CNN does not support open-source.

[danamite at bu.edu]

Hi all,

I worked data tech support for a major wireless company for 4 years. 
Most people in tech support centers are just trained on windows and 
have no knowledge or experience using open source software.

Supervisors and Managers who often have no knowledge of Open Source 
software inform their representatives to respond to such issues by 
telling customers that non-windows OS based software are not supported. 
This even happens with Mac OS based software until customers begin to 
take their business elsewhere, then management begins to do something 
about it.

Sometimes this is very frustrating for both tech reps and customers.

In most cases, it takes the initiative of individual tech support 
representatives to look for Open Source solutions to most of these 
issues to better serve their customers.

When I did tech support, some of us decided to arm ourselves with Open 
Source knowledge so we could address the concerns of our customers who 
do not use windows. Had nothing to do with management because they 
usually are ignorant and do not want to deal with it.

I watch cnn live on my ubuntu machine with no problems using firefox. 
There are a number of firefox media plugins that will play almost every 
kind of streaming media out there.

I am going to email CNN's tech support team with a solution to this 
issue and hopefully they will add that to their knowledge base system 
and be able to assist their Linux based viewers in the future.

Time to educate those who are supposed to be in technical support roles!

Quoting Martin Owens <doctormo at gmail.com>:

> Susan,
>
> Could you invite them to a meeting and see if they would be interested
> in learning something about what Free and Open Source Software is?
>
> It's a travesty that people in the media could be this blind and misinformed.
>
> Regards, Martin
>
> 2008/10/3 David Tresner-Kirsch <dwkirsch at gmail.com>:
>> Hi Susan,
>>
>> Clearly CNN's tech team could use a better understanding of what 
>> open-source is.
>>
>> For future reference though, it's possible to watch CNN live by
>> loading the following stream url into a media player:
>> http://www.cnn.com/video/live/cnnlive_1.asx
>>
>> David
>>
>> On Fri, Oct 3, 2008 at 1:41 PM, Susan Cragin 
>> <susancragin at earthlink.net> wrote:
>>> Here's their note to me, after I tried to access CNN-live.
>>>
>>> -----Forwarded Message-----
>>>> From: VCMTech4 at turner.com
>>>> Sent: Oct 3, 2008 12:13 PM
>>>> To: susancragin at earthlink.net
>>>> Subject: TTS Helpdesk Ticket: 2159693
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Susan,
>>>>
>>>> We do not support Live Video for Ubuntu.  Linux is open source, 
>>>> thus causing a lot of problems when trying to implement a windows 
>>>> based application.  We apologize for the inconvenience.
>>>>
>>>> Cheers,
>>>>
>>>> Kyle
>>>> CNN.com Tech Support
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> ----------------------------------
>>>> Summary: VCM Technical Issue Email Request
>>>> ----------------------------------------------------------
>>>> IMPORTANT NOTICE: Any reply to this email will be copied to the IT 
>>>> Service Management System for tracking purposes
>>>> ----------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
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