[ale] Internet access under Linux

[fd0man™—The Magical Floppy Man]

On Thu, 2006-08-31 at 10:15 -0400, Christopher Fowler wrote:

> On Thu, 2006-08-31 at 09:57 -0400, Michael H. Warfield wrote:
> > Bullshit.  
> 
> I did not say that BS DSL was incompatible.  I stated that he should not
> use BS because of his preferences:
> 
> >> (I really would rather not
> >> have someone come to my home to install and refuse to do so unless I
> >> have a Windows machine up, refuse to accept problem reports that 
> >> aren't on Windows
> >> machines, require Windows-only hardware, etc.)
> 
> Reading that above seems like he is basically talking about BS


? or ComCast.  A bit late to join in the discussion here, but late is
better than never.  ;-)

I have found that sometimes, if I have trouble with my lines here
through ComCast?s cable service, I have to tell them that I am using
Windows, Outlook Express, go through their insane scripts and give them
all the right answers, etc., simply because if I say ?I am using
Evolution? or ?I am a Linux user,? the first thing that they come to
(and never move away from) is that it has to be my mail client,
newsgroup client, operating system, etc.  It is rather stupid.

I have found one tech that is friendly to me, and so if the service is
up and I have troubles, I send an e-mail or instant message to her;
otherwise, I call in and ask to be transferred to her voicemail so that
she can call me back.  She does not treat me like an idiot, and that I
really appreciate; many of the techs I have been on the phone with have
argued with me that I do not know what I am talking about, even when I
provide detailed network transcripts to them to show evidence of
problems that I have experienced, pointing them to authoritative
documents to prove my point.

One example of this was when ComCast?s access to Usenet was down?
specifically, their server that held the authorization credentials for
GigaNews was down.  The error message returned from GigaNews was that
the connection to the ComCast auth server was timing out, and when I
called it in, they said, ?Are you entering the right password??  I
explained to them that since they employ a SSO system for the web site,
e-mail, and newsgroups, and I could log into the other two services,
that my password was correct.  They said, ?Well, nothing is down on our
network, so it is not our problem.?  Not surprisingly, GigaNews said the
same thing?they said it was ComCast?s problem.  Ugh.  I must have talked
to 10 different people at ComCast alone?a couple of which thought the
issue was my password, and another couple of which thought the issue was
my client software (Right.  Because KNode, Evolution, slrn, and Pine all
have it wrong!).  Three days later, access to Usenet was working for me
again.  Unfortunately, my friend was on vacation through this period of
time, so I was not able to report the problem to her.

    ? Mike

--
The fd0man??The Magical Floppy Man! (fd0man at gmail.com) 
"One world, one web, one program"  ?Microsoft promotional ad 
"Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuehrer"  ?Adolf Hitler 
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