Well I can't say I've ever gotten really good customer service from a tech vendor, but there is one company that consistently gives unsurpassed service to all its customers: Dillon Precision.
Unless you're a gun nut, you won't have heard of them, they make machines for making your own ammunition. Anyway, here's their deal. They guarantee most of their products for the life of the product. Anytime something breaks, whether due to defect, user stupidity, or outright abuse, you just call them up and they send you the parts for free.
The peace of mind this grants is incalculable. When buying a Dillon product, you just flat don't have to worry about anything.
I don't know that this kind of service has an analogue in the tech industry, but it seems like it ought to. At the very least hardware vendors should be able to follow suit. At a previous employer, we had a Gold service contract with HP/Compaq. Despite paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for that level of support, there were still numerous occasions when a server up and died and it took one or two full days to get it back up because the HP/Compaq field office was stingy about sending their tech with all the parts he might need. Somehow they thought sending him on the 70 mile drive from Colorado Springs to Denver with one part, only to discover he needed another part, drive back, rinse & repeat, was more cost-effective than sending him with a carload of potentially useful parts in the first place. Maybe it was more cost-effective, but it sure made us question the value of our support dollars.
Obviously, Dillon products cost a lot more money due to the lifetime "No B.S." warranty. A reloading press can easily last 20 years, and a guy can break or wear out a lot of parts in that time (and hell if you wear the whole thing out they'll rebuild it for the cost of shipping). Offering that kind of warranty even for 5 years for a Wintel server could double or triple the price.
Curious, though, that no one seems to have tried this approach....
That's what they said ~8 years ago when everyone was pitching "thin clients".
I don't think the rekindling of the NC concept died on the vine because of lack of bandwidth. I think the issue is that today, people have PCs at home, and there's a lot of value in having the same kind of computer at home as at work. Migrating to some kind of NC-based computing in the enterprise would inevitably break some of that "skills compatibility".
Of course, part of the reason for that is that it wasn't Microsoft pushing the NC's; it was more of a Sun/Java thing. If MS tried it, there's a good chance they could make Windows NC Edition and what-have-you look and feel enough like the home version to make the changeover relatively painless.
A real free trade agreement can fit on a post card: "We the undersigned agree to immediately and directly remove all trade barriers against each other, including but not limited to tariffs, quotas, subsidies for domestic industries, and outright bans."
Any agreement that takes a "baby steps" approach, or concedes that trade barriers against certain goods will remain, or that provides for new ones being erected is not a free trade agreement, it is a "managed" trade agreement.
Why does this matter? I'm sick of free trade getting a bad name from NAFTA and it's ilk. Free trade always benefits the consumers of both nations (and that's who matters: consumers!). The key word is ALWAYS. Managed trade lacks this property. With managed trade, there are inherently winners and losers.
I don't know what YOU'RE doing, but Ghost works perfectly for me. I work at a huge college campus and we re-image all the student lab computers, over 1000 machines, every semester. We face plenty of challenges doing it, but problems with Ghost are not among them.
...don't let this nonsense give free trade a bad name!
This FTAA crap, just like NAFTA, is NOT a free trade agreement. You can tell just by examining their length. NAFTA is, IIRC, several hundred pages long. A free trade agreement can be written on a postcard: "We the undersigned pledge not to erect any barriers to imports including but not limited to tariffs, duties, quotas, or outright prohibitions, nor engage in artificial support of exports by such means as subsidies and targeted tax breaks. We will continue to use, or adopt if necessary, floating currency regimes." And that's it. Heck, you could even leave out the export clause, as subsidizing exports only benefits your trading partners at the expense of your own economy (eg: if Country X wants to send us free stuff, why complain?).
NAFTA and FTAA are *managed* trade agreements. The various signatories make concessions to each other, and maybe trade is free-ER when they're finished, but maybe not.
What really bakes my noodle is that the inevitable negative consequences of managed trade agreements give free trade a bad name. A few jobs head south to Mexico, and Joe American starts clamoring for protectionism again. A few Mexican firms dump some toxic chemicals, and Jane Hippiechick heads to Seattle to throw rocks at Starbucks during the WTO meeting. And no one ever stops to LEARN a damn thing about what's really going on.
Ask any economist, widespread electricy deregulation simply HAS NOT HAPPENED.
There are a very few markets, and probably no two contiguous states, that have meaningfully reduced regulation and moved electricity generation essentially into the competitive private sector.
The rest are variations on the California theme: re-regulation. Change some rules here, loosen this up, but go over there and tighten down on that. Net result, same government-run bullshit, different clothes. Fortunately none of them have proved to be the same kind of ticking time bomb that California's system was... yet.
Though it's fairly distant from anything else of interest, 20-ish miles north of Alliance, NE. Sidney isn't too far away, so you could use a stop at Cabela's as your excuse...
Yes, automation like all labor-saving machinery destroys jobs. And then the unlimited wants inherent in human nature create more jobs.
People have been claiming that labor-saving machines would put the human race out of work for as long as such machines have existed. And oh look, it hasn't happened!
Yet another example of malinvestment spurred by artificially depressed interest rates (90's boom anyone?). Note the extremely long time-to-profit projection. If the Japanese economy recovers and rates rise back to normal levels within 2 or 3 years (which admittedly isn't likely) then this enterprise will tank, unless their prices come way up in the meantime.
(http://www.mises.org for those interested in the business cycle effects of interest rate manipulation)
Even a 256Kbps MP3 can't encode certain sounds. If my master copy of an album is going to be digital, it needs to be a perfect reproduction. I understand there are one or two formats that have been created for just this purpose.
Maybe most folks would be happy with good-quality MP3s, so a tiered pricing system would seem the natural solution. Maybe $1 per track for the MP3, and $1+(avg. extra bandwidth cost) for a lossless file.
I read the review and all the 3+ comments, what it made me think of constantly was gunsmithing. Specifically, pistolsmithing and the 1911.
There are dozens of manufacturers of complete 1911s, raw frames and slides, barrels, and the various small parts. Quality ranges from total junk to family heirloom/museum showpiece. And you could say that what seperates the men from the boys so to speak, is the difference between engineering and craftsmanship.
If you look at the big names in the commodity 1911 space, about $600-$800, you'll find usually servicable pistols that get the job done most of the time. A Kimber, Springfield, or Dan Wesson will generally work, but not be too pretty. Blued, nickeled, or chromed parts on stainless guns. Uneven frame/slide/ejector/extractor blending at the rear of the slide. Mediocre slide/frame fit. Impropertly tensioned extractors. Factory magazines that don't work. Burrs on feed ramps or sear noses. Grip safeties that are fit poorly or not at all. Polymer and metal-injection-molded parts.
Some of these flaws are cosmetic, some are functional. Some are showstoppers on occasion, most are trivial or nitpicky. But they are flaws nonetheless, and any mass-production 1911 is going to have them.
Move up the price ladder a bit and you get your STIs, Valtros Les Baers, Rock Rivers, and Wilson Combats. Now these are some damn fine 1911s, but they're still production guns. They're basically hand built, with great slide/frame fits, no burrs, polished ramps and throated barrels, blended grip safeties, etc etc etc. And they'll cost you $1000-$2000. However, they are still production guns that are bought off the shelf. If they don't make what you want, you have to go elsewhere, or have the modifications done afterwards.
The real quality is in ground-up hand-built guns, from the likes of Dane Burns, Ted Yost, Ned Christiansen, Teddy Jacobson, Cylinder & Slide, Kodiak Precision, Strayer-Voight Infinity, etc. From $2500 to $6000 and up, you get exactly what you want, built by hand from scratch, using exactly the parts you want, and achieving exactly the level of perfection you're willing to pay for. And wait for, as many of these 'smiths and shops have waiting lists measured in years. These are the guns built by craftsmen.
What all this boils down to is the classic dilemma, do it Right, Cheap, Quick: pick two. Kimbers and Springfields are available anywhere for a reasonable price, but may not live up to expectations: they are Quick and Cheap. Baers and Wilsons are in stock and waiting to ship, of excellent quality, and moderately bank-breaking: they are Right and Quick. Infinity's and Burns Custom's approach perfection, will last a lifetime, and cost as much as a used pickup truck: they are two picks' worth of Right. (Incidentallly, the path to Right and Cheap is DIY'ing it.)
This is the same dilemma that's existed all along in software. Arguing for "craftsmanship" is just suggesting that you should relax your requirements on Quick and Cheap, and value Right more highly.
He makes a bunch of assertions, and very few arguments. He doesn't back up anything with data, and very few things with logic. His understanding of economics is almost non-existant. Basically this article is a joke.
Imagine and world where all are equal, in the same way that A = A. I don't want to live there, not even in cyberspace, do you?
But you don't even have to take equality to an absolute to see what a terrible idea it is. What if every/. reader could post front-page stories? And everyone could edit them? What if everyone had editorial mod powers?
The argument for inequality need not be made from the traditional elitist/aristocratic/etc position. Inequality is simply part of human nature, and one should endeavor to understand it before decrying it as "unfair".
Though actually we have "10-digit" dialing, just (xxx)xxx-xxxx, the 1 is not necessary.
Most of urban Colorado was served by 303 for the longest time, then we ran out. They added the 720 code, but instead of regionalizing it they overlayed it, so new phone numbers could be 303 or 720, and the area code tells you nothing about the, well, area that number is in.
I'm surprised New York lasted this long. I think there are as many people in each borough as there are in the entire state of Colorado. I'd guess they went with regional area codes for a while, which our RBOC (Qworst) decided they didn't want to do.
Corporate money in politics is the SYMPTOM, the DISEASE is corrupt government. No, the former does NOT cause the latter.
Corporations only give money to politicians because they can get something in return, because the pols have something to offer them. This something usually takes the form of pork spending, special tax breaks, or regulatory influence. If the government didn't take in so much tax "revenue" in so complex a fashion, or have the discretion to distribute wealth to constituents in the form of pork spending, or the power to tell businesses what to do with their own property, THERE WOULD BE NO CORPORATE MONEY IN WASHINGTON. What's better, these powers are not legitimate functions of government in the first place, so by getting rid of them we could kill two birds with one stone: remove corporate political influence, and start on a return to limited government.
Not that I expect anyone to listen.
Extra fees are IRRELEVANT
on
Add-Ons Add Up
·
· Score: 2
So long as you know about them, your buying decisions will be 99.99% the same as if all the fees had been silently included in a single price.
Let's say you're shopping on eBay, and two different sellers have an item listed you want, one has a buy price of $100 plus $20 flat rate shipping, and the other has a buy price of $120. You will not be fooled by the lower "price", because after S&H they're the same. There are a lot of eBay sellers who try to make extra money this way, by pricing their items low and charging horrific S&H fees (like a $.50 laser pointer plus $5 s&h), but it doesn't work unless they scam you. So long as the terms are clear, it doesn't matter how the final price is broken up, buyers will not be fooled.
Some of these cases are just the same. Your phone bill, electric bill, cable bill, etc. list fee breakdowns and for the most part they're the same every time. So even though your final price isn't that round $39.99 you see in the ads, it doesn't matter becuase you *know* what the actual price is, so you can decide whether you're really willing to pay it.
On the other hand, some of these are bordering on fraud. You call a hotel in some city you're flying to to find out the rates, and they quote you a figure but leave out the fees. Or the same with a car rental. It seems tourist industries are the big offenders, I would guess as they face a less elastic demand structure, since travellers are more concerned with going about their business than haggling over their hotel rates or whatnot.
Oh yes, there's still that.001% of buying decisions I left out at the beginning. Sometimes you'll be willing to pay the final price after all fees, but the mere fact that they're trying to nickel & dime you to death pisses you off and makes you take your business elsewhere. Going back to the eBay example, given a choice between two otherwise identical listings, I'll take the one with free shipping because it strikes me as more honest. Firms, take note.
Slashdot Mirror
If I don't want to sell you something, by what moral principle could you compel me to do so anyway?
The "if you're gonna be a shitty customer, I'm gonna ban you from my store" play seems perfectly reaosnable to me.
Well I can't say I've ever gotten really good customer service from a tech vendor, but there is one company that consistently gives unsurpassed service to all its customers: Dillon Precision.
Unless you're a gun nut, you won't have heard of them, they make machines for making your own ammunition. Anyway, here's their deal. They guarantee most of their products for the life of the product. Anytime something breaks, whether due to defect, user stupidity, or outright abuse, you just call them up and they send you the parts for free.
The peace of mind this grants is incalculable. When buying a Dillon product, you just flat don't have to worry about anything.
I don't know that this kind of service has an analogue in the tech industry, but it seems like it ought to. At the very least hardware vendors should be able to follow suit. At a previous employer, we had a Gold service contract with HP/Compaq. Despite paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for that level of support, there were still numerous occasions when a server up and died and it took one or two full days to get it back up because the HP/Compaq field office was stingy about sending their tech with all the parts he might need. Somehow they thought sending him on the 70 mile drive from Colorado Springs to Denver with one part, only to discover he needed another part, drive back, rinse & repeat, was more cost-effective than sending him with a carload of potentially useful parts in the first place. Maybe it was more cost-effective, but it sure made us question the value of our support dollars.
Obviously, Dillon products cost a lot more money due to the lifetime "No B.S." warranty. A reloading press can easily last 20 years, and a guy can break or wear out a lot of parts in that time (and hell if you wear the whole thing out they'll rebuild it for the cost of shipping). Offering that kind of warranty even for 5 years for a Wintel server could double or triple the price.
Curious, though, that no one seems to have tried this approach....
IAC also owns my employer, ServiceMagic.com
Try it out next time you need a maid, mover, plumber, electrician, or other home contractor!
</utterly shameless plug>
Yeah, but with this service it doesn't consume your minutes.
That's what they said ~8 years ago when everyone was pitching "thin clients".
I don't think the rekindling of the NC concept died on the vine because of lack of bandwidth. I think the issue is that today, people have PCs at home, and there's a lot of value in having the same kind of computer at home as at work. Migrating to some kind of NC-based computing in the enterprise would inevitably break some of that "skills compatibility".
Of course, part of the reason for that is that it wasn't Microsoft pushing the NC's; it was more of a Sun/Java thing. If MS tried it, there's a good chance they could make Windows NC Edition and what-have-you look and feel enough like the home version to make the changeover relatively painless.
I'm still skeptical though.
Reason Magazine ("Free Minds and Free Markets")
Front Sight (members' magazine for the United States Practical Shooting Association)
A real free trade agreement can fit on a post card:
"We the undersigned agree to immediately and directly remove all trade barriers against each other, including but not limited to tariffs, quotas, subsidies for domestic industries, and outright bans."
Any agreement that takes a "baby steps" approach, or concedes that trade barriers against certain goods will remain, or that provides for new ones being erected is not a free trade agreement, it is a "managed" trade agreement.
Why does this matter? I'm sick of free trade getting a bad name from NAFTA and it's ilk. Free trade always benefits the consumers of both nations (and that's who matters: consumers!). The key word is ALWAYS. Managed trade lacks this property. With managed trade, there are inherently winners and losers.
...the International Practical Shooting Confederation.
/. land? ;)
http://www.ipsc.org
Any practical shooters out there in
Noah Yetter
USPSA# A50113
I don't know what YOU'RE doing, but Ghost works perfectly for me. I work at a huge college campus and we re-image all the student lab computers, over 1000 machines, every semester. We face plenty of challenges doing it, but problems with Ghost are not among them.
...don't let this nonsense give free trade a bad name!
This FTAA crap, just like NAFTA, is NOT a free trade agreement. You can tell just by examining their length. NAFTA is, IIRC, several hundred pages long. A free trade agreement can be written on a postcard:
"We the undersigned pledge not to erect any barriers to imports including but not limited to tariffs, duties, quotas, or outright prohibitions, nor engage in artificial support of exports by such means as subsidies and targeted tax breaks. We will continue to use, or adopt if necessary, floating currency regimes."
And that's it. Heck, you could even leave out the export clause, as subsidizing exports only benefits your trading partners at the expense of your own economy (eg: if Country X wants to send us free stuff, why complain?).
NAFTA and FTAA are *managed* trade agreements. The various signatories make concessions to each other, and maybe trade is free-ER when they're finished, but maybe not.
What really bakes my noodle is that the inevitable negative consequences of managed trade agreements give free trade a bad name. A few jobs head south to Mexico, and Joe American starts clamoring for protectionism again. A few Mexican firms dump some toxic chemicals, and Jane Hippiechick heads to Seattle to throw rocks at Starbucks during the WTO meeting. And no one ever stops to LEARN a damn thing about what's really going on.
Ask any economist, widespread electricy deregulation simply HAS NOT HAPPENED.
There are a very few markets, and probably no two contiguous states, that have meaningfully reduced regulation and moved electricity generation essentially into the competitive private sector.
The rest are variations on the California theme: re-regulation. Change some rules here, loosen this up, but go over there and tighten down on that. Net result, same government-run bullshit, different clothes. Fortunately none of them have proved to be the same kind of ticking time bomb that California's system was... yet.
Though it's fairly distant from anything else of interest, 20-ish miles north of Alliance, NE. Sidney isn't too far away, so you could use a stop at Cabela's as your excuse...
Yes, automation like all labor-saving machinery destroys jobs. And then the unlimited wants inherent in human nature create more jobs.
People have been claiming that labor-saving machines would put the human race out of work for as long as such machines have existed. And oh look, it hasn't happened!
Mr. Brain obviously flunked Economics 101.
Yet another example of malinvestment spurred by artificially depressed interest rates (90's boom anyone?). Note the extremely long time-to-profit projection. If the Japanese economy recovers and rates rise back to normal levels within 2 or 3 years (which admittedly isn't likely) then this enterprise will tank, unless their prices come way up in the meantime.
(http://www.mises.org
for those interested in the business cycle effects of interest rate manipulation)
Even a 256Kbps MP3 can't encode certain sounds. If my master copy of an album is going to be digital, it needs to be a perfect reproduction. I understand there are one or two formats that have been created for just this purpose.
Maybe most folks would be happy with good-quality MP3s, so a tiered pricing system would seem the natural solution. Maybe $1 per track for the MP3, and $1+(avg. extra bandwidth cost) for a lossless file.
I read the review and all the 3+ comments, what it made me think of constantly was gunsmithing. Specifically, pistolsmithing and the 1911.
There are dozens of manufacturers of complete 1911s, raw frames and slides, barrels, and the various small parts. Quality ranges from total junk to family heirloom/museum showpiece. And you could say that what seperates the men from the boys so to speak, is the difference between engineering and craftsmanship.
If you look at the big names in the commodity 1911 space, about $600-$800, you'll find usually servicable pistols that get the job done most of the time. A Kimber, Springfield, or Dan Wesson will generally work, but not be too pretty. Blued, nickeled, or chromed parts on stainless guns. Uneven frame/slide/ejector/extractor blending at the rear of the slide. Mediocre slide/frame fit. Impropertly tensioned extractors. Factory magazines that don't work. Burrs on feed ramps or sear noses. Grip safeties that are fit poorly or not at all. Polymer and metal-injection-molded parts.
Some of these flaws are cosmetic, some are functional. Some are showstoppers on occasion, most are trivial or nitpicky. But they are flaws nonetheless, and any mass-production 1911 is going to have them.
Move up the price ladder a bit and you get your STIs, Valtros Les Baers, Rock Rivers, and Wilson Combats. Now these are some damn fine 1911s, but they're still production guns. They're basically hand built, with great slide/frame fits, no burrs, polished ramps and throated barrels, blended grip safeties, etc etc etc. And they'll cost you $1000-$2000. However, they are still production guns that are bought off the shelf. If they don't make what you want, you have to go elsewhere, or have the modifications done afterwards.
The real quality is in ground-up hand-built guns, from the likes of Dane Burns, Ted Yost, Ned Christiansen, Teddy Jacobson, Cylinder & Slide, Kodiak Precision, Strayer-Voight Infinity, etc. From $2500 to $6000 and up, you get exactly what you want, built by hand from scratch, using exactly the parts you want, and achieving exactly the level of perfection you're willing to pay for. And wait for, as many of these 'smiths and shops have waiting lists measured in years. These are the guns built by craftsmen.
What all this boils down to is the classic dilemma, do it Right, Cheap, Quick: pick two. Kimbers and Springfields are available anywhere for a reasonable price, but may not live up to expectations: they are Quick and Cheap. Baers and Wilsons are in stock and waiting to ship, of excellent quality, and moderately bank-breaking: they are Right and Quick. Infinity's and Burns Custom's approach perfection, will last a lifetime, and cost as much as a used pickup truck: they are two picks' worth of Right. (Incidentallly, the path to Right and Cheap is DIY'ing it.)
This is the same dilemma that's existed all along in software. Arguing for "craftsmanship" is just suggesting that you should relax your requirements on Quick and Cheap, and value Right more highly.
He makes a bunch of assertions, and very few arguments. He doesn't back up anything with data, and very few things with logic. His understanding of economics is almost non-existant. Basically this article is a joke.
ALL consumers are buying fewer CDs due to higher prices. It's called the LAW OF DEMAND.
And to think, the marketing department is always trying to cut the economics requirements from their major..
...but desirable.
/. reader could post front-page stories? And everyone could edit them? What if everyone had editorial mod powers?
Imagine and world where all are equal, in the same way that A = A. I don't want to live there, not even in cyberspace, do you?
But you don't even have to take equality to an absolute to see what a terrible idea it is. What if every
The argument for inequality need not be made from the traditional elitist/aristocratic/etc position. Inequality is simply part of human nature, and one should endeavor to understand it before decrying it as "unfair".
Though actually we have "10-digit" dialing, just (xxx)xxx-xxxx, the 1 is not necessary.
;)
Most of urban Colorado was served by 303 for the longest time, then we ran out. They added the 720 code, but instead of regionalizing it they overlayed it, so new phone numbers could be 303 or 720, and the area code tells you nothing about the, well, area that number is in.
I'm surprised New York lasted this long. I think there are as many people in each borough as there are in the entire state of Colorado. I'd guess they went with regional area codes for a while, which our RBOC (Qworst) decided they didn't want to do.
Heh, reminds me of a certain Simpsons episode
...no one's collecting it.
http://reason.com/0111/co.sm.dc.shtml
Corporate money in politics is the SYMPTOM, the DISEASE is corrupt government. No, the former does NOT cause the latter.
Corporations only give money to politicians because they can get something in return, because the pols have something to offer them. This something usually takes the form of pork spending, special tax breaks, or regulatory influence. If the government didn't take in so much tax "revenue" in so complex a fashion, or have the discretion to distribute wealth to constituents in the form of pork spending, or the power to tell businesses what to do with their own property, THERE WOULD BE NO CORPORATE MONEY IN WASHINGTON. What's better, these powers are not legitimate functions of government in the first place, so by getting rid of them we could kill two birds with one stone: remove corporate political influence, and start on a return to limited government.
Not that I expect anyone to listen.
So long as you know about them, your buying decisions will be 99.99% the same as if all the fees had been silently included in a single price.
.001% of buying decisions I left out at the beginning. Sometimes you'll be willing to pay the final price after all fees, but the mere fact that they're trying to nickel & dime you to death pisses you off and makes you take your business elsewhere. Going back to the eBay example, given a choice between two otherwise identical listings, I'll take the one with free shipping because it strikes me as more honest. Firms, take note.
Let's say you're shopping on eBay, and two different sellers have an item listed you want, one has a buy price of $100 plus $20 flat rate shipping, and the other has a buy price of $120. You will not be fooled by the lower "price", because after S&H they're the same. There are a lot of eBay sellers who try to make extra money this way, by pricing their items low and charging horrific S&H fees (like a $.50 laser pointer plus $5 s&h), but it doesn't work unless they scam you. So long as the terms are clear, it doesn't matter how the final price is broken up, buyers will not be fooled.
Some of these cases are just the same. Your phone bill, electric bill, cable bill, etc. list fee breakdowns and for the most part they're the same every time. So even though your final price isn't that round $39.99 you see in the ads, it doesn't matter becuase you *know* what the actual price is, so you can decide whether you're really willing to pay it.
On the other hand, some of these are bordering on fraud. You call a hotel in some city you're flying to to find out the rates, and they quote you a figure but leave out the fees. Or the same with a car rental. It seems tourist industries are the big offenders, I would guess as they face a less elastic demand structure, since travellers are more concerned with going about their business than haggling over their hotel rates or whatnot.
Oh yes, there's still that
I'm wearing an AudioGalaxy t-shirt and a plaid flannel. I call the VP of IT by his first name. OTOH, I make $9.50/hr :(
..."who the hell uses Turbolinux?"
:(
I do.
It's like Redhat without the bullshit. It has great console-based configuration programs. It's i686 optimized (no longer that big of a deal though).
I hope this sale won't affect my favorite distro