As I said before, the only way to get a good deal with your telco is to switch services every now and then or at least threaten to. After checking what Comcast would give me to stay, it was clear that Verizon FiOS would be the better deal and I tried to set a date. Here is my story.
First of all, there were flyers on our door and people going door to door several months before this began all advertising FiOS. When we actually tried to GET it though, they said it wasn't in our area. Song and dance, call after call, nothing. We were stuck. So we set up a DSL package because it was still better than Comcast.
They delayed install for weeks sending us only a cryptic message that they were checking into the possibility of giving us DSL (which is crap because we had it before). I suspect that they were delaying us on purpose until the FiOS became available, but whatever. We wanted FiOS anyway.
When it finally got "turned on" and we were able to do so, we canceled the DSL order and set up one for FiOS instead. Everything went fairly smoothly even down to them calling the day before-hand to remind us and confirm the install date. Then the tech comes out and says that he couldn't install it because they hadn't actually run the fiber from their box in the ground to our house. That and some switch down the street hadn't been set yet (whatever).
He said they'd call us to let us know when the diggers would be out and that he'd already set up the install for the cable for us. They didn't call, but a few days later we found the front lawn spraypainted all over the place (no big deal since we're renting). I called anyway to confirm that they were going to do this right and found out that part of the order was entered wrong. The guy promised to fix it and gave me a tracking number.
As I was writing this, some guy from a third-party fiber installer pulled up and left a note on my door. I caught him and he says that they'll be out to install next week (ugh). Hopefully I can get them to expidite the actual install after that's done.
Reactions
So far, this process has been far less painful than I thought. The incompetence is there, but less than I feared. Also, the customer service people were helpful, spoke English, and were polite. We'll see how this turns out in a week or so.
So I got around to getting my credit filed a few weeks ago and now I'm sitting pretty with freeze letters from all three credit reporting companies. Here's a breakdown by company:
Equifax
They sent me a simple one page letter explaining that the freeze had been placed and giving instructions on how to lift it along with a 9ish digit pin. Simple enough. It's nice to note that you can lift the freeze by calling a phone number rather than having to mail something in. They also point out that you have the option to lift it for a specific party or for a period of time. So far so good.
They don't say how long it takes to lift the freeze so I called them to ask (but they were closed). Their hours kind of suck so I'll try again soon and post the results.
Experian
Like Equifax, they sent a single page description of the freeze and how it works with them. They even have a website I can log into to lift the freeze temporarily. Unfortunately, they say it could take up to 3 days to lift the freeze (which is crap since the computer system could lift the freeze in mere seconds). Otherwise, no issues.
Transunion
At first I had a little trouble because I piled all the mailings together and Transunion sent me a credit report along with my freeze. When I couldn't find the freeze data (in a separate mailing), I called them and had to navigate through their brutally hostile phone system (which insulted me and hung up on me once). Fortuneately the person who finally answers was polite and clearly a native English speaker. Once I sorted out the confusion, I opened the correct letter and found what I needed.
The freeze notification is 5 pages long and the PIN is a full 4 digits shorter than the other two companies. Amusingly, they seem to be chiding me for getting the freeze by reminding me how difficult it will be to get credit now (heh). Interesting note: they can't update my name and address information while the account is frozen. Bonus!
They are easily the most detailed in describing how lifting the freeze works though. They say that if you specify a specific entity to access your credit, you will be issued a custom number to give to whoever wants to run your credit. In other words, no one gets your PIN ever. Good.
Like Equifax, they have a phone number that I can call to lift the freeze, but because of their hours of operation (even worse than Equifax), I couldn't call to see how long it takes.
The Washington legislation outlaws the use of RFID "spy technologies" to collect consumer information without the owner's consent. The only problem is, heavy corporate lobbying narrowed the scope of the law (before Governor Gregoire signed it) to cover only criminal acts such as fraud, identity theft, or "some other illegal purpose" (making it a Class C felony to do so). Collecting information from consumer RFID chips for marketing purposes in Washington—with or without the owner's consent or even knowledge—is still fair game.
There are some cases where you might want to download software, movies, etc and it would be morally correct, but perhaps not strictly legal to do so.
For example, your son plays with your only copy of a rare movie and scratches it beyond recognition. I doubt any reasonable person would disagree with you downloading and burning a replacement (if you hadn't made a backup copy already).
Anyway, I'm not going to argue the ethics of downloading here. It's up to you to decide whether what you do online is correct and that's why this article about protecting you downloading privacy is important. Use the tips provided to make sure that the only person making a judgement call about your online activity is you.
The electronics industry’s dirty little secret is that they have extremely thin margins on gear, so they make up the cost difference by up-selling you on extended warranties and incredibly marked-up cables.
This is completely true. When I worked at a big named retailer, I could buy a 30 dollar cable for about $6 with my employee discount. Things like extended warranties, add on-services, and accessories are all the same.
It's this easy to destroy someone. Just post an ad on Craigslist.com stating that everything on a man's property is free and people will rob the place blind. All that's required is for someone to know when you're out of town.
In a Wired.com essay, Bruce Schneier writes how security professionals just think differently. While engineers try to figure out how to make things work, Security Professionals think about how to break them.
For example:
SmartWater is a liquid with a unique identifier linked to a particular owner. "The idea is for me to paint this stuff on my valuables as proof of ownership," I wrote when I first learned about the idea. "I think a better idea would be for me to paint it on your valuables, and then call the police."
And it's simply thinking in this way that would prevent a lot of bad products (like smart water) from ever being developed in the first place.
Josh discovered a mysterious $13 fee on his parents' phone bill, and as he tracked down the source of the bogus charge, he learned a lot about cramming. The FCC describes it as "the practice of placing unauthorized, misleading, or deceptive charges on your telephone bill" by third party companies, who bank on you being too confused/distracted/annoyed by your hard-to-read bill to notice.
Though the Virgina legislature examined payday lending, they only solution they brought forth was to limit them as far as interest rates and repayment periods. However, at least one small town has kicked out payday lenders via zoning laws. While this may not rate "big news" it is good news and caught my attention for this alone:
The sole proponent of amending the zoning was Randy Phelps, manager of the Advance America lending store in a nearby town. His company, whose Web site says it operates 2,800 stores nationwide, was seeking to open a cash advance store in a new strip shopping center, part of the town's new Wal-Mart complex.
"We're not evil people," Phelps protested to the council. "We provide a needed service."
"We're not evil people"…. Doesn't that give you chills? If pretending to hold a hand out in friendship while stabbing someone in the back with the other hand isn't evil I don't know what is. Of course, he could be oblivious to his own evil just like some other people.
Much love to my UK bretheren, but how the hell did you end up with such bad leadership?! (I know, pot, keddle and all that)…
Currently they're planning to add children to the DNA database:
Home Office officials said plans to include primary school children on the DNA record would be kept 'under review'. The DNA database includes 4.5 million samples of genetic material, many taken from people who have been arrested but never charged with a crime.
By next year, it is expected that 1.5 million of the samples will be from youngsters aged between ten and 18.
MIT is working on software that analyzes the surfaces in photos to see if the light patterns all match in order to detect fakes.
Many fraudulent images are created by combining parts of two or more photographs into a single image. When the parts are combined, the combination can sometimes be spotted by variations in the lighting conditions within the image. An observant person might notice such variations, Johnson says; however, "people are pretty insensitive to lighting."
Another technique is to check the grain of the photo for irregularities. When an object is placed within a photo, the new object will have differing grain from the original (though there are ways to reduce and eliminate this).
If you're wondering why this matters, check out these examples of how fake photos can be drastically harmful:
A British company has developed a camera that can see through clothes, but unlike Backscatter, it doesn't provide pornographic photos of the target.
Depending on the material, the signature of the wave is different, so that explosives can be distinguished from a block of clay and cocaine is different from a bag of flour.
It shoots some rays at the target and reads the response. It's more like a sonar device than a camera and it if works, this will be not only more effective at detecting threats, but also much better for personal privacy.
