As you may know we had a good size snow storm here in the mountains of western North Carolina. It’s not unusual, but we will many times go a few years between these big storms. This one brought a tree down on the phone line just before it branches to our house and one other. I called Verizon the first night (Saturday) and got a (!$!$!$!) robot attendant that told me many outages were reported in our area and it should be fixed by Monday at 9 something AM. Not wanting to waste the time then with holding for a person I resolved to call a second line. At this point I could see the line hanging to the ground from the pole and knew they were not aware of it though. I called from a cell phone (of course…)
Tag: verizon
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Strange Problem Made Simple | Verizon DSL Modem confusion
I had a machine that I picked up to test internet connectivity. They were able to do email, but not visit web pages. My first thought was that internet explorer may have been a bit sideways, but when I got it to the workbench I figured I had solved the problem. No ethernet port. They’ve been using USB then to connect to their DSL modem. So, I plugged in a network card and tested and everything worked fine and scheduled the redelivery. But, when I got it onsite things didn’t quite work out as smoothly. Here’s the setup. A DSL modem with built in switch had a laptop hooked up via ethernet (with absolutely NO connectivity problems) and this desktop which was hooked up first via USB and now via ethernet.
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How to use wireless networking on a laptop
This is one that I run into from time to time. Most laptops the last year or two (actually maybe a bit longer), have built in wireless networking. This is great and makes for easy access to wireless access points just about anywhere. In fact, most current operating systems (Windows XP included) usually do a great job of detecting available networks. (Sometimes they do too good a job which is why wireless security is an issue, but we’ll save that for a future post.) I’ve run into several laptops over the last few years though that supposedly had wireless networking, but the user hadn’t been able to access any wireless networks with the laptop. Usually it’s an easy fix….
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Some companies unable to secure your data
It’s sad, but true. Some companies are just plain irresponsible with your data. Whether it be credit card information, or address and phone number there are those that aren’t good about keeping their databases private. The securityfix is reporting that a recent survey found 12% of people had been notified by companies that they did business with over a breach of security resulting in data loss. Apparently 20% of those, closed accounts subsequently.
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NY requires businesses to disclose security breaches.
The Register writes that New York has passed a law that will require local government agencies and businesses to disclose security breaches. (System broken into or data stolen). I can understand businesses being reluctant to disclose this kind of information. “What will they say about us”, “bad reputation”, “we’ll lose customers”, the thoughts could go on. However, there are some people that respect a business that is up front about a problem like this.