Yesterday I started having brownouts with my Comcast cable modem. after reseting it, etc, to no avail, I called tech Support and asked if there were any outages. Long story short they had reassigned my modem's MAC address to someone else or something retarded like that. Before they figured out it was a settings problem on their end, I had to suffer through Support trying, and failing, to understand why I didn't have IE.

CC: Ok sir, can you please reboot the computer the modem is attached to.

ME: Its plugged into a Router.

CC: ok sir, please plug the modem directly in the computer, and restart the modem aand computer.

ME: (Plugs modem directly into hub, runs dhclient)... ok

CC: Ok sir, now open up Internet Explorer for me and go into Intetnet Options

ME ... what we are trying to do?

CC: We are trying to start IE and go into options

ME: Sorry I don't have Internet Explorer, but if you tell me what we are trying to do under options, I can do it.

CC: Sir, do you have a Mac, because they have IE as well

ME: No, I use Linux

CC:... I see... well, sir, ... I don't know what..., please hold

ME: (sings with the hold music for ~10 mins)

CC: Sir, ... so you don't have IE at all?

ME: Nope

CC: Please Hold

CC: (~10 mins later) sir please hold for Tier 2 support

CC: Tier 2 Support

ME: (Explains problem)

CC: We don't support Linux. Now if you could open IE...

... SIGH ... After setting up a proxy to go through, they see their mistake, and I'm up and running.