Paying for customer service
on
Ebay vs. Musician
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I hate to say this, but you get what you pay for. Sure EBay's a cheap way to sell items, but the sheer volume of auctions (and complaints) means EBay's only going to pay for a large room of trained monkeys following a step-by-step script for customer service.(That's assuming management wants to spend the extra money to train the monkeys) 1. Does the auction sell organs or living tissue? [press here] 2. Is the auction selling any material deemed offensible by the French government? [press here] 3. Does the auction include any CD-R media[press here] (which fires off an automated email, de-lists the auction, etc.)
Its a quantity over quality approach. If you want better customer service, expect to have to pay more to sell your product.
C for graphics (Cg for short) is a language currently in development to solve some of the problems your having with visualizing programmable shaders as you're creating them. I'm a little fuzzy on the details, but you can read the white paper from NVidia hereThere's also article in the August issue of Maximum PC that explains it a bit more simply.
As for modelling, go with what you're comfortable with. Personally, I like TrueSpace, but that's just my opinion.
I'm a little surprised this made it into a slashdot story, but since we're on the subject of moderate earthquakes here's a 5.1 that hit New York late last April. I didn't notice it in here the city, likely becasue I assume every ground tremor is a subway train passing underneath (Having grown up in California, it's still instinctual to dive under a table when I feel the ground shake).
I'd much rather be in California than New York City during an earthquake. Here there's far too much masonry on buildings to withstand even a moderate earthquake safely.
...There's more evidence of harm coming from pesticides used on crops, yet I don't see them shutting down any of the wineries in the area.
But what's the worse that could happen? So you can't use your cell phone. You'll just have to go to the nearby town of Boonville and use the buckwaller in front of the Horn of Zeese Don't forget to bring quarters.
"Exidy Games releases Death Race 2000, a driving game based on a 1975 movie of the same name. You earn points by running over stick figures. Public outcry against video game violence gains national attention, and the game is taken off the market. "
This reminds me of an incident at a computer company I used to work for, where a UPS driver unloaded our shipment of computers and monitors by pushing the entire stack of boxes from the back of his truck onto the loading ramp (ground level, not a dock). And the did this more than once to unload the several dozen boxes we had been expecting. Somebody grabbed a camera and took a bunch of pictures of the pile of boxes haphazardly dumped on the warehouse floor, so at least we had something to go back to UPS with.
Redmond, Wash. -
Microsoft lawyers left a small groups of babies crying today after taking away their candy earilier today. Witnesses state they saw "several vans full of FBI agents and Microsoft employess swarm the Redmond Community Playground, snatching lollypops, chocolate bars, and other sweets directly from the hands of small infants". Top level exectutives in Redmond would not comment specifically on the incident, though a unnamed source high up in the company has been quoted as saying "We are well within our rights to revoke the baby's license to the candy. Users agree to our candy licensing terms when they open the wrapper." Industry observers speculate that the babies own mothers may have invalidated the licensing by taking a small bite of the candy. The Justice Department is currently investigating whether Microsofts actions in the candy industry consitutes an monopoly. Microsoft does not expect the case to delay its upcoming launch of Sucker 1.0 this fall.
In other news today, the MPAA is back in court with a lawsuit against a hacker accused of posting a receipe for chocolate chip cookies to a newsgroup...
Now you have me thinking...
If you've got a double barreled water gun, why not attach a cattle prod to it? Fill the tank with an electrolytic solution, connect a lead to each barrel, and wire a switch to the trigger of the water gun, and watch the neighborhood kids run...
Actually, there are corporate buyers. One example that comes to mind is the background music in stores. A large-corporation owned coffee shop I worked for (take a guess which company I'm refering to here.. heh..) had a system for playing music in the stores. The tapes came from BMG (or is that BMI? I always get the two confused) with various mixes and themes. The deck itself also came from the music comapny. The tapes were some sort of 4-track on a standard 60-minute tape cassette. The tapes wouldn't play on a standard tape deck, and standard tapes weren't suppose to play on it. Like I would want to play easy listing on my stereo at home. (Though I quickly discovered those little converters that allow you to run the headphone out on a CD player to a tape deck worked well, and that made for some less boring store closings)
Here's the interesting points:
The tapes were propritary.
The decks the tapes played on were propritary as well.
The music company owned the tapes, as well as the equipment that played it.
From what I had gathered from the whole thing, the coffee company paid the music service, not on a flat one-time fee, but on a continual basis, due to the fact that the music was considered a 'public performance'
Sound familiar?
(as a final note of little interest, my beloved, yet much persecuted opera tape was found in the sanitizer one evening, quite melted and dead. No one confessed to the act, and instead of a decent burial in the trash can, it had to be sent back to the music company for supposed credit or replacement. I never did see that tape again... )
This same hospital pays its doctors, nurses, etc, to be on call. If they get paged, called in, they paid there work time in addition to the amount they're getting paid to be on call. Hospitals put staff on-call because patient care is considered mission-critical. If they want to handle support in in the same matter, they should be prepared to pay it out in the same manner.
That's an interesting idea and all, but what about other basic nutrients? Correct me if I'm wrong, but your body still needs bulk sugars, carbohydrates, and protein, and caffiene... (ok, maybe not the protein...)
interestingly enough, the article mentioned adobe buying up Canoma, a picture to 3-d program. I wonder how it'll fit into Adobe's line of products. Adobe doesn't have any picture to 3-d programs, but then again, they don't have any 3-d programs to my knowledge...
(hmm. Crossing Photoshop with 3d painter would have been a cool idea though...)
Slashdot Mirror
I hate to say this, but you get what you pay for. Sure EBay's a cheap way to sell items, but the sheer volume of auctions (and complaints) means EBay's only going to pay for a large room of trained monkeys following a step-by-step script for customer service.(That's assuming management wants to spend the extra money to train the monkeys)
1. Does the auction sell organs or living tissue? [press here]
2. Is the auction selling any material deemed offensible by the French government? [press here]
3. Does the auction include any CD-R media[press here] (which fires off an automated email, de-lists the auction, etc.)
Its a quantity over quality approach. If you want better customer service, expect to have to pay more to sell your product.
log off and drive!
C for graphics (Cg for short) is a language currently in development to solve some of the problems your having with visualizing programmable shaders as you're creating them. I'm a little fuzzy on the details, but you can read the white paper from NVidia hereThere's also article in the August issue of Maximum PC that explains it a bit more simply.
As for modelling, go with what you're comfortable with. Personally, I like TrueSpace, but that's just my opinion.
I'm a little surprised this made it into a slashdot story, but since we're on the subject of moderate earthquakes here's a 5.1 that hit New York late last April. I didn't notice it in here the city, likely becasue I assume every ground tremor is a subway train passing underneath (Having grown up in California, it's still instinctual to dive under a table when I feel the ground shake).
I'd much rather be in California than New York City during an earthquake. Here there's far too much masonry on buildings to withstand even a moderate earthquake safely.
...There's more evidence of harm coming from pesticides used on crops, yet I don't see them shutting down any of the wineries in the area.
But what's the worse that could happen? So you can't use your cell phone. You'll just have to go to the nearby town of Boonville and use the buckwaller in front of the Horn of Zeese Don't forget to bring quarters.
...I found this bit of the article amusing...
...So I guess the moral is, violence in video games is OK, so long as it doesn't involve pedestrians.
"Exidy Games releases Death Race 2000, a driving game based on a 1975 movie of the same name. You earn points by running over stick figures. Public outcry against video game violence gains national attention, and the game is taken off the market. "
which made me think of this game, 25 years later.
This reminds me of an incident at a computer company I used to work for, where a UPS driver unloaded our shipment of computers and monitors by pushing the entire stack of boxes from the back of his truck onto the loading ramp (ground level, not a dock). And the did this more than once to unload the several dozen boxes we had been expecting. Somebody grabbed a camera and took a bunch of pictures of the pile of boxes haphazardly dumped on the warehouse floor, so at least we had something to go back to UPS with.
And no, nobody signed for them.
Redmond, Wash. -
Microsoft lawyers left a small groups of babies crying today after taking away their candy earilier today. Witnesses state they saw "several vans full of FBI agents and Microsoft employess swarm the Redmond Community Playground, snatching lollypops, chocolate bars, and other sweets directly from the hands of small infants". Top level exectutives in Redmond would not comment specifically on the incident, though a unnamed source high up in the company has been quoted as saying "We are well within our rights to revoke the baby's license to the candy. Users agree to our candy licensing terms when they open the wrapper." Industry observers speculate that the babies own mothers may have invalidated the licensing by taking a small bite of the candy. The Justice Department is currently investigating whether Microsofts actions in the candy industry consitutes an monopoly. Microsoft does not expect the case to delay its upcoming launch of Sucker 1.0 this fall.
In other news today, the MPAA is back in court with a lawsuit against a hacker accused of posting a receipe for chocolate chip cookies to a newsgroup...
Now you have me thinking...
..ok, maybe not...
If you've got a double barreled water gun, why not attach a cattle prod to it? Fill the tank with an electrolytic solution, connect a lead to each barrel, and wire a switch to the trigger of the water gun, and watch the neighborhood kids run...
...and combined with a LASIK(c) plug-in, it can undo the years of damage caused by sitting too close to your monitor...
Great... Now they're probably going to mandate child saftey-locks on my BFG 9000...
...maybe they want to hit them from behind. ...yeeeah right..
Here's the interesting points:
The tapes were propritary.
The decks the tapes played on were propritary as well.
The music company owned the tapes, as well as the equipment that played it.
From what I had gathered from the whole thing, the coffee company paid the music service, not on a flat one-time fee, but on a continual basis, due to the fact that the music was considered a 'public performance' Sound familiar?
(as a final note of little interest, my beloved, yet much persecuted opera tape was found in the sanitizer one evening, quite melted and dead. No one confessed to the act, and instead of a decent burial in the trash can, it had to be sent back to the music company for supposed credit or replacement. I never did see that tape again... )
This same hospital pays its doctors, nurses, etc, to be on call. If they get paged, called in, they paid there work time in addition to the amount they're getting paid to be on call. Hospitals put staff on-call because patient care is considered mission-critical. If they want to handle support in in the same matter, they should be prepared to pay it out in the same manner.
That's an interesting idea and all, but what about other basic nutrients? Correct me if I'm wrong, but your body still needs bulk sugars, carbohydrates, and protein, and caffiene... (ok, maybe not the protein...)
interestingly enough, the article mentioned adobe buying up Canoma, a picture to 3-d program. I wonder how it'll fit into Adobe's line of products. Adobe doesn't have any picture to 3-d programs, but then again, they don't have any 3-d programs to my knowledge...
(hmm. Crossing Photoshop with 3d painter would have been a cool idea though...)