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Kosmo Systems Inc, along with Ashley IT are proud to present their spam detection service called SimpleFilter. It is so simple, there is absolutely no software to install and it works with virtually any email client on any operating system. Checkout www.simplefilter.com
"We extended the license around (Microsoft's) browser in the AOL client because, frankly, it's worked very well"
Really?? Finally got a clue.
Maybe AOL will stop trying to bully partners into supporting Netscape. It was always puzzling to me that the AOL client software used IE yet they were emphatic about making sure partners websites fully supported Netscape!! See this.
Rogers Cable Internet connection went out again today from 11:45am to 12:32pm and is extremely intermittent at the moment. So intermittent in fact that getting email or trying to get to a webpage is almost impossible. Dialup would be much faster at this point.
Update: Seems the connection is pretty much back to normal now (has been since about 12:45pm). However I'm not able to reach a ton of sites on the net right now even from remote boxes I'm ssh'ed into. Very strange.
Rogers Cable connection went out from 2:40am to 4:02am and has been a little spotty since. In the last 6 hours packet loss has been approximately 22%.
Update: The technician showed up yesterday. I don't cancel them anymore when the connection actually comes back up on their own because most of the time it goes back down anyway so might as well have the technician show up. I told him that everything was fine as per usual. He said he would check the line outside the house anyway just to see what he can determine if anything. He said my signal is good on the low channels but about 10 times normal on the high channels. That might be good for clear TV but he said that in fact could potentially cause interference on the cable Internet. He said it is like that for the whole area most likely and they should probably do something about it.
Well only 3 days since the minor outage and 4 days since the last outage but I knew we'd be back to being out soon enough.
Been out since 3:21pm today and counting. Called Rogers Tech Support and initialy Hulio (Rep #8770) said that there were 5 modems out in the area but then later said that only 2 were out. After I explained the outages that are now 2-3 days apart typically and that they never involve a modem issue but rather a noise issue in the head end he said the only thing he could do was send out a technician to check the modem.
I spoke to a supervisor named Kevin (Rep #8457) and he said he found 3 modems down on the street out of about 15-20. Thats 15-20% if you ask me so as far as I'm concerned that is a pretty large number. If you can believe that is it just 3 and not 5 or more since they never really seem to be able to tell properly anyway. Anyway, I gave him the same spiel about outages occuring regularly and frequently and it always being the head-end. He said since there weren't enough out even if he sent a ticket to the network group they would just come back and recommend sending a technician out to check the modem. Not that it is going to make a difference in the slightest but he said he would mark the issue as cronic and have a senior technician come out.
Update: At 4:21pm it seems the connection is back up. Curious that it was exactly an hour of outage. Once again, this is good time to be back up but being out for even an hour (hey 5 mins is bad enough) is a serious disruption in my day. I've pretty much lost that hour of work. Half of it just sitting on the phone with Rogers.
4:14:11 PM
Friday, May 23, 2003
Rogers Cable Internet Update #3
Minor Rogers Cable outage today from 1:54pm to 2:04pm. This could be an indication of something more to come this afternoon.
Called Rogers tech support at approx. 11:40am today after being down since 10:45. I had my connection monitor running so I can see exactly when it went down. A couple power cycles of the modem did nothing as per usual.
Spoke with the first level rep named Beven (could it have been Kevin?? - I pretty sure I heard Beven a few times). Rep #0751. After having me power cycle the modem even though I told him I did this twice just before calling, he then said, wait there is a major outage in your area so he will send a ticket off to Network Support (Ref #WSR01133625). I asked that it be made high priority considering this has been happening almost every other day for the last couple weeks and that I was down for about 2 weeks in April. He said because it is a major outage that it will automatically be higher priority. He also mentioned that there was no scheduled outage or work being done in the area. Although, I've heard that before a number of times and then I've found out later that there was work going on (probably unscheduled so probably fixing up some problems they don't want to admit to).
Update: As I was writing this post it seems the connection has come back up at about 12:05pm. This has been the quickest return of service in the last 2-3 months. Lets see how long it stays up. Stay tuned.
The Rogers Cable net connection in my area is completely and utterly horrible. At my last place it was actually not bad with only 1 or 2 outages in a year which were typically resolved quickly. Here, I have a couple outages a week and they usually aren't resolved very quickly.
So, I am now going to document my tech support calls to Rogers to show everyone who is considering Rogers how rediculous their service is. I've been meaning to do this on the last 10 or so calls but I thought, this has got to be the last time I have problems. Everytime I think that a few days later there is another outage. Well, I'm going to start with the call today and backfill when I get time. It will take a few hours easily to backfill the old calls so don't expect them anytime soon. This isn't really something I'm looking forward to doing. I've created a separate category for these posts but they will show up in my regular feed as well.
Definitely an interview worth reading. Some great insight from Jim Baller on broadband. How I wish the absolutely lousy cable companies servicing my area would dissappear. They are Rogers Cable and Futureway Communications. Absolutely horrible service where I am now. Rogers wasn't too bad at my last place but here it is horrendous. One of the reasons is that Futureway actually provides the last mile infrastructure to the house but they have not a clue what they are doing. They actually tried to bring fiber to the house but had all kinds of problems and had to back out of that. They also provide phone service to the poor people who were unfortunate enough to go with them. I can't even count how many times people have been without phone service in the last year. Its unbelievable really.
Keeping Government Out Of The Broadband Business. Bryan writes "This is fitting. Since there's a growing number of local governments getting into the municipal broadband business (either because the local companies won't serve them, or serve them badly), there's now a push to outlaw government competition in both Ohio and Pennsylvania. It's definitely a growing controversy that will be getting noisier over the next several years as more communities get fed up with their broadband service and the companies begin lobbying heavily to stop the trend. Broadband Reports has posted an interesting interview with Jim Baller, one of the country's most experienced attorneys in municipal broadband, and he tries to dissect some of the conflict and answer the tough questions surrounding the idea. " [Techdirt]
8:41:45 PM
Thursday, May 15, 2003
Fuss about Feedster Fluff Stuff
No offense to Scott Johnson but what is all the fuss about Feedster images? I think better time can be spent working on the actual search capabilities of the most useful Feedster rather than this fluff stuff which is probably only useful to .001% of Feedster Users.
I finally found a GUI for sftp, ssh and scp for OSX. I've been trying to get MAC people to use ssh and scp for connected and sending/receiving files from me but it is tough to get people to use command line utilities when they are not used to it. Problem is now solved with this GUI front end to these utilities.
If one of the blog chatters is in you'll see a green indicator or an appropriate graphic. Just click on the green icon or the graphic and a custom chat window will pop up. you don't need an account or any special software. works with ie and mozilla on win/mac/linux.
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