On one of my unlucky day – I found an ad pamphlet from Reliance Broadnet’s agency (FourTech computers, Shivajinagar, Pune). I decided to give him a call and got info that Reliance Broadband’s WiMax service was available in my area.

The engineers came, have me filled the form and got necessary ID and address proofs and a check of Rs 562 of installation charges.  After a couple of days they came for installations, installed the antenna, checked the signals and got the internet working for me. Wow, it was fine upto this point.

The next day – The nightmare starts….

The internet was not woking. I tried several time whole day but it never worked. The next day too, same situation. I gave a call to the engineers, they asked me to do some settings but I did not work. Then they asked me the MAC address of antenaa, which I gave them and said he will call back again… no call after that.

The same thing repeated the next day,  he never called back again…

From the next day onward, he started ignoring my call, so I gave call to his boss, Dhananjay. from FourTech computers, he said he will send engineer to look into it. But no call after that.

The next day I called him again but both of them started neglecting me. They never picked up my phone.

I gave them call from another number, and that time I got to talk to them. For next couple of days he promised he will come to my home to see the problem, but he did not come. Finally after 3-4 days, they came and checked that it is indeed not working. They said, next day they will come again and install the antenna on another wall. They did not come !!  Next day, I filled a complaint to Reliance broadband customer service. They assured that installation issues will be addressed soon. Customer service asked the engineers to do the job ASAP. I again called the guy to finish the installation, he promised to come in evening. At evening when I called back, he said he can not come as he was busy in another installation.

Finally I gave him last warning and gave him last chance to come the next day.

But at night, while sleeping, I decided to terminate the connection. Today I emailed the Reliance customer to terminate my connection and refund my installation charges.

These guys from FourTech computers, who do the installation for Reliance are only interested in Installation charges they collect from customers. Once collected, they do not give a damn to the customer and Reliance Broadband is not doing anything to protect customers.

MORAL OF THE STORY:

Stay Away from Reliance Broadband.

Update: Reliance guy came to terminate the connection after 15 days. And informed me that for last 15 days Reliance network is down and many customers lost their connectivity. I feel good that I terminated the connection. My neighbour also confirmed that they lost connectivity for last 15 days. Bad Network. Bad services.

The cyberpolicing is increasing in India, our communication is traceable to our home.

Whatever you are doing on internet is recorded by the server with your IP address. And ISP knows which IP address is used by which user (or cybercafe). Thus with the help of ISP and website (ie, google, orkut, yahoo, rediff, etc) Its quite straight forward to locate the user who posted questionable content on internet.

Recently, Rahul Vaid, an IT professional in Delhi was held for posting obscene messages against Sonia Gandhi, on orkut. Click for more news.

In another incident, Lakshmana Kailash K., a 26 year old techie, was arrested at his home, according to news reports. He was held for 50 days in Jail on charges of defaming Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj on Orkut. Click for more news

But with little efforts, and cautiousness, you can surf online, surf orkut, post scraps, upload pictures, without being caught. This is called anonymous browsing.

When you go online, you leave tracks all over the place. You could be hanging out with friends on IM, checking out websites, or do

wnloading music. If you live in a country where snoops are prying into what ordinary citizens do online (lke, um, the US) you want a way to cover those tracks.

If you’re in school, though, then it’s even worse. No matter what country you’re in, chances are that your access to the internets is as snooped-on as any police state in the world.

So, how do we escape our little virtual prisons? In this Instructable, I’ll tell you about something called Tor (The Onion Router.) I’ll tell you how it works, and then offer some simple instructions on how to get your web browser hooked up. No more getting snooped!

Here is a link that teaches how to do it.

Click Here

Click this link to see whole photostream of Meena Kadri’s photo set of Bollywood mud flaps on Auto rickshaws.

This is just advertisement, reality is so ugly. I have vodafone postpaid connection, and whenever I try to contact customer care, everytime I get into trouble, waste my 20-30 minutes and then leave.

The problems are every time different…..

1. When I dial 111, it doesn’t reach many times

2. “Sorry we are unable to process your request now” – The only message I hear on first time.

3. It starts with “welcome to vodafone…” then it asks my mob no to enter, then reads the number that I entered, then asks me to confirm, then gives options to choose, and then again ” sorry we are unable to process your request”

4. IVR starts directly in Marathi(I dont understand), and I can not figure out where to change it. Once I asked it to customercare where to change the language.

Update: a few more…

5. “Hello welcome to vodafone – sorry we are unable to process your request now” so idotic…

Just plain sucks – Vodafone. I hate you and going to ditch u very soon.

Seems some crackers, found a way, wrote script to automatically add users in communities. Orkut sucks..

1. Sachin Tendulkar
2. The Shahrukh Khan Fan Club
3. CuT tHe CrAp…LisZiN’ 2 MiNe
4. ٱ нυят мyรєℓƒ, รσ υ cคภ’т.
5. Om Shanti Om -Mega Blockbuster
6. I Hate The Morning Alarm!!
7. helllllll…..
8. CHAK DE INDIA
9. Chelsea
10. Naughty by Nature………
11. I am, wat u can never be!
12. I am CooL in my own StyLe

All above communitties were added in my account automatically.

Google search link

Is it any google bomb ??

The main features are – built in sidebar and mediabar for facebook, youtube, flickr, blogs etc….

It is not much usefull for normal browsing needs like checking emails and read news but quite useful for the above mentioned uses…

Link: www.flock.com

Update: And you know what – I have written this wordpress blog post right from the Flock’s ‘Blog editor’ tool. Isnt it kewl ?

The link is for Google Image Labeler (http://images.google.co.in/imagelabeler/)

It is supposed to be for google.com domain but link points to google.co.in domain

http://www.0×4849.net/quiz/cpp/

http://www.cprogramming.com/cgi-bin/quiz.cgi

http://www.lumosity.com/iq_tests/preview?number=1

“We unanimously agree on the disapproval of OOXML with comments. The same will be submitted to ISO,” National Informatics Centre head and BIS technical committee chairperson Nita Verma said after a marathon meeting that lasted over six hours. There was no need for a voting as only Infosys Technologies and CSI supported Microsoft. Link

Infosys, HCL and a few others are backing MS for OOXML, a format which got plenty of technical defects( Link ). Shame on you Infy… !!

ODF Alliance is tracking Indian standardization process of OOXML here

In Russian children toy stores have appeared strange Chinese dolls looking like a girl-doll but if fully undressed there can be something found that better would suit for a boy-doll.People demand to ban those dolls from being sold on the territory of Russia and claim that it maybe done on purpose by some evil forces from outside of Russia in order to form a bad perception of female/male orientation from the early age.

Link

Got this link from BoingBoing. They have numbers for survival chances too.