well, over here in Holland, as most of the world knows, we have some of the finest pot there is, and we're even allowed to buy it, smoke it and on a very small scale transport it. result: we smoke less pot than the british, the french, the germans, heck, everyone around us. it's allowed, so the whole thrill of "doing something forbidden" goes away. most highschool kids try it once at a party and decide it really isn't all that terrific to begin with and that's that, end of story.
another funny thing is that if you take a map of holland, and mark tiny red dots for every teenage pregnancy, you'll find a couple of big red blobs right in the areas where we still have some really, REALLY religious folks hanging out. the kind that refuses to take polio shots...or teach their kids about safe sex, or even the subject "sex" at all. imo this mindset is fighting a losing battle. kids these days have all the information they could ever want right at their fingertips. tv, internet, you name it. either parents adapt to this, and steer their kids in the right direction instead of simply saying "you're not allowed", or they'll utterly fail.
Not all people actually *use* their computers 24/7. Some just sit next to them looking important during a meeting. Some actually care whether their computer set matches the design of the room it's located in(a certain ex-gf comes to mind). besides, pretty stuff sells.
but you're allowed to be pretty pissed off if you lend him your pencil and he then uses it in an entirely inappropriate manner. in fact, you're even allowed to be SO pissed off as to never lend him a pencil again. i leave the exact details as to how one can use a pencil in an inappropriate manner to your imagination...
Also, I'm wondering why people haven't designed software to get around those silly try-to-guess-what-word-we've-seriously-distorted-b eyond-recognition systems.
Oh, but those are around alright. Maybe not easy to find, but I know of some people who used them, mainly to cheat in on-line games, hence the past tense. Takes some serious filtering and OCR though.
all in all, I sympathize, yet i can perfectly understand the company's decision to get (arguably) the same level of support for less money. Being dutch myself, we have a lot of callcenters around here due to national tendency to speak generally at least 1 language besides our own, often 2, sometimes even more, combined with locations that host lots of foreign students, so plenty of callcenter work around here.
And yes, people still prefer techsupport folks they can actually see while talking to them, well, generally anyway. Some of the folks I've seen working on the phone should stay right there, or at the very least been given a long shower, a toothbrush and a brush-up course on inter-human communication:/
personal observation: it's a heck of a lot easier to take someone who knows nothing about tech but has good manners and turn that person into a decent agent than to do it the other way around. fact is, knowledge is only like 30% of the job. the rest of it is 20% patience, 30% manners and 20% timing(knowing when to press the mute button)
what's service levels coming to when companies can't even afford to hire staff that can lie convincingly...back in the day I used to convince people the moon was purple when told to do so, and if I felt like taking a little initiative I'd even sell a few square meters on it...
Still, I applaud your not exploding in his face. Poor Ghumpta likely has to tell lies in order to keep his family fed. You have no idea how crappy it is to have a job like that.
The ones providing tech support bill based on number of calls.
if the company that hires the callcenter chooses this kind of contract, then yes, that's what yóu're gonna get. You get what you pay for and stuff. I know for a fact that when I worked at an out-source callcenter that one of our customers who DID care about service levels paid by the minute, not by the call. They also had people checking the service levels on a daily basis, so things don't always work this way. In fact, working callcenter in a NUTS company right now, our level of service is pretty much the biggest difference there is between the various competitors on the market, so there's a very big emphasis on keeping the customer happy.
so there you were, thinking yourself really tough, making fun of some poor sod in an out-source callcenter who never quite got the training from the not-to-be-named company to really do the job well, who can do absolutely nothing but follow a couple of silly script lines and who gets paid shit to swallow yours? bravo!
What if they decide using Linux is 'hate speech against capitalism'?
Did you just compare linux to the nazi's? For that matter, don't you think there's a subtle difference between a computer operatign system or a regime responsible for...oh, wait, this is slashdot.
i actually wrote a small mirc script that automatically converts what I say to 1337 before sending it to the server....considered doing the same in perl to really bug people, but never quite got around to it, fortunately for them;-)
by it's very definition Science Fiction is....well, Fiction. Ofcourse this logically entails that all of the things described do not exist and never will. I mean, take this Jules Verne character, I mean, airplanes? submarines? pah, such nonsense, no way. or this whole psychohistory babble this Asimov person brought up...
Re:Currect track record
on
Latest SP2 News
·
· Score: 2, Informative
XP SP2... disappointing (may as well be WinXPSE much like Win98SE was)
XP SP2. Websites go out of their way to find security flaws and come up with this in a feeble attempt to keep the anti-MS flow going...sorry, but if this is the worst exploit they can manage to dig up from SP2 perhaps they need to point their arrows elsewhere...
i take it your dad is aware the stuff only works if you take it all the time, everytime? then again, i got it prescribed as well, and in hindsight that was a huge mistake. seems some shrinks can't distinguish between depression and unhappiness, or depression and a touch of authism...
in the past I always used to sneer at people who compared computers to cars. after all, with a car you can kill people, how much harm can a computer really do. however, these days, any unprotected computer is just begging to be used as an accessory to crime. yes, crime, real criminal activities. perhaps people won't die because of it, but individual businesses getting dossed for days lose substantial amounts of money due this slack behaviour on the side of the users.
personally, I feel that governments should lay the responsibility for this with the ISP's. if someone's box gets compromised, it is up to the ISP to make sure that either the box is taken offline, or that the trojan/rootkit/you name it is removed or firewalled off. failure to do so will result in a fine for the ISP. how the ISP deals with this is up to them, they may decide to make the user pay part of it or not, that's entirely their business, but at least someone has to take responsibility. this way, if the ISP wants to run a clean network, they will have to provide information and support on the issue.
my own isp, crappy as they may be, provide cheap hardware router/firewalls for their customers including a full and complete explanation of what they are, what they do and why you'd need one. ofc this is also motivated by a financial interest on their side, but still, quite a Good Thing(tm) imo
I actually ran into trouble with the bank recently when signing up for some extra insurance. Turned out they were comparing the signature to the one they had filed when I opened the account when I was 17, 9 years ago....suffice to say my sig had changed a bit over the years. This technology might have detected that my actual writing pattern is still pretty much the same though.
ehmm, waaaay back in the past? dude with club runs around clubbing dino's over the head? if they make the dino's look like that purple annoying whats-his-name i'll gladly pay for it:)
heh, sysadmins gotta stick together these days. maybe some sort of world-wide affiliation is required, "Sysadmins against kiddies"...hmm, no, that came out kinda wrong
Slashdot Mirror
well, over here in Holland, as most of the world knows, we have some of the finest pot there is, and we're even allowed to buy it, smoke it and on a very small scale transport it. result: we smoke less pot than the british, the french, the germans, heck, everyone around us. it's allowed, so the whole thrill of "doing something forbidden" goes away. most highschool kids try it once at a party and decide it really isn't all that terrific to begin with and that's that, end of story.
another funny thing is that if you take a map of holland, and mark tiny red dots for every teenage pregnancy, you'll find a couple of big red blobs right in the areas where we still have some really, REALLY religious folks hanging out. the kind that refuses to take polio shots...or teach their kids about safe sex, or even the subject "sex" at all. imo this mindset is fighting a losing battle. kids these days have all the information they could ever want right at their fingertips. tv, internet, you name it. either parents adapt to this, and steer their kids in the right direction instead of simply saying "you're not allowed", or they'll utterly fail.
Not all people actually *use* their computers 24/7. Some just sit next to them looking important during a meeting. Some actually care whether their computer set matches the design of the room it's located in(a certain ex-gf comes to mind). besides, pretty stuff sells.
but you're allowed to be pretty pissed off if you lend him your pencil and he then uses it in an entirely inappropriate manner. in fact, you're even allowed to be SO pissed off as to never lend him a pencil again. i leave the exact details as to how one can use a pencil in an inappropriate manner to your imagination...
(You know I'm right because I used a foreign language phrase...)
Oooooh, you speak Freedom...sorry, couldn't resist
Also, I'm wondering why people haven't designed software to get around those silly try-to-guess-what-word-we've-seriously-distorted-b eyond-recognition systems.
Oh, but those are around alright. Maybe not easy to find, but I know of some people who used them, mainly to cheat in on-line games, hence the past tense. Takes some serious filtering and OCR though.all in all, I sympathize, yet i can perfectly understand the company's decision to get (arguably) the same level of support for less money. Being dutch myself, we have a lot of callcenters around here due to national tendency to speak generally at least 1 language besides our own, often 2, sometimes even more, combined with locations that host lots of foreign students, so plenty of callcenter work around here.
:/
And yes, people still prefer techsupport folks they can actually see while talking to them, well, generally anyway. Some of the folks I've seen working on the phone should stay right there, or at the very least been given a long shower, a toothbrush and a brush-up course on inter-human communication
personal observation: it's a heck of a lot easier to take someone who knows nothing about tech but has good manners and turn that person into a decent agent than to do it the other way around. fact is, knowledge is only like 30% of the job. the rest of it is 20% patience, 30% manners and 20% timing(knowing when to press the mute button)
what's service levels coming to when companies can't even afford to hire staff that can lie convincingly...back in the day I used to convince people the moon was purple when told to do so, and if I felt like taking a little initiative I'd even sell a few square meters on it...
Still, I applaud your not exploding in his face. Poor Ghumpta likely has to tell lies in order to keep his family fed. You have no idea how crappy it is to have a job like that.
The ones providing tech support bill based on number of calls.
if the company that hires the callcenter chooses this kind of contract, then yes, that's what yóu're gonna get. You get what you pay for and stuff. I know for a fact that when I worked at an out-source callcenter that one of our customers who DID care about service levels paid by the minute, not by the call. They also had people checking the service levels on a daily basis, so things don't always work this way. In fact, working callcenter in a NUTS company right now, our level of service is pretty much the biggest difference there is between the various competitors on the market, so there's a very big emphasis on keeping the customer happy.so there you were, thinking yourself really tough, making fun of some poor sod in an out-source callcenter who never quite got the training from the not-to-be-named company to really do the job well, who can do absolutely nothing but follow a couple of silly script lines and who gets paid shit to swallow yours? bravo!
why not? don't tell me anyone would look surprised?
What if they decide using Linux is 'hate speech against capitalism'?
Did you just compare linux to the nazi's? For that matter, don't you think there's a subtle difference between a computer operatign system or a regime responsible for...oh, wait, this is slashdot.i actually wrote a small mirc script that automatically converts what I say to 1337 before sending it to the server....considered doing the same in perl to really bug people, but never quite got around to it, fortunately for them ;-)
considering some of the conversation people(not me ofc, no way...) have over IM this might not be a feature suitable for a work environment :)
don't forget to mention the part where Detritus installs a fan in his helmet to cool his silicon-based brain...
by it's very definition Science Fiction is....well, Fiction. Ofcourse this logically entails that all of the things described do not exist and never will. I mean, take this Jules Verne character, I mean, airplanes? submarines? pah, such nonsense, no way. or this whole psychohistory babble this Asimov person brought up...
XP SP2 ... disappointing (may as well be WinXPSE much like Win98SE was)
XP SP2. Websites go out of their way to find security flaws and come up with this in a feeble attempt to keep the anti-MS flow going...sorry, but if this is the worst exploit they can manage to dig up from SP2 perhaps they need to point their arrows elsewhere...
fish = animal, no? so i guess it depends on whether the sushi eater happens to be a circus freak...
i take it your dad is aware the stuff only works if you take it all the time, everytime? then again, i got it prescribed as well, and in hindsight that was a huge mistake. seems some shrinks can't distinguish between depression and unhappiness, or depression and a touch of authism...
in the past I always used to sneer at people who compared computers to cars. after all, with a car you can kill people, how much harm can a computer really do. however, these days, any unprotected computer is just begging to be used as an accessory to crime. yes, crime, real criminal activities. perhaps people won't die because of it, but individual businesses getting dossed for days lose substantial amounts of money due this slack behaviour on the side of the users.
personally, I feel that governments should lay the responsibility for this with the ISP's. if someone's box gets compromised, it is up to the ISP to make sure that either the box is taken offline, or that the trojan/rootkit/you name it is removed or firewalled off. failure to do so will result in a fine for the ISP. how the ISP deals with this is up to them, they may decide to make the user pay part of it or not, that's entirely their business, but at least someone has to take responsibility. this way, if the ISP wants to run a clean network, they will have to provide information and support on the issue.
my own isp, crappy as they may be, provide cheap hardware router/firewalls for their customers including a full and complete explanation of what they are, what they do and why you'd need one. ofc this is also motivated by a financial interest on their side, but still, quite a Good Thing(tm) imo
I actually ran into trouble with the bank recently when signing up for some extra insurance. Turned out they were comparing the signature to the one they had filed when I opened the account when I was 17, 9 years ago....suffice to say my sig had changed a bit over the years. This technology might have detected that my actual writing pattern is still pretty much the same though.
and even better, do they get removed when lost? perhaps battlechess-style?
hmmmmmm.....chess with mechs, big mechs....really, really big mechs...
how about deciding up-front whether you want a DNR or not?
having co-workers thing you're gay isn't necessarily a bad thing ;-) makes the ladies feel all safe and comfortable around you...
ehmm, waaaay back in the past? dude with club runs around clubbing dino's over the head? if they make the dino's look like that purple annoying whats-his-name i'll gladly pay for it :)
heh, sysadmins gotta stick together these days. maybe some sort of world-wide affiliation is required, "Sysadmins against kiddies"...hmm, no, that came out kinda wrong