Never before has a cable company taken so many precautions to protect the public from accidentally walking into a work vehicle parked in a private driveway miles from civilisation.



Way to go, Comcast. Perhaps the next step will be an electric cable to fence the van off. It would be the only cable that worked first time.

Comcast are about as useful as a snowball in hell. You would think that the least a mobile computer user could expect from a homogenous faceless corporation is a standard internet service wherever you go. But no. Sending emails is a hassle.

Port 25 blocked - sometimes

Until this morning, two Macs in our new Comcast-fed abode lay dead in the water, as far as email out was concerned. Ordinarily, flitting from one ISP to another while on the move, you would expect a little aggravation (perhaps) sending emails from Outlook or Mail. Perish the thought that emailing could be straightforward, and companies stick to one system! But to have to reconfigure your email account when emailing via the same company - come on, what's with that?!!!!

Well, for the bored with life, what's with that is this:

Port 25 is standard for outgoing emails

If you use Outlook or some other desktop mail client, (rather than hotmail or gmail) emails leave your computer via port number 25. Sadly, spammers know that too, and use port 25 to flood the world with digital crap. Because ISP's are part of the spam problem, unable to keep up with spammer tactics, basically, most choose to bury their head in the sand and block bona fide idiots like me from using port 25 to send their own legitimate emails while on the move.

That would be almost fine as a tactic if a) - it were a consistent policy, and b) - there were a clear set of instructions on what to do when faced with port 25 blocking. Comcast screwed up on both counts. At my last house they didn't have an issue with port 25, but at this place they do. And getting info from Comcast is like pulling teeth.

Checking to see why you cannot send emails

If you try to send emails and you see your email timing out for no apparent reason, you can do this telnet trick to troubleshoot your mail client. In my case, it proved that I wasn't mad and it said in black and white that there was no address ie the ISP, the craptacular crock of Comcast was blocking port 25.

Comcast help not

With hackles up, locked out of sending email for what reason? you ask Comcast Help for help. Because they only have like 2 permutations in their help book, anyone who isn't using comcast email and Outlook is pretty much floundering for an explanation from a techy. How annoying is it to find yourself in that loop of "Not my problem, talk to the hand, and then talk to the people who make your eMail client."

Of course, when pressed, the techy can bullshit you with "expansive online cross platform real world help" and give you a URL to a page with lovely photographic instructions for various email clients, one of which included step-by-step moves to set up Apple Mail.

And that is where the real issues began, because the instructions to send emails out via the Comcast server don't fricking well work. After following their arcane and completely erroneous instructions, I get over 900 unread emails downloaded, and downloaded and downloaded. I know I am popular, but not that popular. And I could not send a hint of an email still.

Apple support

Thank goodness for unpaid non-Comcast affiliated experts who rove the help forums at Apple support and take the time to apply their expertise to write clear simple steps on how to solve other companies' problems.

For anyone who is interested, you need to use port 587 and keep the rest real simple, much more simple than Comcast would have you believe.

Or to keep it real simple, stay at home and stick to a webmail set up.

I just found another nail to thump into the coffin of cable TV. The Best Online Documentaries web site could swipe the history, science and discovery channel buttons off the remote control of even the most channel-saturated cable provider on earth. And let's not forget the minor detail of user-friendly access to all that material.

Navigating cable TV is crap

Imagine, it took me 5 seconds to navigate to wherever I wanted on the documentaries website. Pop-outs, structure, logic. Hmmm!! That is quite a contrast to the arcane navigation offered by my 21st century cable company. I am a frustrated wound-up ball of nastiness, trying to find programs on the box. And I have so many blisters from pressing the arrows to get from CSI to The Simpsons, it isn't funny.

And as for working out the stupid time divisions in the menu. Hey, bonzo cable guy, I don't care what is on in an hour, give me a list of what is on now, please!

Free documentaries, cheaper cable?

So there you have it, an on-line solution for educational viewing, as opposed to TV that will turn your acute mind into candy floss. And for a laugh, see how far you get with your cable company, asking for a discount on your basic service.

Hi I only need 3 channels now. 3 divided by 100, that makes it 45 cents a month pro rata.

I bet you the operator says they will refer the request to a supervisor, and you will never hear from the Customer Service people till the next problem you encounter.

I have been posting at least one article per day in the web tech section of The Pisstakers since we started in August 2006, but alas nothing seemed to get pinged yesterday. Sorry. The wonders of technology, it was taking 2 hours to upload a file that should have taken a couple of minutes. And the kicker - total failure to publish the rss file.

So, apologies to you and sorry to everyone who got in the way of my bad mood yesterday. I was at my limit of patience watching 3-word test emails time out! But I found a solution.

Fricking Comcast and their hi tech hardware. Don't you just love trouble-shooting damn fancy modems! Instead of falling out of sync for no reason, why couldn't it have flashed a light to say that it was out of sync. Perhaps I would have rested easier, had I thought it was a simple push of a reset button.

Download performance, or lack of it

Just to give you your money's worth of ranting, let me add another article to the Comcast archive. Below is a graphic of our 100mb/sec service performance. 5.6Mb/sec download speed. Hmmm. And upload speed? Apologies - but it was too embarrassing to print! 312kb/sec upload barely made a mark on a graph. Fricking pitiful. (Click on the graph to check your own speeds out.)

Slow internet cripples a nation's progress

Sorry to tarnish a whole nation with one Comcastic brush, but, if this is the best there is in the whole continent, the US is screwed in its capacity as an international economic power. I may be a Pisstaker, but I do know a bit about what goes on in the outside world. Internet provision is essential for future economic prosperity. Internet provision in USA is abysmal. Americans claim to be a world leader in technology. Sorry, that adds up to a horrible dose of reality by 2020.

It doesn't really bother me, because, hey, I already have an education and only need to publish a poxy blog with one small image per post. But what about the youngsters and technology-based ie nearly all companies that rely on the internet to conduct their business? They are working with one hand tied behind their back.

Wii-ing in the wind

And enough already of falsely congratulating the wonders of free markets as a solution to everything. Japanese Wii-playing internet providers and suicidal Swedes didn't get first and second in the list of high speed internet because their leaders held up their arms and allowed a free for all! But Comcast have got rich and uber powerful because US authorities did, and look where they are in the list!

Rather than picking on America, every English-speaking government really needs to step up to the plate and make sure free competition isn't quite so free, because if Swedish or Japanese become the primary languages on the internet, what have English-speaking countries got to fall back on for a marketing edge in the world of business? Certainly not a workforce capable of communicating in two or three languages. "2 languages in the same head? Noone can live at that speed!" (Eddie Izzard.)

Our life in the hands of Comcast? Ouch!

Every comcastic consumer in the US is definitely getting screwed one way or another already, but worse, the future kids, due to become captains of industry as well as pawns, are coming into line to be screwed royally too. It isn't good enough to be happy with lightening fast Wii's and slow-loading on-line timetables for the bus to the unemployment office. More than any generation before them, people will need access to a snappy and world-beating internet set-up. If not, a whole country could be left in the dust.

See, I am back full swing into the ranting with a happy heart, because the internet works!

Comcast again prove they are the biggest bunch of time-wasting arrogant shites you never want to do business with. The phone, the final third of our internet/cable/digital voice package was installed today, 3 weeks after the first couple went on line. Yeehah, plop.

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Until we signed up to them, Comcast were just a faceless name in a sea of ISP's advertising on TV. But we signed up. and just like when you buy a new car, suddenly you see your Comcast everywhere. The latest scandalous Comcast incident is the discovery by Tech basic of a supposed monthly bandwidth cap

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Comcast offer insanely fast internet, high definition cable TV and a digital phone service for $99/month in year one/$130 per month. thereafter. With such high tech services you would think they could do their investors a favor and employ courteous sales staff and helpful techs to maximise the returns on investment. Sadly, they have a monopoly in many parts of America, and Comcast treat their customers like shit.

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