Re:Retrieving unsaved data
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Tales of IT Idiocy
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· Score: 5, Insightful
I worked in a computer lab back in college, and our supervisor used to tell new hires a story....
One day a woman came in, worked on a paper for a couple of hours, and then had her computer crash. She went to the lab assistant on duty, who didn't try to be helpful or sympathetic at all -- he just blew her off with a "well, you should have saved".
She blew up at him. Yelled, screamed, made a gigantic fuss. Lab guy thought it was funny, still wasn't trying to calm her down or be helpful at all. The supervisor heard the noise (his office was across the hall from the lab) and came in to see what was wrong. He talked to the woman, got her to go across the hall where she wouldn't be disturbing everyone else who was still trying to use the lab. There, he offered sympathy, offered to help her with retyping.
Once she started to calm down, she started crying. He finally found out that she'd been raped a couple of weeks before. She'd lost a lot of time for getting ready for finals and doing final papers in doing interviews with the police and the prosecuting attorneys -- and then found out earlier that day that the DA's office had decided not to prosecute her attacker, because he was a former boyfriend of hers and they were afraid they wouldn't be able to persuade the jury that it wasn't just her changing her mind after the fact.
He pointed her to the campus rape center so she could get help -- not just with the legal case and the emotional fallout, but also to have them talk to her professors. She didn't need to be trying to handle finals like that.
The moral is: You don't know how bad a day someone else has had. When people get extremely upset over something that seems like it shouldn't be that upsetting, there's a good chance that they were already upset about something else. And, of course, he added that if we had someone in the lab we just couldn't handle, get him or call the campus police if it was after his office hours. We should try to be nice, but remember that our job was lab attendant, not social worker.
Yep. Although more fun is when users try to describe in "tech terms", but don't actually understand the terminology, so their 'explanation' just muddies the issue further.
Generally my talking-to-the-end user script goes like this:
- What program were you using?
- What were you (clicking on, typing, whatever)?
- What did you expect to happen?
- What happened instead?
If they're getting an error message, I'll get them to send me a screenshot or cut-and-paste it. I've had way too many times when someone's managed to paraphrase the actual error message they're getting into something completely different.
Generally the best, though, is to actually sit them down and get to do whatever produces the problem in front of you. It's the problems that can't be reproduced at will that are the fun ones to figure out....
On the other hand, if headlines read "Prince Charles" assassinated, lots of US citizens would know who that is... which is kind of strange when you think about it.
Of course, a hereditary monarchy has going for it in things like this the fact that the heir to the throne stays the same for decades at a time. If we only had a new vice-president every thirty or forty years, a lot more people would probably know who the current one was.
This reminds me of a couple of oddball cases I've had over the years...
First one, a girl who was taking the "Computer Literacy" class and came down to our office from the computer lab after using the automatic account creator there. She couldn't log in. I verified her user name and let her reset her password so she could get in.
Three minutes later, she's back. Still can't log in. I have her try to log in from my terminal, and she can't log in. So this time, I have her write down the password she wants to use, and I change the password on the account, so I can be sure that it's changed to the right thing. Then I sit her down again at my terminal and have her try to log in.
She still can't log in successfully. I try, and I can log in. So I then had her try typing her password at the username prompt, so she could see what she was typing. Turned out she couldn't consistently hold down the shift key, so she kept capitalizing a different letter each time. So I had to teach her to type in her password slowly, so she could do it correctly without having to see it as she typed.
Case #2: Guy comes in, says he can log in on the Solaris machines in the computer lab, but not the Linux ones (or it may have been the other way around -- it's been about fifteen years now). Now, they're all using the same NIS username/password database, so this shouldn't be possible. One of the other admins takes his case, asks the guy his username, does "su - username" on his workstation, asks the guy to type his password. He does, and successfully logs in. The other admin says, "See, you can log in, there's no problem."
Guy isn't happy with that -- says he's tried on several different Linux workstations in the lab, and couldn't log in to any of them. The two of them start arguing, so I decide to step in, saying "Let's go down to the lab and see". So we go down to the lab, and I ask the guy to pick a workstation and log in.
Now, we used last names as login names, adding characters from the first name to make them unique if needed. The guy sits down, then types in his last name, a space, and his first name as his user name. Of course the system doesn't let him in. The odd thing was that the Solaris machines would take it -- they'd just throw away the space and everything after it, so he could log into them like that.
Those cases, though, were partly user and partly the software -- in the first case, a combination of poor typing skills and the password not being echoed. In the second, the user not understanding what his login name was combined with Solaris' "feature" of throwing away a space and whatever came after it at the login prompt.
For your guy with the event invitations, I'd guess that there was some combination of a user problem and a system problem. Not necessarily with your system, but an email address that he had might have been set to forward to all of that person's family, or been a mailing list for their family. I would've asked him who exactly he was emailing that he got that behavior with, and investigated that possibility.
Re:Sometimes it's the little things
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Tales of IT Idiocy
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· Score: 4, Insightful
"One dipshit Archduke"? You do realize that the Archduke in question was heir to the throne of one of the most powerful countries in Europe, and this was a time when royalty still had more than just ceremonial functions?
It'd be the equivalent of someone assassinating the vice-president of the US today -- not just some random bozo getting killed.
No -- AT&T is making $5/mo for 200mb vs. $15/mo for 2g. They're still charging me $15 for 200mb and $25 for 2g. The subsidy comes from their profits. On my end, buying the phone is simply the "cost of entry".
Note as well that even after I've paid off the "subsidy", they still keep charging me those same amounts. At that point, my costs don't go down, but AT&T's earnings go up.
My point was that the pricing structure doesn't encourage me to minimize my bandwidth usage -- instead, it encourages me to maximize it toward my cap, and the lower price/MB as I increase my cap encourages me to increase my cap if I think there's a good chance that I'll go over the lower cap in any given month. The "subsidy" doesn't affect that.
Here's the thing -- they're already measuring usage. Every month, I get a bill from AT&T that says how many megabytes of data traffic each of the three people in my family used. I can even go to their web site and see how much traffic each of us used each day for the last month.
The carriers have the ability to measure usage, and they are using it. Any whining from them of "we can't identify who the hogs are" or "we don't know where the traffic is coming from" is simply lying. They're already measuring these things for billing purposes. Taking that data and using it for planning purposes only requires some investment in software to sort through the data they already have.
I'll note too that they fail to provide incentives for keeping your usage low. For example, from AT&T, for $15 a month, I can get 200 MB / month of data. For $25, I can get 2 GB / month. So, my wife, who was routinely using around 250 MB a month, upgraded to the 2 GB a month... and once she did, she started doing things like frequently streaming video to her phone. After all, she'd have to use eight times as much data as she used to before she'd exceed her new cap, so why shouldn't she?
It gets worse, though. For my work, I need to be able to remotely access the machines I work on at a moment's notice. I can't guarantee I'll always have a wi-fi connection available if I get an emergency call from the boss, so I have tethering. However, AT&T won't let me pay, say, a few extra dollars a month and use tethering with my 200 MB / month plan. Instead, I have to pay for their tethering plan, which gives me 4 GB / month of data, with tethering, for $45 a month. There is no lower option that allows tethering.
So now I've started watching videos online. I didn't bother getting 3g on the iPad I got myself for Christmas either... why pay the carrier another fee, when I can tether the iPad to the phone and actually get some use out of that 4 GB a month I'm having to pay for?
I would've been happy to give AT&T $5 a month for tethering and stay on my $15 a month, 200 MB / month plan, and not change my habits of using the phone at all. But if they're going to require me to pay $45 a month for a 4 GB plan in order to get tethering, I'm going to damn well increase my usage! Otherwise, I'm paying an additional $20 a month for nothing.
If I wind up using, say, 1 GB a month, I'm actually being charged 4.5 cents per MB. Before, with my 200 MB plan, I was being charged 7.5 cents per MB. If I somehow managed to use all 4 GB in a month, I'd be charged 1.125 cents per MB.
When the carriers effectively are giving steep discounts to "data hogs", what do they think is going to happen? If I had to buy 4 GB at my old plan's rate, I'd pay $300 for it. You can bet I'd be watching my usage carefully in that case! As it is, I *have* to pay for 4 GB a month, so I try to use as much of it as I can!
From my point of view, there are a few different problems here:
1 - Unexpected rules combos. These are the combos you refer to above. Unfortunately, the only ways to prevent these are to either (1) playtest everything with everything else, which means that every new ability that's introduced will have longer and longer playtesting time required, or (2) stop creating new rules. While the second option might actually be desirable from the point of view of some players, it's definitely not desirable from the point of view of the game's maker, who needs to keep creating new products to sell.
2 - Power creep. This is the tendency of new additions to the game to be more powerful than the older things in it. Every version of D&D has suffered from this (I remember people complaining about how much better paladins were than plain fighters when they were introduced, in the very first D&D supplement, "Greyhawk"). 4th was, unfortunately, no exception, with some of the feats introduced in the "Essentials" line being much better than feats from the Player's Handbook. The newer classes that have been introduced also seem to have power creep, with things that were Encounter powers for the older classes becoming At-Will for newer ones.
3 - Guidelines for GMs. It's here that 4th really shines, IMHO. It's gone a lot farther than previous editions in labeling things and giving advice of the "a party should have at least one character of each of these types" sort. It also gave explicit rules on how many magic items PCs should have, what magic items were appropriate for what levels, and how to build a balanced encounter. However, the mechanical nature of these rules, combined with many RPG gamers "if it doesn't say optional, it's required" mindset has resulted in some backlash against these rules. People say they make the game too much like a computer game, with level requirements for equipment, designated "boss" monsters, etc.
Probably one of the biggest failures on the part of 4th was not separating out some of what was meant to be "training wheels" from the core of the rules. It would have made sense to produce the main rulebooks and an, oh, "Basic Set" meant for new players at the same time. As it was, they didn't produce a "Basic Set" for 4th until almost two years after it came out... and designed the "Basic Set" in such a way that new players would need to buy more stuff almost immediately.
Paizo also took a while to come out with their "Beginner Box" for Pathfinder, but I think they did a much better job with it. It can allow a new group, without anyone who already knows the rules, to learn them on their own, and to play without having to buy anything else for at least a few months.
They just announced 5th edition today -- it's not like anything yet. They're saying they want to get a lot of input from players, though, so if you want to put your word in with them, follow the links in the article.
I'm pretty sure that it's being heavily driven by the fact that Pathfinder is now outselling 4th edition D&D.
Oh, and by the way, while you'll find the Pathfinder Core PDF on tons of file-sharing sites, the publisher doesn't give it away. A guaranteed-legal copy of the Pathfinder Core PDF is $10, and the paper book is $50. (http://paizo.com/store/v5748btpy88yj)
As the Pythons might say, "Eh, it's a fair cop." Never actually worked in a comic or gaming store, but I've been "that guy" hanging out in RPG Usenet newsgroups, online discussions, etc. since about 1991.
1974 - Original D&D
1977-9 - First Edition AD&D
1985 - "Unearthed Arcana" - extensive changes and expansions to AD&D - arguably "AD&D 1.5"
1989 - Second Edition AD&D
1995-6 - "Skills & Powers", "Combat & Tactics", "Spells & Magic" - arguably "AD&D 2.5"
2000 - Third Edition AD&D, "A" is dropped for marketing reasons
2003 - 3.5 Edition AD&D
2008 - 4th Edition AD&D
2010-1 - "D&D Essentials" - arguably "AD&D 4.5"
However, during the 80s and early 90s, TSR also kept developing "D&D" as a separate system, separated for legal reasons. This version is often called "Basic D&D".
1977 - First Edition BD&D
1981 - Second Edition BD&D
1983-5 - Third Edition BD&D
1991 - Fourth Edition BD&D
Thus, new D&D rule sets came out the fastest during the late '70s and early '80s, but the average time period between new rule revisions has been 5 years or so. AD&D now moves faster, thanks to the dropping of the "BD&D" line in the '90s.
2nd, 3rd, and 4th edition AD&D were all announced 2-3 years before they actually came out. I'd expect to see 5th edition actually coming out late in 2013 at earliest.
Slashdot Mirror
One day a woman came in, worked on a paper for a couple of hours, and then had her computer crash. She went to the lab assistant on duty, who didn't try to be helpful or sympathetic at all -- he just blew her off with a "well, you should have saved".
She blew up at him. Yelled, screamed, made a gigantic fuss. Lab guy thought it was funny, still wasn't trying to calm her down or be helpful at all. The supervisor heard the noise (his office was across the hall from the lab) and came in to see what was wrong. He talked to the woman, got her to go across the hall where she wouldn't be disturbing everyone else who was still trying to use the lab. There, he offered sympathy, offered to help her with retyping.
Once she started to calm down, she started crying. He finally found out that she'd been raped a couple of weeks before. She'd lost a lot of time for getting ready for finals and doing final papers in doing interviews with the police and the prosecuting attorneys -- and then found out earlier that day that the DA's office had decided not to prosecute her attacker, because he was a former boyfriend of hers and they were afraid they wouldn't be able to persuade the jury that it wasn't just her changing her mind after the fact.
He pointed her to the campus rape center so she could get help -- not just with the legal case and the emotional fallout, but also to have them talk to her professors. She didn't need to be trying to handle finals like that.
The moral is: You don't know how bad a day someone else has had. When people get extremely upset over something that seems like it shouldn't be that upsetting, there's a good chance that they were already upset about something else. And, of course, he added that if we had someone in the lab we just couldn't handle, get him or call the campus police if it was after his office hours. We should try to be nice, but remember that our job was lab attendant, not social worker.
Generally my talking-to-the-end user script goes like this:
- What program were you using?
- What were you (clicking on, typing, whatever)?
- What did you expect to happen?
- What happened instead?
If they're getting an error message, I'll get them to send me a screenshot or cut-and-paste it. I've had way too many times when someone's managed to paraphrase the actual error message they're getting into something completely different.
Generally the best, though, is to actually sit them down and get to do whatever produces the problem in front of you. It's the problems that can't be reproduced at will that are the fun ones to figure out....
On the other hand, if headlines read "Prince Charles" assassinated, lots of US citizens would know who that is... which is kind of strange when you think about it. Of course, a hereditary monarchy has going for it in things like this the fact that the heir to the throne stays the same for decades at a time. If we only had a new vice-president every thirty or forty years, a lot more people would probably know who the current one was.
First one, a girl who was taking the "Computer Literacy" class and came down to our office from the computer lab after using the automatic account creator there. She couldn't log in. I verified her user name and let her reset her password so she could get in.
Three minutes later, she's back. Still can't log in. I have her try to log in from my terminal, and she can't log in. So this time, I have her write down the password she wants to use, and I change the password on the account, so I can be sure that it's changed to the right thing. Then I sit her down again at my terminal and have her try to log in.
She still can't log in successfully. I try, and I can log in. So I then had her try typing her password at the username prompt, so she could see what she was typing. Turned out she couldn't consistently hold down the shift key, so she kept capitalizing a different letter each time. So I had to teach her to type in her password slowly, so she could do it correctly without having to see it as she typed.
Case #2: Guy comes in, says he can log in on the Solaris machines in the computer lab, but not the Linux ones (or it may have been the other way around -- it's been about fifteen years now). Now, they're all using the same NIS username/password database, so this shouldn't be possible. One of the other admins takes his case, asks the guy his username, does "su - username" on his workstation, asks the guy to type his password. He does, and successfully logs in. The other admin says, "See, you can log in, there's no problem."
Guy isn't happy with that -- says he's tried on several different Linux workstations in the lab, and couldn't log in to any of them. The two of them start arguing, so I decide to step in, saying "Let's go down to the lab and see". So we go down to the lab, and I ask the guy to pick a workstation and log in.
Now, we used last names as login names, adding characters from the first name to make them unique if needed. The guy sits down, then types in his last name, a space, and his first name as his user name. Of course the system doesn't let him in. The odd thing was that the Solaris machines would take it -- they'd just throw away the space and everything after it, so he could log into them like that.
Those cases, though, were partly user and partly the software -- in the first case, a combination of poor typing skills and the password not being echoed. In the second, the user not understanding what his login name was combined with Solaris' "feature" of throwing away a space and whatever came after it at the login prompt.
For your guy with the event invitations, I'd guess that there was some combination of a user problem and a system problem. Not necessarily with your system, but an email address that he had might have been set to forward to all of that person's family, or been a mailing list for their family. I would've asked him who exactly he was emailing that he got that behavior with, and investigated that possibility.
"One dipshit Archduke"? You do realize that the Archduke in question was heir to the throne of one of the most powerful countries in Europe, and this was a time when royalty still had more than just ceremonial functions? It'd be the equivalent of someone assassinating the vice-president of the US today -- not just some random bozo getting killed.
Having a Facebook presence and a Google one != Not having any privacy. It's quite possible to share some information without sharing all information.
No -- AT&T is making $5/mo for 200mb vs. $15/mo for 2g. They're still charging me $15 for 200mb and $25 for 2g. The subsidy comes from their profits. On my end, buying the phone is simply the "cost of entry". Note as well that even after I've paid off the "subsidy", they still keep charging me those same amounts. At that point, my costs don't go down, but AT&T's earnings go up. My point was that the pricing structure doesn't encourage me to minimize my bandwidth usage -- instead, it encourages me to maximize it toward my cap, and the lower price/MB as I increase my cap encourages me to increase my cap if I think there's a good chance that I'll go over the lower cap in any given month. The "subsidy" doesn't affect that.
The carriers have the ability to measure usage, and they are using it. Any whining from them of "we can't identify who the hogs are" or "we don't know where the traffic is coming from" is simply lying. They're already measuring these things for billing purposes. Taking that data and using it for planning purposes only requires some investment in software to sort through the data they already have.
I'll note too that they fail to provide incentives for keeping your usage low. For example, from AT&T, for $15 a month, I can get 200 MB / month of data. For $25, I can get 2 GB / month. So, my wife, who was routinely using around 250 MB a month, upgraded to the 2 GB a month... and once she did, she started doing things like frequently streaming video to her phone. After all, she'd have to use eight times as much data as she used to before she'd exceed her new cap, so why shouldn't she?
It gets worse, though. For my work, I need to be able to remotely access the machines I work on at a moment's notice. I can't guarantee I'll always have a wi-fi connection available if I get an emergency call from the boss, so I have tethering. However, AT&T won't let me pay, say, a few extra dollars a month and use tethering with my 200 MB / month plan. Instead, I have to pay for their tethering plan, which gives me 4 GB / month of data, with tethering, for $45 a month. There is no lower option that allows tethering.
So now I've started watching videos online. I didn't bother getting 3g on the iPad I got myself for Christmas either... why pay the carrier another fee, when I can tether the iPad to the phone and actually get some use out of that 4 GB a month I'm having to pay for?
I would've been happy to give AT&T $5 a month for tethering and stay on my $15 a month, 200 MB / month plan, and not change my habits of using the phone at all. But if they're going to require me to pay $45 a month for a 4 GB plan in order to get tethering, I'm going to damn well increase my usage! Otherwise, I'm paying an additional $20 a month for nothing.
If I wind up using, say, 1 GB a month, I'm actually being charged 4.5 cents per MB. Before, with my 200 MB plan, I was being charged 7.5 cents per MB. If I somehow managed to use all 4 GB in a month, I'd be charged 1.125 cents per MB.
When the carriers effectively are giving steep discounts to "data hogs", what do they think is going to happen? If I had to buy 4 GB at my old plan's rate, I'd pay $300 for it. You can bet I'd be watching my usage carefully in that case! As it is, I *have* to pay for 4 GB a month, so I try to use as much of it as I can!
From my point of view, there are a few different problems here: 1 - Unexpected rules combos. These are the combos you refer to above. Unfortunately, the only ways to prevent these are to either (1) playtest everything with everything else, which means that every new ability that's introduced will have longer and longer playtesting time required, or (2) stop creating new rules. While the second option might actually be desirable from the point of view of some players, it's definitely not desirable from the point of view of the game's maker, who needs to keep creating new products to sell. 2 - Power creep. This is the tendency of new additions to the game to be more powerful than the older things in it. Every version of D&D has suffered from this (I remember people complaining about how much better paladins were than plain fighters when they were introduced, in the very first D&D supplement, "Greyhawk"). 4th was, unfortunately, no exception, with some of the feats introduced in the "Essentials" line being much better than feats from the Player's Handbook. The newer classes that have been introduced also seem to have power creep, with things that were Encounter powers for the older classes becoming At-Will for newer ones. 3 - Guidelines for GMs. It's here that 4th really shines, IMHO. It's gone a lot farther than previous editions in labeling things and giving advice of the "a party should have at least one character of each of these types" sort. It also gave explicit rules on how many magic items PCs should have, what magic items were appropriate for what levels, and how to build a balanced encounter. However, the mechanical nature of these rules, combined with many RPG gamers "if it doesn't say optional, it's required" mindset has resulted in some backlash against these rules. People say they make the game too much like a computer game, with level requirements for equipment, designated "boss" monsters, etc. Probably one of the biggest failures on the part of 4th was not separating out some of what was meant to be "training wheels" from the core of the rules. It would have made sense to produce the main rulebooks and an, oh, "Basic Set" meant for new players at the same time. As it was, they didn't produce a "Basic Set" for 4th until almost two years after it came out... and designed the "Basic Set" in such a way that new players would need to buy more stuff almost immediately. Paizo also took a while to come out with their "Beginner Box" for Pathfinder, but I think they did a much better job with it. It can allow a new group, without anyone who already knows the rules, to learn them on their own, and to play without having to buy anything else for at least a few months.
If you're playing third or 3.5, google "grapple ball of speed". It's such a lovely rules-abuse.
They just announced 5th edition today -- it's not like anything yet. They're saying they want to get a lot of input from players, though, so if you want to put your word in with them, follow the links in the article.
I'm pretty sure that it's being heavily driven by the fact that Pathfinder is now outselling 4th edition D&D. Oh, and by the way, while you'll find the Pathfinder Core PDF on tons of file-sharing sites, the publisher doesn't give it away. A guaranteed-legal copy of the Pathfinder Core PDF is $10, and the paper book is $50. (http://paizo.com/store/v5748btpy88yj)
As the Pythons might say, "Eh, it's a fair cop." Never actually worked in a comic or gaming store, but I've been "that guy" hanging out in RPG Usenet newsgroups, online discussions, etc. since about 1991.
For just that reason, a group of people have re-created 1st edition AD&D under the Open Gaming License: http://www.knights-n-knaves.com/osric/
1974 - Original D&D
1977-9 - First Edition AD&D
1985 - "Unearthed Arcana" - extensive changes and expansions to AD&D - arguably "AD&D 1.5"
1989 - Second Edition AD&D
1995-6 - "Skills & Powers", "Combat & Tactics", "Spells & Magic" - arguably "AD&D 2.5"
2000 - Third Edition AD&D, "A" is dropped for marketing reasons
2003 - 3.5 Edition AD&D
2008 - 4th Edition AD&D
2010-1 - "D&D Essentials" - arguably "AD&D 4.5"
However, during the 80s and early 90s, TSR also kept developing "D&D" as a separate system, separated for legal reasons. This version is often called "Basic D&D".
1977 - First Edition BD&D
1981 - Second Edition BD&D
1983-5 - Third Edition BD&D
1991 - Fourth Edition BD&D
Thus, new D&D rule sets came out the fastest during the late '70s and early '80s, but the average time period between new rule revisions has been 5 years or so. AD&D now moves faster, thanks to the dropping of the "BD&D" line in the '90s. 2nd, 3rd, and 4th edition AD&D were all announced 2-3 years before they actually came out. I'd expect to see 5th edition actually coming out late in 2013 at earliest.