Treading new ground always requires greater effort. If I cut a my way through virgin jungle then those who follow have a path.
The problem is even thinking in terms of "effort." Ideas are not the product of labor. Time with a chain saw is proportional to length of path cleared.
If you do not demonstrate through your own choices that you think what you are selling is the best thing to own, how do you expect to convince other people of that?
New systems shipping with Vista are sticking a finger in the Penguin's eye, because when it comes down to it, its all about the apps.
But Microsoft has taught them to think this way, because they make their money selling apps.
In that sense I suppose you're right, the hardest part in "selling" Linux is in getting people to understand that they don't need an "app," they need to get the job done, and that Microsoft's monolithic app approach is not the only way, nor even the best way, to handle any given task.
There are times when the answer to the question, "Does it have an app?" is no, but the answer to the question "Will it do this?" is yes, and oftentimes without the addition of any additional software at all, because the core capabilities are built into the shell itself.
Not so sure that applies when dealing with a free email account.
Are they not selling something? Are not the free accounts a pool of qualified (in the sales sense of the word) customers for what they are selling? Lycos execs did not just wake up one day and say, "Hey, let's just give away our shit for free." They saw a profit path. Just as the cheese people did.
She started by firing off what amounts to an accusation of extortion.
No. She did not start out that way. That was a response; to a response. Perhaps the request for money was made without much in the way of art.
And what it have hurt to have told her, "Ok, look, we'll help you out this time, because that's the sort of people we are. But now you know the score and we know that you know the score. Don't take advantage of us in future, 'k? We offer a reasonable service at a reasonable price and we would be delighted if you chose to avail yourself of it."
Instead of a PR problem they would this woman giving the word of mouth that "They be cool and shit."
Customers don't just show up for no reason. They need to be enticed a bit. Performing that enticement takes time, effort and money. That's just the way it is. And anything you do that furthers that cause is part of your marketing. It isn't all just about advertising and mindfucking people.
This woman is thinking, and spreading the idea, that Lycos are assholes who didn't help her when they should have, whereas if handled properly she would be spreading the news that they help when they don't have to. i.e., she would have truer sense of her relationship to Lycos that she does.
And thus far more likely to start giving them money for what they do.
People like that have no intention of giving you money, they just want to suck your time and resources to extract as much as they can from you, in exchange for nothing.
Yes, there are people like that and I have had to suffer some of them as my own customers, but I realize they do not exist in a vacuum. Getting rid of these people often means getting rid of an even greater quantity of good customers. It's a package deal. There is someone out there that abuses the Craftsman tools exchange policy, but because it exists I am a customer; and I do not. Take steps to the get rid of the abusers and you will likely introduce a step that gets rid of me.
Why not just accept it and enjoy the fact that you make a profit. That's the goal, remember?
Maximinzing your profits in theory often means losing all of your profits in practice.
The customer isn't always right, all too often the customer is wrong, stupid and loud with it.
That is simply because people are all too often wrong, stupid and loud with it.
It is an axiom of customer service that they are. It is their job to deal effectively with that. The saying is not meant to imply that the customer is always correct, but that without customers you have no income; and the customer decides whether or not to give you his custom, on his terms.
It is in this sense that the customer is always right, even when an incorrect, idiotic loudmouth asking something totally ludicrous of you. There is a greater art in coverting one of those people into someone who has just given you money and is happy to have done so than there is in just telling him to fuck off.
All other issues in the situation aside, the answer to that particular question is, "No."
But then the idea that people assigned to customer service should themselves be in their right mind is a dying concept. We live in an age where the customer is viewed as some sort of work horse; and it is deemed more financially advantageous to work a horse to death in three years than keep him in service for 15, because the horse is a consumer.
Of course in that situation the horse does not have much in the way of options.
Yes, in this case she was getting a free service and might be viewed by some as being a pure drain on the system, but attempts to explain to her that data retention costs money and thus the account deletion policy might well be reasonable and that restoration is a labor intensive process that she might just have to legitimately compensate the company for might have been handled with a bit more delicacy, and efficatiously.
She might not have been right, but she was the one with the twenty bucks they failed to get from her. And now they have a wider PR problem instead of a quiet, little private one.
Last time I looked, i didn't live in a socialist country.
Show me where I said you did. Unlike most Americans I know something of the history of Krupp and Bismark and your nation's stuggle to find a balance.
It's a federal liberal (not in your political sense) democratic republic. ..
Actually, since the 1970s the American concept of "Liberal" has been merging with your own, to the extent that someone who holds to the traditional American meaning of the word must now be charecterized as a "Classic" Liberal. Do not mistake a particular political platform for the undlying form. Americas leftists are very much in the German model and I still know some Americans who, back in the day, thought that Hitler was going to be the true light of the world. It was only when Hitler disillusioned them that they switched allgience to Stalin. Oops.
In any case, . You're being too touchy at the invocation of the word socialist. If you told me that America's public school and highway systems resembled socialist structures I'd have little more to say than "Yeah. So?"
That content matters. A book can rot your brain, a TV show can illuminate it (and bear in mind that I've been accused of being an anti-TV whako in this forum and I live amongst piles of books.In omnibus requiem quaesivi, et nusquam inveni nisi in angulo cum libro).
Mere reading is not inherently a virtue. Mere TV watching is not necessarily a sin.
And obsessive mass psychosis is never a good sign of anything.
This isn't Germany and we do not have anything resembling a socialist work structure. Unless your employment contract states otherwise the two weeks notice itself is a mere courtesy, not a legal requirement. In fact, in many businesses you can expect them to have security escort you out of the building immediately upon giving notice; or fire you without any notice at all.
People will camp out in front of stores for the latest game consoles, hottest movies, etc, but its truely unique to see that kind of reception for a book.
And people will turn whore for crack, that doesn't exactly imply that it's the good shit.
Kids who may not have otherwise gotten into reading for pleasure have been introduced to it from reading Harry Potter.
Yeah, there is that. A lot of them went on to read . ..The Da Vinci Code.
Slashdot Mirror
Jim Jones' cult members had a serious kool-aid intolerance. :(
Something I'll bear in mind if I ever become a religous nutter. Now if you'll excuse me I have to go pack or I'll miss my ride on the comet.
KFG
If I was trying to kill you off I would never have offered to buy you a beer! I'd have offered you a kool-aid...
Well that wouldn't work for shit. I don't have a kool-aid intolerance.
KFG
. . .let me know if you're ever in Charlotte NC and I'll buy you a beer.
Help! Help! He's trying to kill me off!
KFG
I'll reiterate, if you've got a point to make, do so...without obfuscation.
No.
KFG
Are you talking about "Ideas may come in a flash, or evade forever."?
Which is the clue that I'm not talking about thinking.
If you've got a point to make, please do so.
Think.
KFG
Don't tempt me.
KFG
Just disagreeing on our definition of the word "labor".
That's what I was doing; and within the context of a specific provided example.
Think about it. It might take some effort.
KFG
Some of my best ideas have come from pondering over a problem.
What I did not say is that thinking is easy.
KFG
Treading new ground always requires greater effort. If I cut a my way through virgin jungle then those who follow have a path.
The problem is even thinking in terms of "effort." Ideas are not the product of labor. Time with a chain saw is proportional to length of path cleared.
Ideas may come in a flash, or evade forever.
KFG
There is a maxim:
"Use what you sell."
If you do not demonstrate through your own choices that you think what you are selling is the best thing to own, how do you expect to convince other people of that?
KFG
New systems shipping with Vista are sticking a finger in the Penguin's eye, because when it comes down to it, its all about the apps.
But Microsoft has taught them to think this way, because they make their money selling apps.
In that sense I suppose you're right, the hardest part in "selling" Linux is in getting people to understand that they don't need an "app," they need to get the job done, and that Microsoft's monolithic app approach is not the only way, nor even the best way, to handle any given task.
There are times when the answer to the question, "Does it have an app?" is no, but the answer to the question "Will it do this?" is yes, and oftentimes without the addition of any additional software at all, because the core capabilities are built into the shell itself.
KFG
I shudder to think what would happen if you unsafely remove it. Especially from a Sony laptop.
You've got 10 seconds to throw it after you pull the pin.
KFG
Not so sure that applies when dealing with a free email account.
Are they not selling something? Are not the free accounts a pool of qualified (in the sales sense of the word) customers for what they are selling? Lycos execs did not just wake up one day and say, "Hey, let's just give away our shit for free." They saw a profit path. Just as the cheese people did.
She started by firing off what amounts to an accusation of extortion.
No. She did not start out that way. That was a response; to a response. Perhaps the request for money was made without much in the way of art.
And what it have hurt to have told her, "Ok, look, we'll help you out this time, because that's the sort of people we are. But now you know the score and we know that you know the score. Don't take advantage of us in future, 'k? We offer a reasonable service at a reasonable price and we would be delighted if you chose to avail yourself of it."
Instead of a PR problem they would this woman giving the word of mouth that "They be cool and shit."
Customers don't just show up for no reason. They need to be enticed a bit. Performing that enticement takes time, effort and money. That's just the way it is. And anything you do that furthers that cause is part of your marketing. It isn't all just about advertising and mindfucking people.
This woman is thinking, and spreading the idea, that Lycos are assholes who didn't help her when they should have, whereas if handled properly she would be spreading the news that they help when they don't have to. i.e., she would have truer sense of her relationship to Lycos that she does.
And thus far more likely to start giving them money for what they do.
People like that have no intention of giving you money, they just want to suck your time and resources to extract as much as they can from you, in exchange for nothing.
Yes, there are people like that and I have had to suffer some of them as my own customers, but I realize they do not exist in a vacuum. Getting rid of these people often means getting rid of an even greater quantity of good customers. It's a package deal. There is someone out there that abuses the Craftsman tools exchange policy, but because it exists I am a customer; and I do not. Take steps to the get rid of the abusers and you will likely introduce a step that gets rid of me.
Why not just accept it and enjoy the fact that you make a profit. That's the goal, remember?
Maximinzing your profits in theory often means losing all of your profits in practice.
KFG
Is this excellent news in theory. . .
No.
. . . , or is there a demand for this?
Yes.
Demand trumps excellence.
KFG
The customer isn't always right, all too often the customer is wrong, stupid and loud with it.
That is simply because people are all too often wrong, stupid and loud with it.
It is an axiom of customer service that they are. It is their job to deal effectively with that. The saying is not meant to imply that the customer is always correct, but that without customers you have no income; and the customer decides whether or not to give you his custom, on his terms.
It is in this sense that the customer is always right, even when an incorrect, idiotic loudmouth asking something totally ludicrous of you. There is a greater art in coverting one of those people into someone who has just given you money and is happy to have done so than there is in just telling him to fuck off.
KFG
KFG
All other issues in the situation aside, the answer to that particular question is, "No."
But then the idea that people assigned to customer service should themselves be in their right mind is a dying concept. We live in an age where the customer is viewed as some sort of work horse; and it is deemed more financially advantageous to work a horse to death in three years than keep him in service for 15, because the horse is a consumer.
Of course in that situation the horse does not have much in the way of options.
Yes, in this case she was getting a free service and might be viewed by some as being a pure drain on the system, but attempts to explain to her that data retention costs money and thus the account deletion policy might well be reasonable and that restoration is a labor intensive process that she might just have to legitimately compensate the company for might have been handled with a bit more delicacy, and efficatiously.
She might not have been right, but she was the one with the twenty bucks they failed to get from her. And now they have a wider PR problem instead of a quiet, little private one.
KFG
It would be a very large and complex project.
It is certainly a formibable task and one of the few I could point to where sheer manpower is critical.
Made more complicated by the fact that a published API does not imply that the API is published.
KFG
This is not neutrality
KFG
Last time I looked, i didn't live in a socialist country.
.
Show me where I said you did. Unlike most Americans I know something of the history of Krupp and Bismark and your nation's stuggle to find a balance.
It's a federal liberal (not in your political sense) democratic republic. .
Actually, since the 1970s the American concept of "Liberal" has been merging with your own, to the extent that someone who holds to the traditional American meaning of the word must now be charecterized as a "Classic" Liberal. Do not mistake a particular political platform for the undlying form. Americas leftists are very much in the German model and I still know some Americans who, back in the day, thought that Hitler was going to be the true light of the world. It was only when Hitler disillusioned them that they switched allgience to Stalin. Oops.
In any case, . You're being too touchy at the invocation of the word socialist. If you told me that America's public school and highway systems resembled socialist structures I'd have little more to say than "Yeah. So?"
KFG
Ever hear of unions?
I don't hold a card, but I got my little red song book directly from the hands on an honest to God Wobblie.
"No you can't scare me, I'm stickin' to the union, till the day I die."
Not everything that has ever been touched by socialism is bad.
Please point out in my post where I made judgement.
KFG
That content matters. A book can rot your brain, a TV show can illuminate it (and bear in mind that I've been accused of being an anti-TV whako in this forum and I live amongst piles of books.In omnibus requiem quaesivi, et nusquam inveni nisi in angulo cum libro).
Mere reading is not inherently a virtue. Mere TV watching is not necessarily a sin.
And obsessive mass psychosis is never a good sign of anything.
KFG
This isn't Germany and we do not have anything resembling a socialist work structure. Unless your employment contract states otherwise the two weeks notice itself is a mere courtesy, not a legal requirement. In fact, in many businesses you can expect them to have security escort you out of the building immediately upon giving notice; or fire you without any notice at all.
KFG
Salaries are for losers; Switzerland is for winners.
KFG
the richest country on earth, not to mention the world's shining example of democracy
What has Switzerland got to do with Florida?
KFG
People will camp out in front of stores for the latest game consoles, hottest movies, etc, but its truely unique to see that kind of reception for a book.
.The Da Vinci Code.
And people will turn whore for crack, that doesn't exactly imply that it's the good shit.
Kids who may not have otherwise gotten into reading for pleasure have been introduced to it from reading Harry Potter.
Yeah, there is that. A lot of them went on to read . .
KFG