Does Comcast Hate Firefox? 676
destinyland writes "Comcast is the largest ISP in America. And they're requiring Internet Explorer for installations — even if you're using a Mac. The Comcast homepage even specifies that the page is optimized for IE 5.5 (which was released in 2000), and 'is not optimized for Firefox browsers and Macs.' With 13 million subscribers, you'd think they could spring for a web developer who could handle multiple browsers. (From the last line of the article: 'I'm afraid to ask how Comcast handles Linux...')"
They don't hate Firefox (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:They don't hate Firefox (Score:5, Funny)
Re:They don't hate Firefox (Score:5, Informative)
The way Comcast handles customers stinks. They had a app that is supposed to switch your email address and set up your account in Outhouse. It does a dandy job of changing your homepage and putting a bunch of tool-bar trash in IE, but can't quite handle the email part. It just dies at that point. I had to go clean up after it on my mom's computer.
Smegging Comcrap tried to spin the email address change as a good thing in their commercials, "Oh, goody, time to change your email!".
Re:They don't hate Firefox (Score:5, Informative)
Oh and one more thing..if you're using your own router you probably want to hit the modem config page again and switch the PPPOE settings. By default the Speedstream handles PPPOE but you want it to be handled by your router. I think this is called bridge mode (sorry it's been awhile, but when you see the page it makes sense).
Re:They don't hate Firefox (Score:5, Informative)
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What utterly baffles me is why the installers don't just bring a cheap / light windows laptop with them.
Because then they wouldn't be able to install 100+MB of probably malicious crap on your computer?
Just a guess, but even if I had a windows machine to install their malware on I'd still make them call it in to set up the cable modem instead. There is no excuse for you to have to install anything to get a simple network connection up and running.
If people hate each other... (Score:3, Interesting)
I changed ISPs because my decent one was swallowed up by TELUS which royally messed up my nice little setup--they warned me that it would happen, but didn't say exactly what would happen or exactly when.
I went with "basic small business service" from a company called Radiant--it is the same kind of DSL, largely riding on the same TELUS networks, but Radiant does the admin. I get multiple fixed IPs, no ridiculous bandwidth caps, and tech support is staffed with actua
Re:They don't hate Firefox (Score:5, Informative)
I use Comcast. I have a business account (had a residential first), and I have always used linux on it. I have a few widows machines, but most of my machines are linux (debian, ubuntu, redhat, mandriva) and they have always worked fine. I have run into a few funny issues where I had to call tech support and have something done on their end, but that was the worst I had to do. The real problem with Comcast (and every other cable company i have used) is the slowdown of their network during times of the day when I need to use it, as well as the poor upstream feed. I have had more then 8% downtime since I switched to business, but I believe that it has something to do with the long run my coax makes from the breakout to the home office.
I have used other cable systems in the past, and most of them were about the same. Nothing to write home about, but barely functional enough. I do miss my T1. It may not have been as fast as broadband companies advertise, but it was much faster then they accomplish normally. But, where I live now, it is way to expensive to go T1.
InnerWeb
Why do people even install anything? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Why do people even install anything? (Score:5, Informative)
You only have to register the mac address of your cable modem (on the HFC interface) so they "allow" your modem onto their system. That's it. Nothing has to be done to your computer whatsoever.
In fact, come to think of it I have never ran their crappy software.
Re:Why do people even install anything? (Score:5, Insightful)
My advice is to go out to the store, and buy the current member of the Motorola SB5100 series, and take back whatever hunk of junk it is they gave out. If you need a router, Linksys WRT54GL plus the dd-wrt [dd-wrt.com] firmware can't be beat. No crappy desktop-level software is needed to get such a setup going.
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As an Ubuntu user on Comcast, the assumption the modem is junk is totaly wrong. (except the RCA modem)
The software is simply a Windows Computer setup disk. It is not needed whatsoever to use Comcast. An online search will provide all the r
Browser-based install (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:They don't hate Firefox (Score:4, Insightful)
That being said, I had comcast installed a month ago and hadnt yet ran a cable to my desktop so when the installer needed me to plug in and test it, I used my xubuntu laptop which worked just fine (although the installer had a laptop there with IE so if there was some required step, he may have completed it).
Also, taking time to explicitly say you are not optimized for something means they just have a crappy web developer who clearly knows that other platforms exist and just doesnt want to support them. Of course I have never been to comcast's customer portal site so it doesnt really matter what browser it requires
Re:They don't hate Firefox (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:They don't hate Firefox (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:They don't hate Firefox (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah I'm sure he feels inferior to someone that ran over their cable with a lawnmower and had to call tech support about it.
Re:They don't hate Firefox (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:More likely... (Score:5, Informative)
Comcast outsources its tech support to a third party call center provider. 90% of the agents on the phone have no idea how to use a computer and can only troubleshoot according to the guides that are provided. And Comcast only provided IE 5.5 guides. They don't even have IE 6.0 guides. Firefox actually works quite well with Comcast's $hit, they just can't offer any technical support for it.
And don't even get me started on their service, or that email change over program. That POS service is provided by some other company, and it doesn't work worth crap.
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Businesses like ComCast will eventually die off. The world of Microsoft is a world that the sun is soon to set on; companies that do not see this coming will get left behind... including Comcast and many other places that seem to think that antiquated, non-standards compliant, user-restricting technology is what's good for this world. If Comcast weren't the only provider of 8 Mbit access in my area, I wouldn't use them, that is for sure:
Re:More likely... (Score:4, Funny)
Try their TV people. I called up to try and get them to update the firmware on my cable box so I could control it via a serial cable with my MythTV box.
I lied and said I had a Tivo and the guy was all "What's Tivo"?
Re:More likely...MS Troll (Score:5, Funny)
No money though. Ballmer just sent me a photo of a mannequin with a chair embedded in it's chest with the word "You" scrawled along the bottom.
Re:More likely... (Score:4, Insightful)
Comcast has trained their install techs with Windows/IE. Almost every ISP i ever had gave me the same answer "linux not supported" or before 2000 - "which version of Windows are you running" and when i would say "Linux" they would ask again "so, which version of linux is it"?
In reality most of the time you just setup you box with DHCP and why would you ever want to visit their website anyway?
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So while it's going to be an easier install for the lusers on IE, people on Firefox, Safari, Seamonkey, Opera or what have you are essentially fucked. For them, the question is "why aren't you using Windows?".
BTW, for all the Linuxvangelists that wonder "why can't the users just learn
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Didn't you know that on slashdot, snide off-topic comments about America (the spelling "Amerika" is de rigueur here), Red States, Republicans, GWB, Christians, rural people or Global Warming Skeptics equals positive "karma?" Pretty much everything in the moderation scheme--editors having unlimited mod points, the meta-moderation system and the algorithm that determines who gets mod points--work to reinforce the hive mentality.
So, it's time get on board with the group think.
My experience (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:My experience (Score:5, Informative)
Re:My experience (Score:5, Informative)
They have to call in to the office and have them register your modem's MAC and the ethernet card's MAC with the system. Generally this is done via a web interface that has weird proxy settings to get to the registration server. The techs that require that CD (and it could vary from day to day depending on what management's feeling like) may not know any better, may be told they require Windows that day, or they might just be lazy -- as you said.
Re:My experience (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:My experience (Score:5, Informative)
It depends per market. They aren't all the same due to the purchase of smaller markets. You might be in a market that doesn't have MAC auth.
Re:My experience (Score:5, Insightful)
I too did a self-install with my Linux systems. I called, just as you, read off some serial numbers and was up and rolling.
Unfortunately, at one point they changed *something*, and all http requests were re-routed to the comcast website. I called Customer Service and was told that my computer was not communicating with the internet and that I had to change something via Windows control panel. I told them that I was not running windows and this did not even register with the tech support person. She kept going from the script as if I hadn't even spoken! I was very polite at first telling her something to the effect that: "Ma'am, I'm sorry, I am not running a Windows operating system. My computers can clearly see the internet because I can get to the comcast homepage. You just need to unblock the MAC address of my cable modem. (PLEASE!)" She continued to go on like she couldn't here me. When I finally said: "Can I please speak with your superior?", she asked "Why? Has your customer service been less than satisfactory?" and then started fighting with me to talk to someone else. I finally did talk to a superior who fixed my problem, although *she* didn't understand that there were operating systems other than Windows. She basically asked me why I couldn't just follow the first woman's directions.
Another time I had the same problem, I called in and the problem was fixed immediately (I did not mention Linux, and simply asked if they could reset my cable modem).In short, customer service at Comcast is windows-centric, follows scripts as opposed to understanding any technology, and is hit or miss in the satisfaction department depending on who you get on the line.
Re:My experience (Score:5, Interesting)
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I have a counter-story to this I found rather funny. One time when I was having a problem with my modem, I called in to tech support. As usual, they asked what OS I was running. When I responded "FreeBSD," rather than them saying it wasn't supported and giving me the runaround, the tech said "Oh, well
Re:My experience (Score:4, Informative)
Only this time, my wife called Comcast and made the mistake of telling them we're running Linux. I wanted to kill her. But the nice tech on the phone actually said "Oh, ok. I can't do anything, but I can have your cable modem configured from remote." And this time they actually did it. I was at least somewhat impressed that they didn't just throw up their hands and say "we don't support you."
As far as Firefox goes -- yes, those stupid install CDs require IE 5.5 or later. They will not work on ANY box that doesn't have IE 5.5, not even a Windows 98 box with IE 5.0 on it. The Comcast start page *does* work okay with Firefox, however, provided you have the latest Flash player installed. There are a few minor rendering difficulties at times, however.
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That installer that requires IE doesn't appear to actually be necessary.
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The techs like to use a CD installer which uses Internet Explorer to configure the cable modem. In my experience, however, it doesn't actually appear to be necessary. I've gone through the process twice, and I just stay on the phone with a tech and give them some numbers from the bottom of the modem and they configure it remotely. No need for a CD-based installer.
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Re:My experience (Score:5, Funny)
2 days of sitting in front of Trumpet Winsock twiddling options, 15 years old, never having heard of so much as an IP address. I will never forget the moment it worked. It was like magic. It was ethereal. It took me 20 minutes to find my first porn site
Re:My experience (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know if it is an issue anymore, but I always made sure that I told the company I did not have a USB port. They still came in and plugged a USB Only, Windows only modem in. After that, I make sure the computer does not have any working USB ports so that when it doesn't work, they are forced to read the ticket, then go back and grab a modem with an ethernet port that can be installed on a linux system or a router.
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It's not their fault... (Score:5, Insightful)
Cheers!
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I work for Comcast. (Score:4, Informative)
1) No, I'm a Systems Engineer, not an Installer.
2) A majority of us use Firefox. Internally, it's the browser of choice.
3) The web page is probably something that hasn't been updated. There are tons of internal projects for that kind of thing. But of course it's done by committee, which takes time.
It's a non-issue, really.
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--
Switch to solar and get firefox compliant billing: http://mdsolar.blogspot [blogspot.com]
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You mean the Comcast.com webpage where you log in to pay your bill?
I've never used IE to pay my bill through that site - I've always used Firefox.. what website are you talking about?
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Ah, but it is an issue. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I work for Comcast. (Score:4, Insightful)
Why should they fix it? You're still paying!
Grim reminder (Score:2)
Rogers is no better (Score:5, Informative)
And the worse part is though they have to go out of their way to break things. I mean there is enough HTML/CSS/etc in common between the two [IE and Netscape/Moz] that every website should at least be functional on both, if not presentable.
Pizza Pizza also doesn't work in Linux which means I have to boot my Windows laptop to get some chow
Tom
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Cheers!
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Pizza Pizza also doesn't work in Linux which means I have to boot my Windows laptop to get some chow ... :-(
737-1111 has worked for decades, and probably takes less time than rebooting :)
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To be honest, I'd rather take the 30 seconds to boot my laptop than talk with a human. Ordering Pizza [or dealing with most phone staff] is right up there with having my nails forcefully removed in terms of things I'd enjoy doing. Pizza phone folk are so f'ing stupid that it usually takes 3 times as long as simply clicking a few buttons on their website.
Tom
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Give me a BREAK....... (Score:5, Insightful)
Comcast doesn't hate Firefox. They probably don't see a need to support it. I remember 5+ years ago, running my linux boxes on Charter. They didn't support it, but that didn't mean they had a problem with me doing it.
Here's a hint to the idiot who posted this: DON'T INSTALL THEIR SOFTWARE. YOU DON'T NEED IT. Plug your router/linux box into the cable modem, DHCP, viola, internet connection. Easy as that.
Re:Give me a BREAK....... (Score:5, Funny)
FYI you can substitute the viola for a cello, worked fine for me. Just make sure to keep it in tune otherwise your cable signal goes all wonky
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Although my initial setups with Comcast have always gone smoothly -- I ran Linux but the installer only cared that I could pull up a webpage. However, this doesn't help if there is something dreadfully wrong on their side and you need them to diagnose it. For instance, I've seen cable installations (not Comcast) where t
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homepage even species? (Score:5, Funny)
Seriously though -- this seems like corporate laziness to the nth degree.
Browser compatibility (Score:2)
I know, I know, I could get Opera to pretend it's IE. That's still stupid.
Peter
They Don't (Score:5, Interesting)
They also offer no support. If you call with a trouble report you'd better pretend you are using a Windows machine when they give you their step by step connection test instructions. If they say "click Start -> Control Panel" and you say "I have neither", the problem is obviously on your end.
This is also true if you have only Macs and Linux, which I did at both my home and my studio when I first set those up. Luckily the guy who handled them had his Windows laptop.
By the way, Wild Blue satellite, same thing. They have independent installers, but Wild Blue tech support can't help them if they run into a problem on and only Linux machines are on the customer's end.
Re:They Don't (Score:5, Insightful)
I worked tech support for AT&T@Home and ATTBI. If someone would call saying they had connectivity problems and they were running an alternative OS we were instructed to powercycle their modem remotely and if still no bloc-sync, to have them do it manually with a power down. If still nothing we rolled a truck after explaining that if it wasn't a line issue they would have to pay. Now, if that tech arrived at their house, hooked up the laptop and found that they had bloc-sync after all, then the person paid $90 for the trouble call.
Honestly, if you're running Linux in your home and nothing else, I expect you to be able to handle powercycling yourself and insuring that your computer is running properly (including checking your router, your ethernet card, and to make sure your DHCP client is running).
What Install? (Score:4, Informative)
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linux support - zero (Score:2)
Unrelated to the lack of linux support, what I see via tcpdump is a complete loss of traffic for about 1 to 3 minutes followed by a large amount (sometimes hundreds per second) of only ARP traffic, followed shortly after that by normal traff
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Untrue (Score:5, Informative)
I called their tech support line and explained the problem. The first person I got didn't know how to handle it, so they passed me on to their supervisor. The supervisor recognized the problem and knew how to solve it. He asked me for the serial number of my cable modem, the MAC address of the network card connecting to it and a few other minor bits of data. He entered it manually into their systems and told me to reboot the cable modem. It came up perfectly.
Admittedly, needing to call tech support for your "self-install" is a hassle, but it's still a far cry from "not supporting".
Verizon does similar (Score:4, Insightful)
If you call them up to ask for help and actively tell them you don't want to install the software, they'll grumble for a while but eventually cave and step you through how to manually connect to and configure the DSL Bridge/Router they ship you.
comcast will soon love FF, opera, konq, etc. (Score:2, Interesting)
Screenshots of Safari for Windows (Score:2)
The Mac Cop-Out (Score:5, Funny)
If I call anyone's support about difficulties (cable modem troubles at home, network issues at work) they will frequently jump as soon as they realize (sometimes after a comically long time) that I'm using a Mac, and declare with infinite righteousness and authority that my problem is definitely "Mac-related." And then they're off the hook, as far as they're concerned.
It doesn't really matter if it's a router issue, or even a bad password -- for some reason, the cause is always "Mac-related." They wash their hands of it and skip away free, easy as pie.
For me, when a technician or supportist utters that phrase what I hear is, "I'm incompetent, and I'm hoping you don't know enough to see that. See the pretty icon? Clicky-clicky!"
It plays into the myth that Mac users are somehow rare -- somehow few and far between. You can bash about market-share voodoo until you're blue in the face, it won't change the fact that it isn't hard to find Mac users. There are definitely fewer Mac users than Windows users, but that smaller number isn't nearly as insignificant as some would have us believe.
"I'm sorry, but the vast majority of our users use Windows. I can't help you."
"As a Mac user, that's very disappointing."
"Yeah, I get that all the time."
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By the way, they use the 'It's a Windows related issue, call your OEM/Microsoft.' just as often, trust me.
Comcast support (Score:5, Interesting)
It then took another 12 minutes to explain that the OS of my choice has nothing to do with a modem that is failed. I was finally booted to a real technician after asking for a MAC address reassignment (tip: start using tech words and asking for things you can't actually do over the phone) I was able to get someone who at least understood what happened and send out a new modem.
What does this have to do with the topic? Well, I was asked to check a page at Comcast for terms, during the time I had told the "tech" that my cable was out, as they flat out said they would not support any issues with Firefox, especially under Linux, neither of which had anything to do with the problem.
Next time, I'll tell them I'm in BeOS or V2.
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So on that day, some poor BS script reader got to learn about Windows 3.11, Linux, BSD, OS X, BeOS, AIX, and any other TLA (three letter abbreviation) I could think
Re:Comcast support (Score:4, Insightful)
Verizon FIOS Techs required Windows (Score:5, Funny)
Support of their Router (Score:2)
Not if you have a brain... (Score:2, Informative)
Could be worse (Score:3, Interesting)
Fortunately, for now the FCC still requires them to allow you to use other ISPs (if you pay more, but it's worth it). No telling how long that will last, though.
Handling Linux (Score:2)
It's simple, the responce would be
a) Contact Microsoft
b) Get a copy of Vista
c) Install it
d) Then contact us
;-)
Jaj
Injustice to the nth degree! (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously, get off Slashdot if you don't know how to set up an Internet connection. You're lamenting the fact you don't get a few browser helper objects, your IE branded, default home and search pages changed, and about 3 or 4 extra things run at startup installed.
Comcast - Chicago West (Score:2)
1. Initial setup was they absolutely insisted on having me use a Windows PC to run the setup software. This didn't install anything, but did activate the cable modem. When I told them all I had was Linux, they offered to do it manually but that would "take a couple of weeks". In reality it took about 24 hours for the request to go thru the system.
2. Every time since then, when ever I've seen them do an install or troubleshoot, they don't even b
Comcast has always been helpful if not... (Score:2)
The key is to know the lingo (Score:5, Informative)
The key to working with Comcast is to have some basic technical knowledge of cable internet. Once you show you know the lingo and you know the basic technical aspects, you'll either get the support person to "talk up" to your level immediately or switch you to someone that knows. Most support people have at least heard some of the terminology, usually enough to know if they're in over their head and need to route you to someone else.
For example, if you buy your own modem, NEVER say "I need my new modem INSTALLED." Say "I need my new modem PROVISIONED". 95% of the support people will know right away what you need and won't bother asking you about Windows and you'll be online 15 minutes later.
Know how to get to the status page of your modem (usually http://192.168.100.1/ [192.168.100.1] but may vary depending on model). Know that your downstream signal needs to be between -10 and +10 dBmV. Know that your downstream SNR should be above 33. Know that your upstream power should be between +30 and +50 dBmV. When my signal dropped because of a splice in the line gone bad, I didn't tell Comcast "my internet don't work", I told them, "my downstream power is -16, which is out-of-spec, I need a tech to take a look at this". I had a tech out the very next morning and was back online by the afternoon.
Also, whenever you have a problem, BEFORE you call do the mantra of restarting your cable modem, router, and computer. Even if you know this will not fix the issue, do it. Then take the router out of the loop and do it all over again. Then when you call, tell them you did all this already. This will save time.
In all the times that I have had to call Comcast for technical issues, not once did the subject of Windows ever come up.
A generation of Microsoft-only weenies (Score:3)
I guess Microsoft deliberately nutured this little ecosystems; not just in the positive sense of focussing on developers, but in the negative sense by their careful marketing and PR speak aimed at FUDding everything else.
This is nothing new to Slashdot. What's perhaps interesting is that there are still lots of techies in this mindset, when people here clearly feel things have moved on
Linux installs... (Score:3, Insightful)
This is nothing new (Score:3, Interesting)
The same thing happened with Dragon Naturally Speaking, in the last version before MS bought it and built it into Word. Same checking and forced install, same rationale, same story from tech support, except we finally got one guy to admit it would work with another browser after we told him we'd already done it.
We had Adelphia for telecom at the time. They also force installed IE with their software. We just didn't install their software since it was nothing but IE, some help files, some self-promotion, and AOL and Earthlink install programs. The important stuff, ports and s4erver names and whatnot, were in the instructions, and Opera read those off the CD just dandy. Whenever we called for tech support they asked if we had IE. We said no, we had Opera. They said they didn't support that. We said we weren't asking them to support the browser, we wanted them to fix the problem with the line or network, and in fact I forbid them to attempt to provide "support" for anything from the wall plug in because I didn't trust them to leave my system in the state I wanted it.
Kickbacks. That's what it comes down to. Probably not direct monetary kickbacks, but something like reduced support charges for their own Windows Server software as long as they standardized their network by having everyone use one "standard" browser. Then again, this was Adelphia, so it might well have been payola.
Non-issue really (Score:4, Informative)
To get their service going:
Call Comcast, deal with the stupid support people and get your account set up.
Throw whatever disks they give you in the trash.
Connect modem to router.
Enjoy pretty fast service (at least in my area).
What's the problem? I don't use their web portal (or at least very rarely) and the modem that I bought works fine with their service and my router.
Yeah, they hate Firefox. (Score:3, Informative)
Yep, they hate anything that's not from Microsoft.
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I've been considering switching to Comcast from DSL, but I can't see paying a cable company when I have DirecTV. Those two are the only choices in my community. DSL or Comcast. I'm sure there are other DSL providers, but they're all just as slow.
The consumer doesn't have much choice, unless they want to move to an area with better Internet service.
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I am as far away as possible from the phone company
Fios has not yet been rolled out to my neighborhood.
There is the wireless broadband being touted in this area
Or I have 8Mbps from comcast which works pretty well >95% of the time - or at least it does when I am awake