You're right, chasing nerds isn't a sport. Beating the shit out of jocks (now responsible for making sure my fries are piping hot), on the other hand, is.
What makes you think that proxies aren't on the cutting edge anymore? Proxies have evolved these past few years and there are some that are very sophisticated. Ever never heard of a program called Tor?
Tor is proxy software that uses onion routing (look it up) to establish a secure connection. Because all packets are encrypted and are forwarded to several onion proxies anyone sniffing the network will not be able to establish anything about the downloaded content. Furthermore, with the help of Privoxy dns requests can also be masked so that even the sys admin will be clueless. Even better, since Tor chooses a new circuit every few minutes the Tor network is resistant to traffic analysis. Finally, because of the way the Tor network was designed you will remain anonymous and maintain a secure connection even if some of the onion routers are compromised.
There is even a package called Torpark that bundles Tor and Firefox together in a standalone executable, making it ideal for public computers.
There's a huge difference between parking in someone's lot and demanding they take responsibility for your property and paying for something (in this case OS repair) and getting the opposite (loss of all your data). Frankly I don't give a damn what their policy states. Yes, Best Buy has the legal right to reformat the HD of any customer that signs their contract, but that sure as hell doesn't make it the appropriate thing to do. I have the legal right to organize a Nazi parade in a town full of Holocaust survivors, but doing so would make me an asshole regardless of whether or not it is by law permissible. The Geek Squad is incompetent not because they acted outside their legal bounds, but because they carried out an unnecessary, uncalled for, and ultimately destructive action completely against the customer's wishes.
No, they both *explicitly* told them NOT to wipe out the drive. They made themselves very clear, and thus what Best Buy did was absolutely inexcusable.
A couple years ago my roommate took his computer to Best Buy because it was running slow. He explicitly told them not to wipe out his drive. What did they do? Wipe out his drive. When his sister was having the same problem, he advised her to take her business elsewhere because of the incident. Unfortunately, the other place also wiped out her drive without her permission.
These aren't isolated examples. I wouldn't be surprised if at least a good half of Geek Squad employees are completely incompetent with computers.
Slashdot Mirror
You're right, chasing nerds isn't a sport. Beating the shit out of jocks (now responsible for making sure my fries are piping hot), on the other hand, is.
You totally blew at sports, didn't you? Be honest now.
What makes you think that proxies aren't on the cutting edge anymore? Proxies have evolved these past few years and there are some that are very sophisticated. Ever never heard of a program called Tor?
Tor is proxy software that uses onion routing (look it up) to establish a secure connection. Because all packets are encrypted and are forwarded to several onion proxies anyone sniffing the network will not be able to establish anything about the downloaded content. Furthermore, with the help of Privoxy dns requests can also be masked so that even the sys admin will be clueless. Even better, since Tor chooses a new circuit every few minutes the Tor network is resistant to traffic analysis. Finally, because of the way the Tor network was designed you will remain anonymous and maintain a secure connection even if some of the onion routers are compromised.
There is even a package called Torpark that bundles Tor and Firefox together in a standalone executable, making it ideal for public computers.
There's a huge difference between parking in someone's lot and demanding they take responsibility for your property and paying for something (in this case OS repair) and getting the opposite (loss of all your data). Frankly I don't give a damn what their policy states. Yes, Best Buy has the legal right to reformat the HD of any customer that signs their contract, but that sure as hell doesn't make it the appropriate thing to do. I have the legal right to organize a Nazi parade in a town full of Holocaust survivors, but doing so would make me an asshole regardless of whether or not it is by law permissible. The Geek Squad is incompetent not because they acted outside their legal bounds, but because they carried out an unnecessary, uncalled for, and ultimately destructive action completely against the customer's wishes.
No, they both *explicitly* told them NOT to wipe out the drive. They made themselves very clear, and thus what Best Buy did was absolutely inexcusable.
The sad thing is you're not exaggerating.
A couple years ago my roommate took his computer to Best Buy because it was running slow. He explicitly told them not to wipe out his drive. What did they do? Wipe out his drive. When his sister was having the same problem, he advised her to take her business elsewhere because of the incident. Unfortunately, the other place also wiped out her drive without her permission.
These aren't isolated examples. I wouldn't be surprised if at least a good half of Geek Squad employees are completely incompetent with computers.