Wednesday, July 18, 2007

I attempted to post yesterday but my Net connection was messed up. I'm not sure if I should blame AT&T or my apartment manager.

I'm also experiencing lots of interference on my phone-line. During a "round-table" interview with The Paracast, I endured long bouts of clicking and static. It's not incapacitating, but it's close.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Blame AT&T (the modern equivalent of a Frankensteinian monster, or the recombinant DNA hybrid of the old AT&T, or Ma/Pa Bell). My AT&T DSL connection has also been flaky of late and at times past all too often.

Their email servers, depending on who and what I'm emailing to and getting mail from, seem to be incredibly slow and fucked up at times. They are also infested with Back Orifice (ASN BO1) port scanning attacks via not just their networks, but also inhabiting their server farms.

You'd think AT&T, now the world's largest and wealthiest telecommunications corporation on earth could figure out how to eliminate and enhance their services, but no, that might shave a fraction of a percent off their profits. That's how corporations lose their edge and clients to their up and coming competitors.

A kind of corporate social Darwinism. We all suffer in the mean time, though. I used to be a phone phreak or telecomm hacker back in the early to late '70's, and I was part of an informal group wherein I was one of the social engineers and legal consigliare's.

(I remember how they became such an evil, backward monopoly that Judge Greene had to break their monopoly for their crimes of economic manipulation and dominance back in early 1982 or so [it was a good day and new dawn, for the last quarter century, at least], for crimes against their customers for profiteering, among a vast host of other corporate, financial, technologically restrictive criminal, proven actions)

Well, this missive will go through the AT&T secret room in San Francisco (see Wired 'zine articles, etc.)for the edification and perusal of our very own good old NSA/ATT/USG industrial complex, but frankly my dears, I don't give a damn anymore. Fuck'em if they can't take a serious joke. Time to switch ISP's, if for no other reason than practical reliability and speed, if not the lowest cost, and to make a political statement.

[And yes, I know too well that this comment can easily (and hey! without warrants!) to my dynamic ISP address via logs at Pa's HQ or at Fort Meade, MD. I don't care, as I do nothing illegal, except perhaps speak my mind. When they start prosecuting thought crime, I will be there at the hustings...]

Come join me...

"Dr. Sidney Shafer,
The President's Analyst"

(movie character, played by James Coburn, about The Telephone Company's omniscient surveillance and control capacities--it was a 1967 hip, funny as hell, anti-abuse of authoritarinist romp, said the ghost of Gene Shalit. Go rent it!)

"--We don't care. We don't have to.
We're The Telephone Company."

Check out old online issues of YIPL, TAP, TEL, PHRACK, and check out the 2600 magazine and website, for 'further directory' assistance...

Anonymous said...

Or else the Sinister Forces have tapped your phone....

--WMB as Anon

Anonymous said...

Ya' think? Wouldn't be the first or the last time. Fucking bastards! The only positive thing about that is to relish the idea of what an incredibly mundane and boring job it must be to listen to other people's private, legally protected conversations, without warrants. Booooooorrrinnggg!

The boors. Arrogant neo-naifs on the loose, and we won't find out until many years from now, like the 1975/76 Church committee, et al, which exposed, somewhat, the intelligence horrors of the prior 30--now it's deja vu all over again, courtesy the assheads in the grey house (soiled until and unless vacated early 2009) and their mil & intell minions, via the UnPatriot Acts of the Bush League. Feh!