Anyone still using FAX?

You're calling customers a "problem"?

Just refer them to us. ;-)

Some say, "The customer is always right." I say, right or wrong, the customer is always the guy who pays the bills. ;-)

Cheers! Rich

No, we have a Western Electric 317 in the kitchen. Seriously.

Sometimes yes :-)

The movie we saw a couple of days ago was partially in Siouan (but with sub-titles).

Maybe it's because he couldn't figure out anything more sophisticated? :-)

I've had "smart" phones for awhile now, and make extensive use of being able to access the Internet, check e-mail, play music, and read eBooks while out and about.

Plus my wife and I often play Scrabble while waiting at restaurants on one of our phones -- most places probably wouldn't let you bring in a regular Scrabble board. :-)

They're saying that the Blackberry guys (RIM) have gotten the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of dollars of free advertising from Obama, who's made more than one reference to how much he likes it. Too bad that Obama mentioning how much he likes living in the White House probably wouldn't due much for the depressed housing market...

---Joel

Nope, this thing has a remarkable battery run time and that's what really counts for many folks like me. I also had instances where others with their newfangled iPhones couldn't get a signal I happily chatted away.

I usually read. Also, got myself a Samsung NC10 after someone recommended that here in the NG. Around 8h on a battery charge and you can draw schematics on it all day long. But I also bought a Bluetooth mouse for it because the touchpad on those super-mini notebooks is kind of hard to do CAD with.

If they listed their Chicago home that would be one more on the side of the for-sale inventory.

I expect (hope?) that's more a matter of the service provider than the particular phone model, even though some phone models certainly have better RF sensitivity than others.

It does seem that it's primarily the "traveling sales guys" who have the fancy phones when a business is paying for it -- probably they're the most likely to really benefit from being able to send/receive immediate e-mail updates while on the road.

You wife might feel neglected if you do that too much. :-)

Good to hear that your NC10 is working out well.

---Joel

It runs on the Sprint CDMA network.

And here is the reality: When I suggested once that system configuration information, service status and such be accessible via polled email to the sales guys that was shot down as "too complicated". I could not believe it. Here they had all those fancy phone yet all they normally used them for was, well, to call someone. "Hey, Joe, when's the machine for Doctor So-and-so going to be ready?" Of course, the guys overseas would have to call at night or talk to an answering machine.

It's similar to fancy 4WD cars that are always driven in cities, or high end laptops where you see the guys in the airport lounge play sudoku or solitaire until the boarding call.

I don't do that when we are together although she also likes to read.

Haven't used it too much yet. For the last few biz trips I needed the big laptop because Gerber View is kind of iffy on a 600 pixel high screen. Plus it was at clients, where I could plug in.

Ok, going to let you all in on a new scam we got hit with.

First, our VISA had expired, so we got new cards. This card isn't used everyday, but we had a couple of things automatically using this card. We contacted the two companies, Vonage and Virgin Mobile, and updated the info. Didn't use it otherwise. This was in October.

Mid November, get a call from Visa Security. Had a few european charges on our card. Got them removed, and they sent out new cards. So far, so good.

Get new cards, reset Vonage to new cards and use them to buy one Christmas present from a vendor we have used for years. First of the year, we get another call from Visa Security. There are two purchases for $3.95 that hit our card, plus one for $79.05 that hit and was immediately removed. Told them not our purchases, so they cancel them and we get NEW cards... again...

Now is when it gets interesting. A few days later, we get a little package containing Acai diet pills, addressed to my wife. Reading the little note inside, in fine print, is the warning that this is your 'free' trial offer. If you do not cancel within 14 days, you will begin receiving monthy shipments of pills for the low price of $79.95!

We call the credit union, and ask "What Gives?" Seems that a bunch of folks have been clicking a link at Oprah's and Rachel Ray's websites for these pills. Just clicking the link places the order for the 'free trial' (just $3.95 shipping and handling!) However, we have never been to either site, so it seems that this is the latest scam: Steal addresses and card numbers. Test card with small charge. If it goes through (good card...) then ship 'product' with gotcha attached. If they don't call and cancel, you get them for big bucks!

Now, I went ahead and 'canceled' our order. It was officially listed as an internet order, placed from a bogus aol.com email address. It only took me three days, and about 6 hours on hold to get through to an operator to 'cancel!'

So, keep an eye on your credit card charges. They are getting cleverer and cleverer!

Oh, by the way. Remember that there were TWO $3.95 charges? A week later, we received a box containing a package of diet teas, and a 'different' brand of Acai pills... 8-)

Charlie

Had something like that happen about a year ago on a DEBIT card.

About once a week I peruse the bank account on-line.

Noticed two charges "pending", each for the $ equivalent of 1 Euro, charged in Paris... I've been in eastern France several times, but never Paris.

Called bank security. Suspicion: Test Charges before the BIG hit. They issued new cards, and watched. They never did let me know if they caught anyone.

So now I take a peek at the account every morning ;-)

...Jim Thompson

Hi Joerg,

iPhones run on AT&T, so that probably is the difference.

I've noticed that there's been a trend in the past, oh, say decade while the web has really taken off that "IT guys" today tend to be educated more about setting up and configuring software and networks and building relatively static web pages... but their education in actual *programming* has taken a bit of a dive. Hence, as soon as you ask for something that requires a bit of newly developed software, you get that "too complicated" response.

(At both my current employer and the last one the IT guys haven't been programmers... although at both places they were also busily working on their MSCEs...)

Of course, I suppose this applies to electrical engineers as well... look at how much analog design has been de-emphasized in the past decade...

How long ago were you making your suggestion there? These days I'd expect the suggested method to obtain configuration/service information would be to just set up a web site designed for the small screens of mobile devices.

The HP Mini 2140 is coming out with an option for a 1366x768 screen in March:

---Joel

Yep, and a neighbor had to put a vertical yagi on a piece of irrigation pipe to get a signal. So far for "wireless".

It was several years ago but you'd be surprised how "set in their ways" sales departments can be. Case in point: At my very first employer we had a brain storm session to see what else we could market in the area of ultrasound. Engineers invited. Our team came up with the idea of ultrasonic toothbrushes. Thundering laughter, people almost rolling on the floor, was shot down of course. We could all have our own islands and LearJets by now if they hadn't shot that down :-(

Nah, mine is fine and has 6-cell. Plus I am not sure Microsoft will grant them the right to load XP. And I won't take anything else.

My take on "support" is they are now manned by total imbeciles.

Standard answer is that it must be my fault, re-boot, take two aspirin, and don't call or E-mail again. If you can understand these residents of "English-speaking" countries at all... worse than the Ebonics crowd at the banks :-(

Major useless ones: Dell, OLM, Cox and GoDaddy

Major stunning marvel of intelligent assistance: UltraEdit

Decently intelligent assistance, but cranky/crabby: Agent

...Jim Thompson

I was quite pleased with Dell so far. But I rarely needed support because those laptops and PCs last and last. The best is an 8-year old laptop that is now definitely north of 30,000 hours of use. It has a distinct valley in the touchpad and some letters on the keyboar a barely visible.

One of them had an early HD failure. Early as in after four years. A quick Newegg order and I had it back up. Imaging (ultrasound live images) was really slow now. Hmm. Went to Dell web site. Asked me to key in the service tag. I thought what the heck, well past warranty, it'll probably bounce. Nope, listed all the drivers for this particular laptop. Click, click, click -> install -> two drivers were younger than the laptop -> imaging was faster and zippier than when it was brand new.

The topper so far: Customer service agent in the south-east responded "Sah! Ye oarn't lisnin' da mee!" Problem is, I do understand a southern twang quite well but they were on one of those dreaded VoIP "new and improved" corporate networks.

Most of my "paperwork" transfer is now done by E-mail.

Occasionally I will password protect a ZIP file or place it on my FTP with a password to limit access, but that's rare, usually limited to very large files.

I did utilize PGP in the past, back when it was initially the rage. Haven't used it in a while... don't know if I even remember how now ;-)

...Jim Thompson

I would be quite surprised if it turned out that OneSuite.Com had a direct connection your ISP that doesn't route the packets through other systems.

The threat model is a clever lawyer in a multi-million dollar contract dispute arguing that a document was forged or modified before a judge who is a bit afraid of the spooky way that the internet moves data.

That being said, while a fax is better than an email in such a case, an email that is encrypted with a public key system (PGP, GPG...) is far better than either when it comes to tampering and/or forgery claims.

I believe that you mean repetitive stess injury, not carpal tunnel syndrome. Thumbs don't have carpal tunnels. :)

The RSI stopping them from texting will go well with the bad ears from listening to loud car stereos stopping them from using a telephone.

The problem is covincing a Luddite judge that the above is true.

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YourISP.Com

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True. But that assumes that both parties agree on the need for encryption and a method for doing so. https is available on all browsers and doesn't require non-technical people to install/configure anything. In fact the security is largely transparent to the users.

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That's what I was getting at. Some people with web shares don't have the proper admin access to set up the system accounts necessary to set up passworded FTP accounts.

Access control on a web server only requires write permission into a part of its file space.

I don't know if I explained that clearly.

The odd bit is that the library system in question seems to work just fine at all of their other sites. The one place it appears to be hiccuping is where the city has an organized crime problem. Its true that the admin is probably inept (or was told to leave this problem alone, if he doesn't want to wake up with horse parts in his bed). But if it was just buggy, I'd expect problems in other parts of their system.