I have to agree. I have several users who call, frequently, w/mind-blowingly stupid problems. On occasion, I've had to show one of them where the power button was on a computer. But, when I see one of them calling- I *love* Caller ID- I make sure to take a deep breath, smile, and only *then* answer the phone. It works- the user gets a cheerful tech, + I don't get miserable about yet another PEBKAC.
It's a matter of extent. Encouraging your employees to keep a cheerful attitude w/customers helps the customers + probably the employees as well. Making employees check in w/a smile meter is both demeaning + vaguely unsettling, and could well have the opposite of the intended affect.
Minor quibble: The University of Pennsylvania (aka Penn) is located in West Philly. Penn State University is located in Center County, which is quite literally in the center of Pennsylvania, ~200 mi. west of Philly. But, yes, Penn's mortgage program has had a huge effect in the gentrification of West Philly. It even has a derisive nickname: "McPenntrification."
This was my experience as well- that giving users the option to simply tag a request as being urgent resulted in *every* request being urgent. And, when everything is urgent, *nothing* is urgent.
We then made a simple change: tagging a request as urgent sent a page to me or my co-workers. The users quickly found that tagging inane requests as urgent resulted in an irritated tech arriving at their desk. The result was, surprisingly, that *fewer* requests were tagged as urgent.
I teach 'introduction to the Internet' courses to new users (largely older folks), and one of the things which I try to reinforce is how useful tabs can be. Unless people know about the availability of tabs + their usefulness, I find that they're more likely to open multiple instances of Firefox (or whatever browser they prefer).
I agree that the only way to end spam would be to make sure that nobody ever responded to it. There's one problem w/this, though: mathematically, spammers already have a near 0% response rate.
Some basic math: any finite number divided by infinity is zero. Spammers can send, literally, infinite numbers of spam messages for very little cost to themselves. If they get *1* sale out of infinite spam messages, they make a profit. 1/infinity = 0. Therefore, spammers make money if they get a 0% response rate. Perfect business plan.
There's the nub, then: most of the changes in Vista/7 are answers to questions people weren't asking. The main questions asked about WinXP dealt w/making it faster, more stable, + more secure; Vista/Win 7 are, instead, prettier.
Your essential point- that XP is almost 10 years old, and therefore able to run on lesser h/w than either Vista or Win 7- is a reasonable one. But a better question is: what does the new OS offer to make it a 'must' for people currently using the older OS. If people figure that Win 7 is going to run only marginally faster on brand new equipment than XP does on their current, older equipment, it's a major disincentive to purchase the new PC w/the new OS.
In other words, even if Win 7 is a major improvement over Vista, users may still hesitate to adopt it, for some of the same reasons that they hesitated to adopt Vista.
It could be considered to be Contempt of Congress, defined by Wikipedia as:
Contempt of Congress is the act of obstructing the work of the United States Congress or one of its committees. While historically the bribery of a Senator or Representative was considered "contempt of Congress," in modern times a person must refuse to comply with a subpoena issued by a Congressional committee or subcommittee - usually seeking to compel either testimony or documents - in order to be considered in "contempt of Congress." ...
The criminal offense of "contempt of Congress" sets the penalty at not less than one month nor more than twelve months in jail and a fine of not less than $100 nor more than $1,000.
SPAM is, without question, the most perfect business model ever conceived. It's simple math, really. Consider:
* It costs the same amount to send literally an infinite amount of unsolicited commercial e-mail messages as it does to send 1. * If one person out of the infinite SPAM recepients buys the advertised product, the spammer makes money. * Any finite number divided by infinity is zero. * Therefore, a spammer makes money even with a *0 percent* response rate.
No way to beat that model. Therefore, it's overwhelmingly unlikely that a legal solution to spam will work. It also makes it almost impossible for a technological solution. The best advice re: SPAM is the one I give to all my users: delete SPAM messages as quickly as possible, devoting as little brain power as possible to the process.
What motivation would Apple have to open-source the iPhone? Specifically, what advantage would it gain from going open-source that it doesn't have now?
I can't see any compelling business reason for Apple to take the iPhone open-source. It might look good from a geek perspective, but from a business perspective, not so much.
Note: they can relax the requirements to code for the iPhone w/o requiring open-source. This is a more likely course of action.
As I note below, the reason to pay is to encourage other artists to release similarly-DRMed work. As an xkcd cartoon pointed out (http://xkcd.com/488/), if you buy DRMed media, and they change the technology or you change your OS, an attempt to bring along the media for which you have paid makes you a criminal (under the DCMA). DRM-free media obviates this, w/o requiring one to pirate the media.
I just hit the Website, listened to some of the tracks via streaming audio, liked them, so I bought the album. I was also one of the minority of people who chose to pay for Radiohead's "In Rainbows," where I had the option of selecting whatever cost I desired, including nothing.
In each case, I chose to pay for the work both because I liked the product and because I want to encourage artists to release music in a similar manner in the future. Am I an idealistic fool? Perhaps so, and it wouldn't be the last time I was called that. That is a badge that I wear proudly.
A few notes on vaccination:
* The two most significant public health efforts in world history are the advent of clean public water systems (before that, you either had to boil your water, add alcohol to it, or risk catching a nasty water-born disease like cholera) and near-universal vaccination of children. Polio + smallpox used to kill millions; today, both are nearly eradicated. The importance of vaccination in improving the health of the world is difficult to overstate. Better yet, vaccination against many diseases is a cheap and highly effective way to improve quality of life in less-developed parts of the world.
* A common logical fallacy to which people fall prey is the one in which they find evidence to support whatever conclusion they favored in the first place. In this case, people hear rumors about vaccines. run a Google search, and find people saying that vaccinations cause problems. Hence, they make the statistically unsupportable conclusion that vaccinations caused the problems in question.
* A common accusation is that vaccination causes autism. There is no evidence suggesting this, but there is ample evidence to suggest that advancing parental age is correlated w/higher rates of autism. Lo and behold, parental age in much of the world is higher than ever before. There's your correlation: older parents lead to autism, not vaccinations.
-Z
The Internet was designed to be almost completely decentralized. That's part of the reason for the urban myth that it was designed to survive a nuclear war; quite literally, it *can* continue to work even were multiple hubs vaporized.
As a result of this extreme decentralization, it is just as impossible to protect the entire Internet as it is do destroy it. That being said, (relatively) small parts of it *can* be protected, at least in part, by technologies with which we're all familiar: firewalls, etc. This is, of course, very much partial protection, but in a system as wide open- by design- as the Internet, that's about the best you're going to get.
Slashdot Mirror
All your space stations are belong to us.
-Z
I have to agree. I have several users who call, frequently, w/mind-blowingly stupid problems. On occasion, I've had to show one of them where the power button was on a computer. But, when I see one of them calling- I *love* Caller ID- I make sure to take a deep breath, smile, and only *then* answer the phone. It works- the user gets a cheerful tech, + I don't get miserable about yet another PEBKAC.
It's a matter of extent. Encouraging your employees to keep a cheerful attitude w/customers helps the customers + probably the employees as well. Making employees check in w/a smile meter is both demeaning + vaguely unsettling, and could well have the opposite of the intended affect.
Minor quibble: The University of Pennsylvania (aka Penn) is located in West Philly. Penn State University is located in Center County, which is quite literally in the center of Pennsylvania, ~200 mi. west of Philly. But, yes, Penn's mortgage program has had a huge effect in the gentrification of West Philly. It even has a derisive nickname: "McPenntrification."
Only Microsoft would think of releasing a product whose more-or-less-official abbreviation means to grimace in pain.
More seriously, if WinCE genuinely has a smaller footprint + is more stable than Android, that says something really bad about Android.
This was my experience as well- that giving users the option to simply tag a request as being urgent resulted in *every* request being urgent. And, when everything is urgent, *nothing* is urgent.
We then made a simple change: tagging a request as urgent sent a page to me or my co-workers. The users quickly found that tagging inane requests as urgent resulted in an irritated tech arriving at their desk. The result was, surprisingly, that *fewer* requests were tagged as urgent.
As usual, YMMVW,
-Z
I teach 'introduction to the Internet' courses to new users (largely older folks), and one of the things which I try to reinforce is how useful tabs can be. Unless people know about the availability of tabs + their usefulness, I find that they're more likely to open multiple instances of Firefox (or whatever browser they prefer).
I know *precisely* what it means. Do you?
I agree that the only way to end spam would be to make sure that nobody ever responded to it. There's one problem w/this, though: mathematically, spammers already have a near 0% response rate.
Some basic math: any finite number divided by infinity is zero.
Spammers can send, literally, infinite numbers of spam messages for very little cost to themselves.
If they get *1* sale out of infinite spam messages, they make a profit.
1/infinity = 0.
Therefore, spammers make money if they get a 0% response rate. Perfect business plan.
Ditto here.
There's the nub, then: most of the changes in Vista/7 are answers to questions people weren't asking. The main questions asked about WinXP dealt w/making it faster, more stable, + more secure; Vista/Win 7 are, instead, prettier.
Your essential point- that XP is almost 10 years old, and therefore able to run on lesser h/w than either Vista or Win 7- is a reasonable one. But a better question is: what does the new OS offer to make it a 'must' for people currently using the older OS. If people figure that Win 7 is going to run only marginally faster on brand new equipment than XP does on their current, older equipment, it's a major disincentive to purchase the new PC w/the new OS.
In other words, even if Win 7 is a major improvement over Vista, users may still hesitate to adopt it, for some of the same reasons that they hesitated to adopt Vista.
Monorail! Transit system of the future! Always has been, always will be.
Cue The Simpsons,
It could be considered to be Contempt of Congress, defined by Wikipedia as:
SPAM is, without question, the most perfect business model ever conceived. It's simple math, really. Consider:
* It costs the same amount to send literally an infinite amount of unsolicited commercial e-mail messages as it does to send 1.
* If one person out of the infinite SPAM recepients buys the advertised product, the spammer makes money.
* Any finite number divided by infinity is zero.
* Therefore, a spammer makes money even with a *0 percent* response rate.
No way to beat that model. Therefore, it's overwhelmingly unlikely that a legal solution to spam will work. It also makes it almost impossible for a technological solution. The best advice re: SPAM is the one I give to all my users: delete SPAM messages as quickly as possible, devoting as little brain power as possible to the process.
I tell ya, Graphene-based CPUS will even be able to run Vista at a decent clip.
-Z
What motivation would Apple have to open-source the iPhone? Specifically, what advantage would it gain from going open-source that it doesn't have now?
I can't see any compelling business reason for Apple to take the iPhone open-source. It might look good from a geek perspective, but from a business perspective, not so much.
Note: they can relax the requirements to code for the iPhone w/o requiring open-source. This is a more likely course of action.
As I note below, the reason to pay is to encourage other artists to release similarly-DRMed work. As an xkcd cartoon pointed out (http://xkcd.com/488/), if you buy DRMed media, and they change the technology or you change your OS, an attempt to bring along the media for which you have paid makes you a criminal (under the DCMA). DRM-free media obviates this, w/o requiring one to pirate the media.
I just hit the Website, listened to some of the tracks via streaming audio, liked them, so I bought the album. I was also one of the minority of people who chose to pay for Radiohead's "In Rainbows," where I had the option of selecting whatever cost I desired, including nothing.
In each case, I chose to pay for the work both because I liked the product and because I want to encourage artists to release music in a similar manner in the future. Am I an idealistic fool? Perhaps so, and it wouldn't be the last time I was called that. That is a badge that I wear proudly.
A few notes on vaccination: * The two most significant public health efforts in world history are the advent of clean public water systems (before that, you either had to boil your water, add alcohol to it, or risk catching a nasty water-born disease like cholera) and near-universal vaccination of children. Polio + smallpox used to kill millions; today, both are nearly eradicated. The importance of vaccination in improving the health of the world is difficult to overstate. Better yet, vaccination against many diseases is a cheap and highly effective way to improve quality of life in less-developed parts of the world. * A common logical fallacy to which people fall prey is the one in which they find evidence to support whatever conclusion they favored in the first place. In this case, people hear rumors about vaccines. run a Google search, and find people saying that vaccinations cause problems. Hence, they make the statistically unsupportable conclusion that vaccinations caused the problems in question. * A common accusation is that vaccination causes autism. There is no evidence suggesting this, but there is ample evidence to suggest that advancing parental age is correlated w/higher rates of autism. Lo and behold, parental age in much of the world is higher than ever before. There's your correlation: older parents lead to autism, not vaccinations. -Z
The Internet was designed to be almost completely decentralized. That's part of the reason for the urban myth that it was designed to survive a nuclear war; quite literally, it *can* continue to work even were multiple hubs vaporized.
As a result of this extreme decentralization, it is just as impossible to protect the entire Internet as it is do destroy it. That being said, (relatively) small parts of it *can* be protected, at least in part, by technologies with which we're all familiar: firewalls, etc. This is, of course, very much partial protection, but in a system as wide open- by design- as the Internet, that's about the best you're going to get.