, every AOL customer I talk to, basically we take away. For several reasons.
1) things work without all the advertising from US (can't control other sites, but WE aren't hammering them.
2) We're cheaper
3) We have better spam and virus filters
4) We actually CARE about what our customers want
5) We don't provide worthless tools and pass them off as keeping you safe (this counts against "others" also)
Perfect example of the last one. I have a system on my bench right now. It was purchased 4 months ago with "AOL protection already installed and setup. Today I found 10 viruses, and about 349 spy/adware items on the system (per adaware scan). Due to the huge amount of CRAP on the system, I may be forced to reload it due to the huge amount of damage done to the system. It could probably be cleaned up, but laborwise....cheaper to backup and reload.
This isn't the first time either. My shop averages about 3 a week that come in for malware problems that have AOL, SBC, Earthlink, or "others" installed that simply aren't doing their jobs. These are ISP related tools that aren't working. I'm not counting the stuff like spybot or whatever that is purchased that isn't doing it's job either.
Little things like THIS is only going to tick AOL users off more when they can't get their mailing lists anymore. I have about 200 customers running mailing lists and they are all small and free mailing lists. One of them is a quilting list for pete's sake with like 50 people on it, and 35 of them are on AOL. I expect to see quite a few new customers when AOL pulls this....I'm counting the days.
Switch! There's plenty of independant ISPs out there that have NO intention of charging for crap like that. The telcos can't control bandwidth when the bandwidth isn't purchased from them. So why don't we just buy bandwidth from non ILECs....in otherwords, buy from OTHER places. SCR can service almost all of CA and we will never pull this kind of crap. Nor will our upstream providers. The customer pays us for the bandwidth, the sites they go to pay for THEIR bandwidth. I don't see the problem. I'm making my money and I'm not a greedy @#$%@#$%.
There are over 5000 Independant ISPs in this nation, pick one and switch. Most charge the same as the ILECs and they don't even route their support overseas if you need help. Plus, they'll actually be happy to help instead of feel like support is a burden they shouldn't have to bare.
If more people did this, the more honest companies out there would quickly start seizing control and the ILECs would lose even more power because the independants don't have the $ to do anything but bend over and take it. Help us help you by using our services so we can afford to invest in R&D and/or new tech to avoid this kind of crap in the future.
Other than starting the Linux Kernel and giving us an option to free us from the yoke that is Gates and Jobs? Gates and Jobs donate and do all the things they do for tax purposes, not out of the goodness of their hearts. Linus has created a FREE kernel and maintained it for over a decade expecting nothing in return. It asked how our heroes were, I don't consider Jobs or Gates my heroes, or even anti-heroes. All Gates does is take money away from me and my clients with little in return other than aggrevation. All Jobs does is keep to his own little world instead of taking a real chance like allowing OS X to run on Non-apple Intel hardware.
As far as heroes go, I would have to say Linus would be much higher ranked than either Jobs or Gates.
Macromedia Dreamweaver & Macromedia Flash are a part of Macromedia Studio. Seems to me to be an artifically inflated list or they don't really know WTF Macromedia Studio is. Atleast there's an "Other" option.
It also kind of seems like Novell's digging for people to market to since you're REQUIRED to enter your name and email address. That's what's keeping me from filling out the survey. I've already spoken with their salesmen and "I don't want to waste my time if you're only going to buy 2 or 3 licenses a month...." was repeated to me on several occasions.
If you were hired on as a Network Administrator of a Microsoft network, that's one thing. If you hired on as support or something like that, they can't honestly expect you to handle that job without training. You may even want to bring that to their attention. Something like "I don't mind doing it, but I'm going to need the training or it could get all kinds of screwed up"
The other option is say, "Look, I don't have the time to teach myself all this stuff and I don't know it. Why not hire a consultant that knows what they're doing to handle the heavy work?" My company has retainers and whatnot where we can be hired on in several levels. Basically you buy the hours you need for a year and you can use them however you see fit. Regular appointments can be scheduled or call as needed and it's really not that expensive when you're talking about network health. Usually what we end up doing is coming in to fix a major snaffu and make sure things are good to go. We then maintain everything for awhile while giving some basic training to one person in the company on how to handle day to day tasks and reduce the hours we come in for awhile to see how things go. Not really meaning to plug my company, but we can do alot of work remotely as well. I'm sure others can so there's always an option available before things get outta hand.
Either rate, if you're not willing and/or able to handle it, you're not doing your employer or yourself any favors because it could be a bad spot on your record if you were let go or left under not-so-good terms. The key point is flat out tell them your concerns. If they don't go with them and still want only you to handle the work, then they have noone to blame if your lack of knowledge screws something up.
Decent computer? Hmm, I suppose using MSI or Asus motherboards with Intel or nVidia Chipsets with AMD and Intel CPUs with nVidia Graphics. You don't get more "common" than that. The only off the wall thing I use is Turtle Beach sound cards and those used to be common enough and do have good support for just about anything. Difference is, I don't go updating drivers the day something new comes out. I don't feel that should be necessary. Any problems that I've had in the past couple of years has been caused by copy protection. Previous to that it was rushed to market products.
But yeah, the copy protection in EVERYTHING literally just punishes the person who legally purchased a product and doesn't do anything to stop piracy. Last problems I had was with Starforce that was installed by Silent Hunter III (which is the one I returned due to the protection). It literally caused my system to lock up consistantly and after installation of SF, the system would no longer shut down or reboot properly. Forcing me to hold the power button to shut it off or hit the reset button when I was would a restart.
Point still remains that games aren't worth what they are asking at present. They have some serious nerve to say that we should be paying more for a product that many are already feeling is over valued. Look at Valve's new crap now. I would pay $30 for HL2 and CS:S, that's all I would want, MAYBE DoD. But to get that I would have to spend $60+ and gain a whole crapload of stuff I DON'T want. When you get down to it, CS:S and DoD are literally nothing more than MODs for the game anyway. I won't go into the history here as I'm sure many of you are already aware of it.
First thing's first. Second hand market does so well because, well, $60 for a game that you beat in 2 days.....I can understand that. I pay less than that for my television service and it lasts and entire month. I sat down with American McGee's Alice after paying $55 for it at a local store on a Friday evening. Saturday night I had it beaten already. I bought Diablo 2 the day it came out for $65. I came home, spent 4 hours working on it to make it even work on a standard system. When I say standard it was an asus board, intel chip, nvidia video. NOTHING worked beyond the ingame vids. After that 4 hours of mucking around with it, I got it to run. I then played it an astounding 2 hours. Since then it has sat on my shelf. So not only did it waste $200 worth of my time ($50/hr instore labor, not gonna use onsite labor even thought I should) and I'm out the money for the game, but I didn't even get as much play time as I did repair time with it because the game sucked so badly. Tribes 2, again, the day it came out. Nothing but system lockups and other anomolies. The only game producer I know of that actually consistantly puts out games that don't crash constantly (not to say they don't have issues, but atleast they do RUN out of the box) is Id Software.
Let's not forget about companies like Valve. I bought HL way back when and though I wasn't happy with it's netcode the single player was worth playing....for awhile. Until you go to the alien planet, but that's another story. So I start playing CS online with it and get used to the game play. Valve all of a sudden releases their new netcode. I have to say "thanks for trying to fix your mistakes" but they took it too far. The new netcode was horrible and nothing ticks someone off more than getting killed by someone when you're halfway across the map from where they shot. Basically, their new updates made THAT game worthless to me and has since sat on a shelf.
Everything said up until now has just been examples. I could fill an entire office full of paper with the various issues I've had over the year.
I used to spend anywhere from $2-5k on games a year. Not hardware, just the game titles themselves. However over the years, the games take longer to be released (understandable since there's more to do....in some ways), they are lower quality, and quite frankly rushed to market. Imagine if Ford put a vehicle out there with bad tires on it.....oh wait..... Point being, products are being put out before they are ready. This frustrates and angers the person who paid for the product.
Why on EARTH should we pay $50-80 for a game that we'll have to spend days, weeks, or even months helping fix flaws in the game before we can even use it for what we intended...stress/frustration relief. That's like selling someone a car that backfires any time you give it gas, the windows will only roll halfway down, and every so often it evacuates the cooling system on it's own. "Oh, well, you can bring it into the shop and we'll fix that for you. We found that problem". Of course that problem causes another problem so you have to wait to get that one fixed. Or better still, you buy a car that won't move. The engine will run, all electronics work, but it just sits there in your driveway. 3 months later, the automanufacturer delivers the transmission to your house but you have to install it yourself.
Don't get me wrong, I understand software flaws and they can happen. But if the flaws are there from the day it was published as ready...that's just wrong. And going back to one of my earlier statements, I once spent $2-5k/yr on games. Last year I spent a whole $150 buying games. Why? Because I refuse to pay for something that is suppose to be for entertainment but I have to work (unpaid mind you) to be able to properly use it.
If the game producing industry doesn't get their heads out of their ***** then they're going to soon find themselves in the same boat as the Recording and Movie industry. People don't mind paying top dol
Couple of things I thought should be said here. First off, the people that are asking those questions over and over again, won't read this book. They don't WANT to know. When a person doesn't want to know something the blinders come on and trying to take them off....well, you might as well back a badger into a corner and try to take it's pelt with a pair of tweesers.
However, if that didn't dissuade you from trying, the things I see that people need to understand MORE than anything else is basic terminology. The whole computer is not called a Modem, CPU, CD-ROM, or disk drive. If people can use proper terminology (or atleast close enough that the tech can figure it out) then support calls would be cut in half.
To help you explain things to a child, we compare things to something they already understand. In the case of computers (and the fact that I went to school for automechanics) I find computers can relate very well to cars in the average user's mind. Ie, the CPU is the engine, the keyboard and mouse are the pedals, steering wheel, and shifter and the monitor is the windshield. I'm sticking with the basic aspects for a reason. You may even want to make note that "you know what these are in a car, basic knowledge similar to that will make your computing world so much easier and rewarding."
As the years have gone on with thousands of different machines out there from just one vendor alone, it's difficult for any one vendor to stock everything. On my ISP side, I keep spare parts of any mission critical components I have in place. IE RAID controllers, RAM, CPUs, motherboards, and NICs (not so much a problem these days with dual NICs on most server boards. But that's also my own preference since we custom build here and my equipment is required for 24/7 operation. To me it doesn't matter if I don't use the part before I decom the server, I had it just incase. It's a peice of mind thing even if it was a $1000 card.
As a Whitebox manufacturer, if someone is building a server for a specific need that is 24/7 operation, I might even recommend to them to consider buying redundant/spare parts. Problem is I might get taken up on that option 1 time out of 100. People don't want to spend money when they don't have to. They've relied on the computer manufacturer building a quality component. But let's face it, unless it's custom built (by someone who cares and actually QAs each machine) then it's assembly line produced and thus has lower QA on it.
Part of the reason for this, I believe, is places like Dell saying "4 hour time to delivery" as an option when you buy equipment from them. They assume that EVERYONE does that. Point of fact, more often than not Dell can't/won't do it either.
The other part is....god forbid the all mighty dollar. "Why should we spend $1500 to have spare parts lying around that we may or may not need?" "We have 100 servers, that would be $150k in parts that will probably never be used. That's just too much, forget spare parts." That's where bighats with small brains should leave it to the IT dept. to deal with. 100 servers...what's really the odds of all 100 of them going down at once AND it being the same components? I mean really. Having 2-5 spares of each component is all that's needed. If you're not using close to or the same arch for each box, that's another issue and things like this should have been considered.
Either rate, if there are mission critical services running, not keeping parts available is playing russian roulette. We spend hundreds of thousands a month on redundant 'net lines, we backup our data daily, we even keep it off-site. But god forbid keeping spare parts available.
I don't know how many of you may have watched the History channel show last night on the little ice age, but things like that just show us we don't know jack about the weather, how it's affected, and how it affects us. A massive volcano errupted in the early 1800s that cause "The year without a Summer" in 1816. So much ash, sulfer, and sulfuric acid in the air the sun's rays simply couldn't get to the earth. People freezing to death in August, snow on the ground in July, freshly shorn sheep froze to death in June.
One of my employees had the same "tinfoil" thing going on. When she was 8 she had to get glasses. Each year her eyesight got worse and worse until she was 16 and her parents finally let her get contacts. Now her perscription stays about the same (rarely, but sometimes improves).
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That got me on a search one night, partly because I have 20/40 vision and I have glasses, but they hurt to wear so I end up never wearing them. I don't recall where I saw the particular articles about eyesight and how optometrists would adjust things, but I think it was new scientists.
Anyway, the article talked about how in some countries optometrists were changing the way they have the focal point center in the eye. For a very long time now, they would have the focal point just before the retina. To me that always seemed kind of silly since the retina is what "sees". They have studies that were showing that doing that was causing the eyes to adjust the other direction usually making matters worse than better. While the people they studied with the adjustment to focusing the light directly to the retina had stable eyesight, and sometimes improving eyesight.
Kind of makes you wonder in ways. I mean, if you have blurry vision because your eyes aren't focusing light correctly, wouldn't the idea of focusing light directly where it should go be the way to do things and not just before? Oh well, doctors aren't always right and it's always a good idea to get second opinions and educate yourself anyway. I know when I get my next pair of glasses (probably won't) I'll specifically ask them to focus the light on my retina, not before it.
After some quick looking I found this. It's similar to what I read elsewhere. Since I'm shortsighted...hmmmmm
http://www.mercola.com/2002/dec/4/eyeglass_prescr
Several valid points are brought up by the comments you guys have all made. Granted, the vallejodsl.com domain is just redirecting actually. Our actual site is scronline.com which pulls up correctly, and when you go to vallejodsl.com it just pulls the same data. I had intended to setup that domain to redirect but I haven't done it as of yet. Which vallejodsl.com wasn't really intended for anything other than to see if it could improve ranking for scronline.com, but to be perfectly honest I'm not even worried about vallejodsl.com. The main goal is and always has been to increase rank on scronline.com
Sure, the site doesn't look that good. It's a design that was done in 2000-2001 that has only had minor SEO upgrades (also under different ownership at the time). It's in the process of a rebuild now. Sure I waited too long to rewrite the site and it's very dated, but the point still remains that there is code that should have been getting pulled. We have been growing it organically as opposed to artifically inflating everything. No matter what that doesn't change the fact that doing the same search on Yahoo or even *gasp* MSN, scronline.com would show up as the 4th link (yahoo) and 2nd link (msn).
As far as the comments stating that I'm not using it properly, I used Google in an every day use finding drivers, server and desktop issues, you name it since something like 1998. I was just using my domain as an example. However, when you go to google and search for something and it doesn't show up until 5 or 6 pages in, turn around and go to yahoo and the same thing shows up as the 4th result, it calls into question the ability of the search. Particularly when you see that for over 6-8 months.
I won't disagree that internet search has vastly improved due to Google. There's no arguing that point in the least, however I believe that google is overrated and isn't staying true to it's core business. When it takes years to fix known flaws in a search engine but they are turning out beta after beta of other programs, what is one to think?
Most people know how overrated google has become. Why then do we keep writting about only the good things? I don't read Cringely very often, but I've never seen even him have anything really negative to say about google. What's up with this? Is it just because they put out some nifty tools that raise large amounts of privacy concerns? Is it because it was ONCE a killer search engine?
Why aren't poor search results being reported? For example, in the city of Vallejo, CA we are the only facilities based DSL provider and we even own vallejodsl.com, but up until today (which is the first time I've done this search in 2 months) we weren't even on the first 5 pages. We don't participate in the shadey SEO practices so we were shoved so far back we weren't visible even when actualy looking specifically for a vallejo based DSL provider. I've been given huge amounts of excuses for why that could be, but when 80% of the results were blackhat SEO tactics that shoved us back I could care less about them. We are a well established company (15 years in business) and there should be no reason why we should have been so low on the results. We have plenty of backlinks but google only lists like 36 while others list as many 3000. We stood in that "state" for well over 2 years regardless of what we did on our end.
I still have a hard time understanding why people are considering google the greatest thing to happen to the internet since TCP/IP. Google's core business is search, that's where it got it's start. If it can't maintain it's core, then why should we be thanking them for giving us other tools? And to be perfectly honest, google is a noun not a verb and it drives me insane when langauge gets twisted for marketing purposes and it should bother everyone else too. Being mindless is what these people count on, so why are we caving to it. Blog anyone? IT'S A WEB LOG! Calling it a blog puts a buzzword to something that's been around for a decade but someone just wanted to make money off the idea so they had to create a word that people liked saying.
I can't disagree with that. Personally, just about every mainstream AV/Security company has irritated the ever-loving-crap out of me lately. But there is a difference between techs and tech savvy people vs. Joe the average user. I don't think it's so much that they want it easy, it's more that there's alot of laziness going on. I'm mean, I can't even tell you how many customers are calling us for net support and they just don't read the screen.
notification: "Your Norton needs to update some of it's program files would you like to run liveupdate to update your progam now?"
Customer: "I have this yellow screen on my computer and I can't do anything with it being there"
support: "What does the window say?"
Customer reads off the window
support: "That's to help you keep your antivirus up to date and keep your information current so you are protected. Just click yes and follow the instructions"
Customer: "Oh, so I just close it then?"
One thing I have to give credit to MS for is the way they are applying automatic updates. "Download and ask me to install..." is a great way to do it. When the user shuts the computer down, updates that are downloaded are installed. I don't see why that can't be done with AV software as well. Definitions are one thing and don't require a reboot, engine updates are another. If they would just do it instead of nagging alot of the problems would go away. I have to agree it's a pain to take the time to download the updates to turn around and reboot your computer...you just booted the damn thing up.
BUUUUUUT like you say. The crap out these days is resource hungry. Either rate, I would like it if they would get their heads out of their butts and just do what needs to be done and quit jerking everyone around with excuses or "look at me!! I must stay in your head!! Remember my name!! Buy more from me!!"
Well, that's funny. I don't see ANY nagware out of mcafee and that's part of the problem. I see it updating whenever it's an active subscription, but after that it just doesn't do anything. This is the online/newest version not the old stuff that did nag all the time. The problem I see with McAfee is everything is all online. While that's a good way to do it, customers sign up, then change ISPs, then change ...., and a year later they don't remember what information they used for online registration. The client doesn't even show their email address used so you have to take guesses at it. In several cases they have to buy a brand new AV client simply because they don't have access to the old email address.
Furthermore, I've had cases where their antivirus would keep the anti-spam from working and thus mail would never get delivered. It would just sit there fighting each other. Let's not even talk about the thousands of machines that come into my shop that won't even boot because McAfee is damaged. Boot into safe, uninstall McAfee and the system will boot properly.
I don't disagree that you would see McAfee for years after it's gone (by whatever method), but that's partly because of the poor way they keep the customer informed and handle the account/licensing. Their products are in desperate need of a complete revamping. I even get about 300 "spam from your network" emails because of their crap client a day. Not a single one of them come from my ISP, they just spoof an email address on domains run/hosted by us or spoof our domain in the EHLO statement.
That's not to say Symantec is any better. Up until the 2006 version I was pleased with Norton, but now it's just so in your face that you have to wait 5 minutes after boot up before really doing anything because of a popup screen that says "Norton is up and working properly" kind of crap and will sit there for 30 seconds or until you physically close the window yourself. I've had quite a few times their stupid little popups gets right in my way, or even kicked me out of a game I was playing
Mainstream AV is too intrusive (but I can understand why since users just keep ignoring what it's saying) and in several cases ineffectual. They are all bringing a false sense of security and allow users to think they don't still have to follow good security on their own like....I don't know....not opening email attachments they aren't expecting.
On that note, I'll bet money on the fact that more than 70% of the computers that were infected with the most recent outbreak of the sober virus were all computers purchased with McAfee OEM with only 90 days of service and probably half of those weren't even activated the other half were unknowingly (or uncaring) expired. Gotta love it when OEMs use McAfee as the default OEM product by default.
The thing to remember about nag screens, they are there for a reason. Users always "oh, I just clicked close on that" and then complain about "why do I get viruses", "why do people do that", "is there anything I can do to go after these people?", and my personal favorite "what can I do to keep this from happening again?".
Actually, the FCC backed the Telcos so they don't HAVE to share their infrastructure. Depending on the telco, they will let the current companies continue to provide service, but they won't allow any new ISPs to gain service. So basically what's out there now is all that will be out there as far as DSL is concerned. Many providers have gotten skittish and instead of researching are freaking out that they're going to be put out of business, but I don't see that happening any time in the near future.
However, that doesn't change the fact that there's wireless, BoPL coming, and who knows what else. Wireless is getting ready to get a major boost with the 802.11i standard which will push so much bandwidth over a single channel it's not even funny. Over 800mpbs from a single unit.
I just find it a bit aggrevating that the consumer instantly assumes that an independant company is going to be more expensive and/or lower quality of service when 99 times out of a 100 it's quite the opposite. Sure some are a little bit more expensive, but look at what you get out of that. For starters you're talking to english speaking people in the U.S. instead of someone trying to sound american in India. Even going so far as to say "my name is Steve". SBC business class DSL forces you to use PPPoE instead of a truly routed product, what's up with that? You're paying a premium for what you would expect to be a routed product and you're not getting it.
ahhh, well, there's a few tricks there that we've learned. Many times SBC/ASI testers don't have the equipment needed to resolve the issues. Specifically bridge tap locating equipment. In my area there's like 3 trucks with that equipment out of 15. So when the tech is onsite and doesn't have the equipment, even if they suspect a bridge tap they write on the report "no bridge tap found" and that's pretty much the end of that.
Surprising that they didn't have access to the RT, though. Must be some "special" deal they have working with SBC or something. Granted, you have to have be added to the RT if you're not already. Maybe they just weren't willing to do that for just one customer.
There's a few things here that I should mention. First, Speakeasy is a bit too large to be considered an independant ISP in my humble opinion, however they are independant in the strictest sense. The fact that they wouldn't try to work out issues on your line shows that they aren't being responsible to the customer but to the bottom line. SBC probably put a bridge tap on your line which could have easily been removed if they wanted to find/resolve the problem. For that matter they should have been willing to work with you on moving you to an RT also if that was something that could be done at the time.
Speakeasy customers do not have access to SBC's remote terminals. By law, SBC doesn't have to share them.)
Actually, they do have access. If you are required to have an SBC line to get DSL from a provider, then they are using SBC's transport, plain and simple. The ONLY provider that I know of that has their own transports is Covad which is part of the reason they ended up going bankrupt a few years back. Building that from the ground up is extremely expensive.
Also, it's not really "law" that SBC doesn't have to share their lines, it's regulation. A little different, but that's playing with symantics. However, SBC and the other Telcos have found that kicking us off their networks would be a VERY bad idea since smaller ISPs are what is driving the DSL market up, not necessarily because of anything that they themselves are doing.
Now as far as transferring service, most ISPs will be happy to see if they can hash out a way to keep you from having downtime. Be it running a new line, using the ISP switch tools within SBC's ISP tools, whatever the case might be.
What it boils down to is finding an ISP that is responsible to the customer and not the stock holder. Speaking as a board member of CISPA (California ISP Association) I can say that every one of the CISPA members would go the extra mile to extend service to you or anyone else in the coverage areas and do everything possible to solve any problem that would arise. Let's face it, smaller independant ISPs HAVE to have something to trump the multi-billion dollar marketing budget of the large/corperate ISPs.