Another problem is that the tech can only be as smart as the person on the other end of the phone. If the person making the call is clueless then the tech is unlikely to get enough information to truly solve the problem anyway.
For example, guy calls in and says, "the internet is down." That can be so many differen things it's all but impossible to troubleshoot. Especially if they don't know what a modem is and they think their computer is a CPU.
That and if your connection's down, it's kinda hard to look it up online.
So true. I always get a kick out of when I call my ISP to report that my connection is down and at the end of the call, they remind me that next time I can use their online tech support website. Online tech support is great for most things, but people at ISP's may want to rethink the idea.
I'm sorry but if I was building houses for the poor, and someone stole the scafolding or my old sawhorse, I'd go home, tell them to build their own damn house, and never look back. Talk about pissing on the hand that feeds you.
Or (this would be fun!) get the BSA to audit their pal Microsoft. Last I heard, M$ had some 250,000 PCs on site -- want to bet that every single one has every piece of software properly licensed??
Problem is that even if this did happen (and yes, I agree it would be fantastic), Microsoft would get out of any fees real quickly. Say, for examply, an employee had an unlicensed copy of Winzip on his/her computer. The BSA finds this, tells MS about it. MS then tells Winzip to give MS a license or else MS will sick the BSA on Winzip for an audit. Heck, MS could sick the BSA on itself simply for thinking about auditing MS, since I'm sure the BSA uses Windows.
You can sue the company for libel though. Damaging your credit report due to a mistake on their part can cause you actual damages.
It's great having a lawyer for a brother. I had a company try to say I owed them money. I told them that I did not, and that I had the receipt as proof of payment. They said they'd damage my credit rating if I did not pay up. I called my bro, who called the company. Next day, I had a formal apology from the company stating that I did not owe them money and that my credit rating will remain clear.
Re:Not just for geeks,...it's education for everyo
on
Revolution OS
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
So I think as a gift to every new client I am giving them a copy of this so they can get informed. This DVD does so much better of a better job explaining this revolution to people.
So we're not boycotting DVDs today? Damn, must have missed that memo.
I'll admit, there is very few pieces of demo-ware that I've bought. Though, there is one piece that I did. AnyJ has a cool way of doing it. You can download as many times as you want. Every one of the features are there to use. If you try to open a project older than 90 days, it reminds you that you should register, but lets you continue anyway. For those reasons, I bought a personal license. And in fact, my past two companines have switched from their IDE's to AnyJ because of the demo's they tried.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that many other posters out here. Do not require an email address until they buy the software. Do not cripple the program from the start. If you treat your customers like pirates, pirates they will become (see RIAA). If you treat your customers like people you want to please, then some will buy, and some will decide your product isn't worth it. That's the chance you take.
Aye, but you can pull out the alternator and the car will still start and run (though it will kick out when the battery dies). Plus, it is well documented how an alternator works, what the power output and input must be, and it's dimensions must be within a certain range. This documentation allows third party complanies to produce different alternators for your car, giving you a choice.
When the alternator died in my old car, the manufacturer provided plenty of support in getting it replaced with a new one. The owner's manual specied what it needed to be replaced with, and when I took the car in to a repair shop, they were able to put a stock one in for me.
When IE broke (that is, needed a critical update so some thirteen year old kid couldn't take control of your computer), did Microsoft provide any help with replacing IE? No, they put some gum over the hole and told you to just keep on driving. When a new hole rusted through what happened? More gum. And so on.
He means you can't replace the AM/FM radio with the Bose one. Sure, you can bolt the Bose one to the glove compartment (or trunk, or wherever), but you cannot pull out the AM/FM radio and put the Bose one in its place.
A few other things to consider... You cannot cut the lines to the AM/FM radio or the car won't start. Instead, you have to splice them and attach them to the Bose as well. You cannot turn off the AM/FM radio, or the car will not start. Instead, you have to turn on the Bose one and hope the AM/FM doesn't start sending noise down the lines.
Should I have to pay (even) more for a CD because my friends didn't technically purchase a license to listen to the music?
According to the xxAA, yes. Feel free to replace "xx" with "RI" and you have the music mafia. Or replace "xx" with "MP" and "music" with "movie" and you have the movie mafia. Either way, the answer stays the same. DIVX (not the codec) was the MPAA's dream. Pay for the movie every time you watch it. If you want to watch it at a friend's place, pay for it again. If you want to watch it upstairs, pay for it again.
The RIAA is trying to do that exact same thing with music. I hope that it will fail as badly and that someone (anyone) pimp slaps some sense into them. If not, I'll switch to classical music. I'll have an easier time adjusting my taste in music than adjusting to the "pay-to-play" model the xxAA is trying to force down our throats.
Also, P2P would fall apart if people couldn't run it on their $40/month line.
Not just P2P would die though. All multimedia services on the internet would be screwed. Think of it this way, using.NET all your apps would be internet side. You're paying the ASP. You're paying the ISP. And you're paying for each and every second you use your own app. This would do very bad things to the new RIAA's downloadable music service and would completely kill any MPAA downloadable movie service. Movies weigh in at oer a gig each. When people have to pay for the download, *twice*, people will just pass.
I like the idea of political duty. Think of it like jury duty, only longer. It basically states that random people will be picked to server as politicians (house menbers, senate members, etc.) for a period of time. They are then released and a new crop is picked. There are many problems with this, but there are many problems with the way things are done now.
If the policitial duty was truly random, the views of the population are more likely to be represented. Though it would take a lot of effort to ensure the process is random and is not corrupted.
I seem to remember one of my business friends talking about the "one ten rule". It went something like: "If you make ten people happy, collectively they will tell one person about it. If you make one person mad, he will go out and tell ten others that you screwed him."
The moral of the rule, at least according to my friend, is that it's not always good business to try and make everyone happy, but it's piss poor business sense to not try to resolve issues that upset people.
Poorly worded, but I'll bet he meant that if you don't license your product under an Open Source license, no one but you can sell it. Unless, that is, you allow them to pay you for the rights to sell it.
Not exactly. The O-ring seals had never been tested at as cold of weather as it was on the day of the Discovery disaster. Engineers tried to point this out. They also tried to point out that the temperature was well below that of the approved specs. The problem was political. A former president was there for the launch (Nixon if I remember correctly), and NASA was not about to disappoint him. Upper level people ignored the engineers warnings about the O-rings and the launch took place.
The O-rings then failed because of the low temperature, and the shuttle exploded.
I agree with most of what you said, but one minor nit pick. The airport controllers knew the planes had been taken over by terrorists long before the planes crashed into the buildings. F16's had even been launched to try and intercept the planes should they veer off to a populated area. The problem is that the F16's were unable to reach the planes in time.
So yes, in this one case anti-aircraft cannons may have actually helped. Though, I agree the potential for more harm then good is huge.
Not to get into a religion debate, but here is a quick lesson on simple statistics.
Say, for example, the changes of life forming through random luck on an object (be it planet, asteroid, comet, whatever) are 1,000,000,000,000,000:1. If there are 1,000,000,000,000,000 objects out there, then life will have likely formed on at least one of them.
It's a lot like a lottery. You can point to someone who won and say, "The odds against you winning are beyond astronomical," but that doesn't change the fact that he or she did. Just like you can point to the Earth and say, "The odds against life forming on its own are beyond astronomical," but again, that does not mean that it didn't.
Heh. I remember comparing Resolve to Ebonics on the newsgroups a while back. My prof, good ol' Paolo Bucci, was less than pleased.:)
I never did understand why they would not teach Java. They use Resolve to abstract away the need for pointers and they spent a lot of time building a large library to emulate the function of Java. Partial maps, linked lists, and such. It just seems odd to me to try and teach C++ as if it was Java.
...yet all of a sudden, you turn 18, and having sex with a classmate can put you in jail.
In Ohio, at least, the law provides a 2 (maybe even 4) year buffer. That means that an 18 year-old can still date a 16 year-old. This was to keep the situation of high school sweethearts being labeled as pediphiles because one turned 18 before the other did.
I accept messages from people not on my list and I don't get many porn messages anymore. I disabled all URL messages, since they tended to be the worst offender. Also, I disabled all multiple-recepient messages from people not on my list. This way I can still hear from new people I haven't met before, but spammers who click hundreds of names then "send" get filtered out.
I prefer "support@[website]". For example, to get RealPlayer to quit bugging me, my email address it was assigned was "support@real.com". I also make an extra effort to ensure all the correct check boxes are selected to "yes" as well.:)
Slashdot Mirror
Tell that to the bnetd team.
Another problem is that the tech can only be as smart as the person on the other end of the phone. If the person making the call is clueless then the tech is unlikely to get enough information to truly solve the problem anyway.
For example, guy calls in and says, "the internet is down." That can be so many differen things it's all but impossible to troubleshoot. Especially if they don't know what a modem is and they think their computer is a CPU.
That and if your connection's down, it's kinda hard to look it up online.
So true. I always get a kick out of when I call my ISP to report that my connection is down and at the end of the call, they remind me that next time I can use their online tech support website. Online tech support is great for most things, but people at ISP's may want to rethink the idea.
Microsoft has absolutely no way to force anyone to buy an Xbox.
Microsoft could start bundling XBoxes with Windows.
I'm sorry but if I was building houses for the poor, and someone stole the scafolding or my old sawhorse, I'd go home, tell them to build their own damn house, and never look back. Talk about pissing on the hand that feeds you.
Or (this would be fun!) get the BSA to audit their pal Microsoft. Last I heard, M$ had some 250,000 PCs on site -- want to bet that every single one has every piece of software properly licensed??
Problem is that even if this did happen (and yes, I agree it would be fantastic), Microsoft would get out of any fees real quickly. Say, for examply, an employee had an unlicensed copy of Winzip on his/her computer. The BSA finds this, tells MS about it. MS then tells Winzip to give MS a license or else MS will sick the BSA on Winzip for an audit. Heck, MS could sick the BSA on itself simply for thinking about auditing MS, since I'm sure the BSA uses Windows.
You can sue the company for libel though. Damaging your credit report due to a mistake on their part can cause you actual damages.
It's great having a lawyer for a brother. I had a company try to say I owed them money. I told them that I did not, and that I had the receipt as proof of payment. They said they'd damage my credit rating if I did not pay up. I called my bro, who called the company. Next day, I had a formal apology from the company stating that I did not owe them money and that my credit rating will remain clear.
So I think as a gift to every new client I am giving them a copy of this so they can get informed. This DVD does so much better of a better job explaining this revolution to people.
So we're not boycotting DVDs today? Damn, must have missed that memo.
I'll admit, there is very few pieces of demo-ware that I've bought. Though, there is one piece that I did. AnyJ has a cool way of doing it. You can download as many times as you want. Every one of the features are there to use. If you try to open a project older than 90 days, it reminds you that you should register, but lets you continue anyway. For those reasons, I bought a personal license. And in fact, my past two companines have switched from their IDE's to AnyJ because of the demo's they tried.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that many other posters out here. Do not require an email address until they buy the software. Do not cripple the program from the start. If you treat your customers like pirates, pirates they will become (see RIAA). If you treat your customers like people you want to please, then some will buy, and some will decide your product isn't worth it. That's the chance you take.
Aye, but you can pull out the alternator and the car will still start and run (though it will kick out when the battery dies). Plus, it is well documented how an alternator works, what the power output and input must be, and it's dimensions must be within a certain range. This documentation allows third party complanies to produce different alternators for your car, giving you a choice.
When the alternator died in my old car, the manufacturer provided plenty of support in getting it replaced with a new one. The owner's manual specied what it needed to be replaced with, and when I took the car in to a repair shop, they were able to put a stock one in for me.
When IE broke (that is, needed a critical update so some thirteen year old kid couldn't take control of your computer), did Microsoft provide any help with replacing IE? No, they put some gum over the hole and told you to just keep on driving. When a new hole rusted through what happened? More gum. And so on.
Looks like Alabama and Indiana beat you to it. :)
He means you can't replace the AM/FM radio with the Bose one. Sure, you can bolt the Bose one to the glove compartment (or trunk, or wherever), but you cannot pull out the AM/FM radio and put the Bose one in its place.
A few other things to consider... You cannot cut the lines to the AM/FM radio or the car won't start. Instead, you have to splice them and attach them to the Bose as well. You cannot turn off the AM/FM radio, or the car will not start. Instead, you have to turn on the Bose one and hope the AM/FM doesn't start sending noise down the lines.
Should I have to pay (even) more for a CD because my friends didn't technically purchase a license to listen to the music?
According to the xxAA, yes. Feel free to replace "xx" with "RI" and you have the music mafia. Or replace "xx" with "MP" and "music" with "movie" and you have the movie mafia. Either way, the answer stays the same. DIVX (not the codec) was the MPAA's dream. Pay for the movie every time you watch it. If you want to watch it at a friend's place, pay for it again. If you want to watch it upstairs, pay for it again.
The RIAA is trying to do that exact same thing with music. I hope that it will fail as badly and that someone (anyone) pimp slaps some sense into them. If not, I'll switch to classical music. I'll have an easier time adjusting my taste in music than adjusting to the "pay-to-play" model the xxAA is trying to force down our throats.
Also, P2P would fall apart if people couldn't run it on their $40/month line.
.NET all your apps would be internet side. You're paying the ASP. You're paying the ISP. And you're paying for each and every second you use your own app. This would do very bad things to the new RIAA's downloadable music service and would completely kill any MPAA downloadable movie service. Movies weigh in at oer a gig each. When people have to pay for the download, *twice*, people will just pass.
Not just P2P would die though. All multimedia services on the internet would be screwed. Think of it this way, using
How does one choose trustworthy authorities?
I like the idea of political duty. Think of it like jury duty, only longer. It basically states that random people will be picked to server as politicians (house menbers, senate members, etc.) for a period of time. They are then released and a new crop is picked. There are many problems with this, but there are many problems with the way things are done now.
If the policitial duty was truly random, the views of the population are more likely to be represented. Though it would take a lot of effort to ensure the process is random and is not corrupted.
I seem to remember one of my business friends talking about the "one ten rule". It went something like: "If you make ten people happy, collectively they will tell one person about it. If you make one person mad, he will go out and tell ten others that you screwed him."
The moral of the rule, at least according to my friend, is that it's not always good business to try and make everyone happy, but it's piss poor business sense to not try to resolve issues that upset people.
Poorly worded, but I'll bet he meant that if you don't license your product under an Open Source license, no one but you can sell it. Unless, that is, you allow them to pay you for the rights to sell it.
Crap, you're right. I meant the Challenger.
The shuttle failed in it's normal operation.
Not exactly. The O-ring seals had never been tested at as cold of weather as it was on the day of the Discovery disaster. Engineers tried to point this out. They also tried to point out that the temperature was well below that of the approved specs. The problem was political. A former president was there for the launch (Nixon if I remember correctly), and NASA was not about to disappoint him. Upper level people ignored the engineers warnings about the O-rings and the launch took place.
The O-rings then failed because of the low temperature, and the shuttle exploded.
I agree with most of what you said, but one minor nit pick. The airport controllers knew the planes had been taken over by terrorists long before the planes crashed into the buildings. F16's had even been launched to try and intercept the planes should they veer off to a populated area. The problem is that the F16's were unable to reach the planes in time.
So yes, in this one case anti-aircraft cannons may have actually helped. Though, I agree the potential for more harm then good is huge.
Not to get into a religion debate, but here is a quick lesson on simple statistics.
Say, for example, the changes of life forming through random luck on an object (be it planet, asteroid, comet, whatever) are 1,000,000,000,000,000:1. If there are 1,000,000,000,000,000 objects out there, then life will have likely formed on at least one of them.
It's a lot like a lottery. You can point to someone who won and say, "The odds against you winning are beyond astronomical," but that doesn't change the fact that he or she did. Just like you can point to the Earth and say, "The odds against life forming on its own are beyond astronomical," but again, that does not mean that it didn't.
Heh. I remember comparing Resolve to Ebonics on the newsgroups a while back. My prof, good ol' Paolo Bucci, was less than pleased. :)
I never did understand why they would not teach Java. They use Resolve to abstract away the need for pointers and they spent a lot of time building a large library to emulate the function of Java. Partial maps, linked lists, and such. It just seems odd to me to try and teach C++ as if it was Java.
...yet all of a sudden, you turn 18, and having sex with a classmate can put you in jail.
In Ohio, at least, the law provides a 2 (maybe even 4) year buffer. That means that an 18 year-old can still date a 16 year-old. This was to keep the situation of high school sweethearts being labeled as pediphiles because one turned 18 before the other did.
I accept messages from people not on my list and I don't get many porn messages anymore. I disabled all URL messages, since they tended to be the worst offender. Also, I disabled all multiple-recepient messages from people not on my list. This way I can still hear from new people I haven't met before, but spammers who click hundreds of names then "send" get filtered out.
I prefer "support@[website]". For example, to get RealPlayer to quit bugging me, my email address it was assigned was "support@real.com". I also make an extra effort to ensure all the correct check boxes are selected to "yes" as well. :)