Phil Bowermaster has some thoughts on updating the Three Laws of Robotics.

<tone=”sarcastic”>Well, I’m sure glad that AT&T bought Bell South.</tone>

Their POP server has been down much of the day. When I go to the Bell South technical support web page, the link to “Network Status” no longer exists, even though when one does a search on “Network Status” one receives instructions to go to the Bell South technical support web page, and clink on the “Network Status” link…

The only other option is to chat with a representative. So I follow the link (it only works in Explorer, of course, not Firefox), and fill out the form with my name, rank, and phone number. And problem description. Which has a limited text field so it won’t allow me to print out the last letter of the problem. Or a complaint about their text box that does that. I click on the button to “Chat without diagnostics.” I get a new page that says the following:

The BellSouth FastAccess DSL eAgent option is currently unavailable.

The hours of operation to chat are as follows:

DSL Technical Questions 7:00AM – 12:00AM 7 days a week
Billing Questions 8:00AM – 7:00PM Monday through Friday
8:30AM – 5:30PM Saturday
Order Status Questions 8:00AM – 8:00PM Monday through Friday

We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for choosing BellSouth FastAccess DSL!

They’re only available during working hours and some hours on weekends. I receive this message at a little after three Eastern time. But note that there’s no time zone. Maybe the scheduled times for chat are in whatever time zone Bangalore is in.

So, no email, no network status, no way to chat, no way to email (because I don’t have email, remember?). All I can do is call 611 and see if I can find a non-moron who knows what a POP server is, and doesn’t ask me to reboot my PC.

I don’t hold out high hopes. And here I was, thinking that Bell South Interweb service sucked before they were reabsorbed into the AT&T borg…

I mean, I am still the number two Google hit for “Bell South DNS problem,” two and a half years later.

[Update a couple minutes after posting this]

The power of the blogosphere! As soon as I put this post up, the server started working again. TM gets results!

[Update a couple minutes after the last update]

Now it’s timing out again. Oh, well.

[Update a few minutes later]

And now it’s working again. But even if it is, that doesn’t excuse their pathetic on-line help setup.

[An update an hour or so later]

OK, I’m only number two for “Bell South DNS problem”, but I’m numero uno for “tech support idiocy.”

<tone=”sarcastic”>Well, I’m sure glad that AT&T bought Bell South.</tone>

Their POP server has been down much of the day. When I go to the Bell South technical support web page, the link to “Network Status” no longer exists, even though when one does a search on “Network Status” one receives instructions to go to the Bell South technical support web page, and clink on the “Network Status” link…

The only other option is to chat with a representative. So I follow the link (it only works in Explorer, of course, not Firefox), and fill out the form with my name, rank, and phone number. And problem description. Which has a limited text field so it won’t allow me to print out the last letter of the problem. Or a complaint about their text box that does that. I click on the button to “Chat without diagnostics.” I get a new page that says the following:

The BellSouth FastAccess DSL eAgent option is currently unavailable.

The hours of operation to chat are as follows:

DSL Technical Questions 7:00AM – 12:00AM 7 days a week
Billing Questions 8:00AM – 7:00PM Monday through Friday
8:30AM – 5:30PM Saturday
Order Status Questions 8:00AM – 8:00PM Monday through Friday

We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for choosing BellSouth FastAccess DSL!

They’re only available during working hours and some hours on weekends. I receive this message at a little after three Eastern time. But note that there’s no time zone. Maybe the scheduled times for chat are in whatever time zone Bangalore is in.

So, no email, no network status, no way to chat, no way to email (because I don’t have email, remember?). All I can do is call 611 and see if I can find a non-moron who knows what a POP server is, and doesn’t ask me to reboot my PC.

I don’t hold out high hopes. And here I was, thinking that Bell South Interweb service sucked before they were reabsorbed into the AT&T borg…

I mean, I am still the number two Google hit for “Bell South DNS problem,” two and a half years later.

[Update a couple minutes after posting this]

The power of the blogosphere! As soon as I put this post up, the server started working again. TM gets results!

[Update a couple minutes after the last update]

Now it’s timing out again. Oh, well.

[Update a few minutes later]

And now it’s working again. But even if it is, that doesn’t excuse their pathetic on-line help setup.

[An update an hour or so later]

OK, I’m only number two for “Bell South DNS problem”, but I’m numero uno for “tech support idiocy.”

<tone=”sarcastic”>Well, I’m sure glad that AT&T bought Bell South.</tone>

Their POP server has been down much of the day. When I go to the Bell South technical support web page, the link to “Network Status” no longer exists, even though when one does a search on “Network Status” one receives instructions to go to the Bell South technical support web page, and clink on the “Network Status” link…

The only other option is to chat with a representative. So I follow the link (it only works in Explorer, of course, not Firefox), and fill out the form with my name, rank, and phone number. And problem description. Which has a limited text field so it won’t allow me to print out the last letter of the problem. Or a complaint about their text box that does that. I click on the button to “Chat without diagnostics.” I get a new page that says the following:

The BellSouth FastAccess DSL eAgent option is currently unavailable.

The hours of operation to chat are as follows:

DSL Technical Questions 7:00AM – 12:00AM 7 days a week
Billing Questions 8:00AM – 7:00PM Monday through Friday
8:30AM – 5:30PM Saturday
Order Status Questions 8:00AM – 8:00PM Monday through Friday

We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for choosing BellSouth FastAccess DSL!

They’re only available during working hours and some hours on weekends. I receive this message at a little after three Eastern time. But note that there’s no time zone. Maybe the scheduled times for chat are in whatever time zone Bangalore is in.

So, no email, no network status, no way to chat, no way to email (because I don’t have email, remember?). All I can do is call 611 and see if I can find a non-moron who knows what a POP server is, and doesn’t ask me to reboot my PC.

I don’t hold out high hopes. And here I was, thinking that Bell South Interweb service sucked before they were reabsorbed into the AT&T borg…

I mean, I am still the number two Google hit for “Bell South DNS problem,” two and a half years later.

[Update a couple minutes after posting this]

The power of the blogosphere! As soon as I put this post up, the server started working again. TM gets results!

[Update a couple minutes after the last update]

Now it’s timing out again. Oh, well.

[Update a few minutes later]

And now it’s working again. But even if it is, that doesn’t excuse their pathetic on-line help setup.

[An update an hour or so later]

OK, I’m only number two for “Bell South DNS problem”, but I’m numero uno for “tech support idiocy.”

Is aging natural? Or normal? And even if it is, does that mean we shouldn’t try to beat it?

I think that part of this is people falling prey to the naturalistic fallacy, and mistakenly assigning a good/bad value to “normal.”

A homebuilt 3-D printer that creates objects out of sugar.

Tapping the jet stream?

And have we overemotionalized the climate debate? The most interesting thing about this article is the source.

[Update in the afternoon]

From comments:

What kind of an axe does Rand then have to grind here? It seems to be just hypocricy. We see a string of climate articles with his blurbs suggesting “Warmmongers are in trouble” or some such. Why oh why?

Because the policy outcomes, if global warming is admitted to be real, are something he is against in principle? And yet he advocates against denying evolution in a few posts to the side. Oh, the irony.

My “axe to grind,” if I have one, is that I am a skeptic (not a “denier”) on the need to up-end our economy for climate change, as I am on all religions. If global warming is “real,” we’ll deal with it as the effects become evident, and we’ll have a much better chance of having the resources in the future with which to deal with it if we don’t panic about it right now.

My “axe to grind” is against the overrighteous and hypocritical moralists who want to preach to the rest of us how to live while refusing to live by their own sermons, and purchasing indulgences for themselves. It is against the watermelon socialists who are using this new religion as a means to implement the collectivist (and ultimately totalitarian) social goals that they couldn’t achieve in the Cold War.

This long ago ceased to be about science. And, FWIW, evolution remains on much more solid footing than climate models.

…geek blog sites.

…that we should view as curable.

Note to self: should the need unfortunately arise, tell the surgeon that I don’t want him to do my colostomy this way.

Either way, I suspect that you’ll still pay through the nose.