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Submission + - Comcast Drops Spurious Fees When Customer Reveals Recording

An anonymous reader writes: In yet another example of the quality of Comcast's customer service, a story surfaced today of a Comcast customer who was over-charged for a service that was never provided. At first, the consumer seemed to be on the losing end of a customer service conversation, with Comcast insisting that the charges were fair. But then, the consumer whipped out a recording of a previous conversation that he had with another Comcast representative in which not only was the consumer promised that he wouldn't be charged for services not rendered, but the reason why was explained. Suddenly Comcast conceded, and the fees were dropped. But most telling of all, the Comcast rep implied that she only dropped them because he had taped his previous interaction with Comcast customer service.

Submission + - Techno-Archaeologists Used an Abandoned McDonald's to Hijack a Satellite (vice.com)

Daniel_Stuckey writes: From an abandoned McDonald's in the backyard of NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, a dozen or so volunteer scientists and engineers have taken control of a decommissioned, still running, 70s-era space satellite, currently some 20,000 kilometers away, by using discarded vintage space computers and a few sweet eBay finds. The so-named "McMoon's" Control Center is some sort of bizarre testament to human ingenuity and what a bunch of very smart people with virtually no budget or proper authorization can pull off. A bit of context: The International Sun-Earth Explorer (ISEE-3) satellite was launched on August 12, 1978, and was originally meant to study the Earth’s magnetosphere from the L1 Lagrangian point between the Sun and the Earth, where the gravity of both bodies cancel each other out.

Comment Re:I'm still running a wrt54gl too (Score 1) 427

I've been running a WRT-54GL for about that long but instead of running Tomato, I run DD-WRT. Runs very well too. My only complaint was that after months and months the Broadcom chip gets hot. So having studied electronics and worked building remote sensing circuit boards for oilfield, I know that heat kills electronics, and I did the only sane thing: put together a nice little heat sink, got some heat sink grease (thermal silicone grease), and stuck the heat sink to the top of the Broadcom chip. The whole thing gets warm, but the chip doesn't get hot, and it will stay running for many more years. As far as performance: yes it only has (802.11)b and g (but not n). Still, 802.11g is good enough for me to wirelessly stream movies (dvd, not blu-ray) to an LG box connected to the tv via an hdmi cable (dlna). If you really want to start your search (and want to run Tomato) start by looking on the Tomato web site and see what routers are supported. I know the dd-wrt site lists supported routers.

It's not that hard to mount an old 486 or Pentium fan in there.

Comment Re:+1 for this Post (Score 3, Informative) 427

If you've got an old 486 or early Pentium cooling fan, mount it inside the 54G.

You can find +12V near the power inlet.

You can use plastic/nylon motherboard standoffs with the little button clipped off to hold the fan up in the air over the big chip.

Use RTV silicon caulking compound to glue them to the 54's motherboard.

This presupposes you have a soldering iron and a voltmeter, or at least a soldering iron and enough knowledge of power supplies to tell where the filter caps are.

I've got a stack of 54s and non-wireless BEFSR41s and putting a fan inside makes a world of difference.

Submission + - WSJ: Computer Programming Is a Trade; Let's Act Like It (wsj.com)

An anonymous reader writes: From the story "Fortunately, it turns out that a computer-science degree isn't necessary to get a job in programming. Fourteen percent of the members of some teams at Google don't have a college degree, and 67% of the programming jobs in the U.S. are at nontech companies where other kinds of industry experience are more likely to be valued.

Computer programming, in other words, has become a trade. Like nursing or welding, it's something in which a person can develop at least a basic proficiency within weeks or months. And once budding coders learn enough to get their first jobs, they get onto the same path to upward mobility offered to their in-demand, highly paid peers."

Comment Re:not really that hard, theoretically (Score 1) 177

No, the original intent was to ensure that slave owners could form militias to prevent slave revolts. The Founders were well aware of the inability of militias to stand against a professional army as consistently demonstrated in the American Revolution.

Yeah, if the colonies' professional army hadn't been able to defeat King George III's militias, we'd all be speaking English now.

Comment Re:not really that hard, theoretically (Score 1) 177

The original intent was to prevent the government from having too much power by ensuring that citizens could form militias. Having arms available to everyone (not just the government's army) was an essential part of being able to raise a militia.

The original intent was to make militias possible so that they could avoid having to have a standing army.

They were very big on the idea of not having a standing army.

Submission + - Cringley: IBM not a viable company, propping itself up by trippling its debt (cringely.com)

McGruber writes: Robert X. Cringely has a new ebook out, titled "The Decline and Fall of IBM" (http://www.cringely.com/2014/06/04/decline-fall-ibm/). Cringely believes that IBM is in deep trouble and has been since before the Great Recession of 2008. He also says that the company has probably been doomed since 2010.

On Sunday, Cringley was interviewed on the nationally syndicated talkradio program Moneytalk. Program host Bob Brinker (http://bobbrinker.com/) pointed out that Warren Buffett bought almost $11 billion worth of IBM common stock, then asked Cringley "what did he miss?" Cringley answered that IBM is in a downward spiral because it is focused on maintaining and increasing earnings per share (EPS). IBM is borrowing money to buy back shares, propping up EPS but adding debt. IBM's debt has tripled in the last 5 years.

Cringley also told Brinker that IBM has gone from hardware sales to selling services but they have poor customer retention, having lost the state of Texas and The Walt Disney Company. Their sales culture tends to bid low to win the contract and then extract more dollars by selling extra services. IBM also lost a contract with the CIA to Amazon. A person who called-in to the program pointed out that IBM lost its leadership in product development, lost sales of its core products to Fortune 500 companies, and its software business is eroding because of open source applications. Cringely concurred with the caller and told him "you made my point."(http://honeysbobbrinkerbeehivebuzz3.blogspot.com/)

Comment Re:If you *lourve* your job ... (Score 1) 135

Hierarchy has been the primary source of inefficiency everywhere I've ever worked. But how to design an organization that can coordinate itself without hierarchy, especially given that it's made of humans used to playing games of master and servant rather than cooperating for common goals?

Create a common goal, for starters. The rest will fall into place.

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