20 years after the fall of the wall, the democratically elected German government has possibilities of surveillance, the East German state was only dreaming of.
Every phone call, every email, ever visited website – it’s all saved for 6 months and can be traced back. With regards to a crime and under judicial control? No, from every single web user, in advance, turning up side down the presumption of innocence. But it is all to our best and will never possibly used against us.
Friends and colleagues had warned me with a pitiful smile. If a Belgian service provider says that the installation of phone, Internet, TV, whatever, will take place between 8 and 12 in the morning; the chances of the installation team showing up are hazardous at the best. Based on the experience of other people, it is apparently perfectly possible to spend two if not three mornings at home waiting for a service provider never to come.
However, once they had entered my apartment, it was a bit weird to have these two guys there , talking about their job, the color of the company t-shirts and the annoying boss as if I were simply not present. They only realised that I eventually was when I had to sign several papers with the mention “read and approved” signing my soul over to the devil finally getting my very own high speed Internet connection at home.
When people go to a doctor and tell him that they have, let’s say, problem with the stomach; they would not trust this doctor if he immediately gave them a prescription and told them to go home. A doctor is expected to ask questions like What was the last thing you ate?; Since when does it hurt?; Is it the belly or further up?; and the patient will not only answer the questions but will feel taken care of and well treated.
When people complain about an IT problem, they don’t want to be asked questions and even less want to answer them. The solution has to be immediate, easy and without costs. No: What did you do last before the system crashed?; Did you get any error message and if yes, what does it say? Did you reboot?; etc. when a programme is not working as it should.
A good IT support is like a good doctor: a very rare species, able to break down complex issues into understandable terms and someone you never ever want to let go. . .
So far, the Ubuntu experiment was not working out very well. I had it installed in parallel to Windows Vista and hardly ever used it. I’m a normal user. I’m willing to click my way through programmes and modify the settings but everything which requires me to learn a new language in order to speak to my computer, goes beyond my IT capacities and my willingness.
I was considering to remove the whole Ubuntu linux thing; until yesterday evening. Thanks to Windows and a bunch of extremely stupid “we have to protect intellectual property” companies – I’m now much more in favor of Ubuntu than I ever was. What happened is that I could not play the DVD I wanted to watch because I had changed the region for the DVD drive too often. Excuse me? If a friend of mine has a book I’m interest in, I will ask to borrow it. Same for CDs and DVDs. And my friends are Americans, Europeans, Asians, etc.
Microsoft and others apparently think that this is, if not illegal, at least highly suspicious. Because I could abuse itand therefore limit the number of times you can change regional settings for the DVD drive. And if the regional setting of the drive doesn’t correspond to the one of the DVD, it doesn’t play.
Now, being p*ssed of by this kind of customer treatment and having a whole evening to spend, I not only fixed the booting problem with Ubuntu but also another problem with the mouse driver. The fan is still not turning as it should linked to a CPU problem and the build-in media player is not the best. However, I watched my DVD with a delay of 20 minutes only and decided that the Ubuntu experiment will be continued. With renewed energy and motivation.
Congrats to all those hyper protective, paranoid and greedy companies – your behaviour makes me embrace open source in a way it never happened before.
Every time I’m decided to really, really get to the shop and buy the material I need to set up an Internet connection at home, the unprotected WiFi is working fine.
But the moment I really need it to work – preferably on Sundays when shops are closed – it is down.
Error in the database. The uploaded data for subscribers is not read correctly. Result: Emails to subscribers go out as text instead of html. BIG BIG issue.
Why does this kind of thing always happen on a Monday morning or on a Friday evening?
