I drive a Prius. It's a confusing enough vehicle when it's operating correctly. Throw in an unanticipated control response with a frightening haptic profile, and at least a few people are going to have trouble thinking beyond manipulating the last thing they frobbed.
The vehicle needs two things here, at least:
1. A fix to the cruise system that ensures there's no possibility of unexpected behavior (yes, with proper software design it's possible; I do that for a living).
2. A kill switch, such as that found on every(?) motorcycle made in the past N decades. Separate from the ignition switch (which used to be a kick-start lever) and the key switch, it's got a consistent and obvious location, color, and purpose. And you think it's an idiot-knob, until you need it.
Then you get the flipside: the online troubleshooting site is the only thing you can find under "contact." No way to get past the lack of an answer in the database to find a phone number, email address, or submission form.
Most online content providers do this. Google, Yahoo, ESPN, are a few I can think of off the top of my head. The closest you'll ever get is to luck into a "feedback" widget meant to collect impressions about their web design on a particular page. But those are likely linked to a database on a server they haven't logged into in years. It's semi-understandable in those cases. They provide content for nothing, so there's no profit margin in taking complaints, especially when 99% of all contacts will be spam or attempted denial-of-service attacks. Of course, broken content is a problem, so it costs them more to leave it broken than to fix it, but they still don't see the need to have a service organization to deal with it.
But when companies who sell expensive products they have presumably paid a lot of money to test do this, it's just business suicide.
> Most customer service centres seem to be manned by people that would fail the Turing test.
"Do," not "would."
A human being following a script instead of thinking and saying what he knows automatically fails the Turing test. You're not talking to a person. You're talking to a 3-ring binder.
On the first instance where the 3-ring binder fails to address my problem correctly, I say "please elevate this," and I keep saying it until I get to someone who knows what they're talking about. And so on and so forth.
It works, sometimes.
I ended up discussing battery-recharging issues with the CEO of a not unpopular computer mouse company once.
But mostly you reach the "I need to speak to a VP about his organization and the institutional attitude he's created regarding customers and quality" state and suddenly nobody has access to a phone number, or has orders never to release it.
At the present time, getting off the planet isn't much of a priority matter.
Being able to live on it, however, is.
Because, what are your choices?
Put a lot of money we don't have into a project that will allow only the insanely wealthy to go somewhere else and leave the rest of us to continue devolving into the sort of people they want to get away from in the first place?
or,
Fix this dump and get another 100 years of technological progress under our belts so we can figure out how to do interplanetary travel cheaply when it really does become a matter of survival for our species?
Seriously, though, I make $40 in about 20 minutes. It would take me N times that long to DL and run any of the bigger Windows updates. On a new machine that was imaged with a base rev of the OS, there are several of those, interspersed with dozens if not hundreds of smaller ones.
It'd be worth it to me to get that all done by someone else, and I'd have someone to yell at if it isn't done.
NB: I did buy a computer at BB last year. One of the reasons I got it was that it had already gone through the process (and that particular model was marked down and was relatively cheap for the specs). They were stocking some units that way as a policy. I didn't even have to wait for it to be done. 2-GHz dual-core Dell lappy with all the mod cons (except a bulky optical drive) for $650? Sold. Out the door and at home cruising the intarwebs in 20 minutes, with no DIY sysadmin hassles at all.
They gave discounts to PC vendors who bought a lot of Intel chips.
They never tied the discounts to the vendors' not using AMD chips.
After getting literally hundreds of millions of pages of documents in deposition and finding no credible evidence (and asking for delays of the trial date to continue requesting documentation), AMD came to that conclusion and accepted Intel's settlement.
Intel's compiler writers didn't want to have to validate their compiler against AMD's parts, so they defaulted the behavior when the part wasn't an Intel part. Big whoop. AMD typically fabricated benchmark superiority by comparing software simulations of their unreleased products against released Intel parts that weren't even the current generation. How is that not a worse and more deliberate attempt to stifle sales of those Intel parts?
It would be if Charlie Daniels is right. Or that that was what he was saying.
Maxwell says you can conserve momentum and still gain propulsion by emitting radio waves.
BTW, that isn't the laws of thermodynamics, more like the laws of motion. It's a momentum and energy not being the same thing and each having its own conservation law, sort of thing.
But take heart. Most jokes are funny not because they are right, but because they follow the syntactic and semantic patterns of jokes. Same deal with Republican political slogans. Total bullshit, but excellent clap-trap.
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I for one welcome our easily-rooted overlords.
I drive a Prius. It's a confusing enough vehicle when it's operating correctly. Throw in an unanticipated control response with a frightening haptic profile, and at least a few people are going to have trouble thinking beyond manipulating the last thing they frobbed.
The vehicle needs two things here, at least:
1. A fix to the cruise system that ensures there's no possibility of unexpected behavior (yes, with proper software design it's possible; I do that for a living).
2. A kill switch, such as that found on every(?) motorcycle made in the past N decades. Separate from the ignition switch (which used to be a kick-start lever) and the key switch, it's got a consistent and obvious location, color, and purpose. And you think it's an idiot-knob, until you need it.
Okay, maybe not "most". "Many".
Then you get the flipside: the online troubleshooting site is the only thing you can find under "contact." No way to get past the lack of an answer in the database to find a phone number, email address, or submission form.
Most online content providers do this. Google, Yahoo, ESPN, are a few I can think of off the top of my head. The closest you'll ever get is to luck into a "feedback" widget meant to collect impressions about their web design on a particular page. But those are likely linked to a database on a server they haven't logged into in years. It's semi-understandable in those cases. They provide content for nothing, so there's no profit margin in taking complaints, especially when 99% of all contacts will be spam or attempted denial-of-service attacks. Of course, broken content is a problem, so it costs them more to leave it broken than to fix it, but they still don't see the need to have a service organization to deal with it.
But when companies who sell expensive products they have presumably paid a lot of money to test do this, it's just business suicide.
> Most customer service centres seem to be manned by people that would fail the Turing test.
"Do," not "would."
A human being following a script instead of thinking and saying what he knows automatically fails the Turing test. You're not talking to a person. You're talking to a 3-ring binder.
On the first instance where the 3-ring binder fails to address my problem correctly, I say "please elevate this," and I keep saying it until I get to someone who knows what they're talking about. And so on and so forth.
It works, sometimes.
I ended up discussing battery-recharging issues with the CEO of a not unpopular computer mouse company once.
But mostly you reach the "I need to speak to a VP about his organization and the institutional attitude he's created regarding customers and quality" state and suddenly nobody has access to a phone number, or has orders never to release it.
But now that Woz says there's a bug you know there's a bug, so how boring is your next ride in your wife's Prius going to be?
And now the Beatles are just those dudes from Rock Band.
(Yes, I stole that joke from Paul McCartney. So if anyone else steals it from him, I'll sue, because I did it first.)
Good thing they didn't call it the iPud, or it would come up awfully short in the marketplace...
At the present time, getting off the planet isn't much of a priority matter.
Being able to live on it, however, is.
Because, what are your choices?
Put a lot of money we don't have into a project that will allow only the insanely wealthy to go somewhere else and leave the rest of us to continue devolving into the sort of people they want to get away from in the first place?
or,
Fix this dump and get another 100 years of technological progress under our belts so we can figure out how to do interplanetary travel cheaply when it really does become a matter of survival for our species?
In other words, you were replaceable by software.
Seriously, though, I make $40 in about 20 minutes. It would take me N times that long to DL and run any of the bigger Windows updates. On a new machine that was imaged with a base rev of the OS, there are several of those, interspersed with dozens if not hundreds of smaller ones.
It'd be worth it to me to get that all done by someone else, and I'd have someone to yell at if it isn't done.
NB: I did buy a computer at BB last year. One of the reasons I got it was that it had already gone through the process (and that particular model was marked down and was relatively cheap for the specs). They were stocking some units that way as a policy. I didn't even have to wait for it to be done. 2-GHz dual-core Dell lappy with all the mod cons (except a bulky optical drive) for $650? Sold. Out the door and at home cruising the intarwebs in 20 minutes, with no DIY sysadmin hassles at all.
Yeah.
I'm a technical boy, too.
(Reaches into gym bag.)
Anonymity does not protect free speech, it threatens it.
Your rights are not protected by anonymous morons shouting "FIRE" on a crowded internet.
Your rights are protected when you take a stance in a court of law and allow the Judicial Branch to apply the First Amendment to your case.
The other branches of government will always have no other barrier to limiting your freedoms.
Your anonymity is only protecting you from being laughed at by your neighbors for the silly shit you post on the web.
"Its just a very old story with a few pretty visuals."
And how much is the Walt Disney company worth today?
I'm looking at Mickey Mouse laughing on my new desk calendar right now.
He's laughing at the idea that someone thinks it's news that old stories with a few pretty visuals are worth over a billion dollars worldwide.
We're paying for what Bush wrought. Learn something about cost accounting before you apportion blame.
Nobody going into a McDonald's should be allowed to sit for more than the time it takes to scarf down the food.
In fact, all McDonald's should be placed at the top of long flights of stairs; or better, escalators running backwards.
Science only feels like a religion because in both people with full knowledge of the arcana speak to the rest of us as though we are children.
The difference is in the veracity of the arcana.
So Science sometimes feels like a religion, while religion proves to be religion.
I'll take care of your question right after I get some post-its so I can make a note to remind me to deal with this.
Well, that's a sample set of 1.
Only 0.599999999 billion more to go before we get a statistical significance as to the world's opinion.
Except they didn't do that, either.
They gave discounts to PC vendors who bought a lot of Intel chips.
They never tied the discounts to the vendors' not using AMD chips.
After getting literally hundreds of millions of pages of documents in deposition and finding no credible evidence (and asking for delays of the trial date to continue requesting documentation), AMD came to that conclusion and accepted Intel's settlement.
Intel's compiler writers didn't want to have to validate their compiler against AMD's parts, so they defaulted the behavior when the part wasn't an Intel part. Big whoop. AMD typically fabricated benchmark superiority by comparing software simulations of their unreleased products against released Intel parts that weren't even the current generation. How is that not a worse and more deliberate attempt to stifle sales of those Intel parts?
They won't delete your fake account because, maybe, you made the common mistake of joining facadebook.com instead of facebook.com? Na?
It would be if Charlie Daniels is right. Or that that was what he was saying.
Maxwell says you can conserve momentum and still gain propulsion by emitting radio waves.
BTW, that isn't the laws of thermodynamics, more like the laws of motion. It's a momentum and energy not being the same thing and each having its own conservation law, sort of thing.
But take heart. Most jokes are funny not because they are right, but because they follow the syntactic and semantic patterns of jokes. Same deal with Republican political slogans. Total bullshit, but excellent clap-trap.
Your Hoover won't work in outer space.
Think about it.
Cool.
We can finally shut down the MMRPG called "religion".
I just used that explanation with the 3 major credit bureaus and raised my FICO score 20 points!
Because I wanted to post my own version of it later in the timeline as though this had never appeared.
(That's not just irony, it's comedy.)