Recently it was announced that Tony Kornheiser, another well-known columnist, might be the subject of a situation comedy going into development. Were you pleased overall with how you were portrayed in the television series based on your life, Dave's World? How did you feel when it left the air? Is it in syndication anywhere these days?
I'm so scarred by the daily battles with spam that the whole thought of opting-out of anything repulses me... I feel like if I get on some DNC list that a bunch of offshore telemarketers will get their hands on that list so they have "live" targets.
My wife recently told me that she was clicking on an opt-out link on some bit of spam and I nearly tackled her out of her chair to keep her from doing it.
You can't let them know you're there! Pull the shades! Rip the phone out of the wall! Gag the dog!
1. People - some people are simply better troubleshooters and problem-solvers than others. Attitude is a big part of the equation as well: if the helper doesn't care too much about the call, he'll end up providing shoddy service. People in support positions need to want to help to some degree or suffering will occur somewhere in the chain.
2. Processes - The help desk personnel need to know who to go to for what and in what circumstances. If this is unclear, start logging calls and the results of their handling. This gives you a baseline to examine for problem areas, and all kinds of things will be pointed to: the processes themselves, the people, attitudes, the product, etc.
3. Communication - Someone else pointed this out, and it's critical. When departments and their personnel don't know what's happening across the hall, it leaves a lot of cluelessness, and this will kill a help desk. What ends up suffering in the end is morale and therefore attitude, which comes across in such a high visibility department.
4. Know-how - Once the right people and processes are in place (which you'll know because proper communication gets it across), fill in holes in the knowledge of the help desk reps to reduce overhead in time spent per issue. This kind of training can come from inside or outside, and provides possible promotion material down the road.
"Blog" isn't any more of a word than "zpolit" and "phthoom". Jesus, michael, you're an editor for this site! Have some respect for your work and please stop using whatever the trendy neologism of the day is!
currently the RFID industry seems to be giving 'mixed' signals about whether the tags will be disabled or left enabled by default.
Of course they are. Why alienate either end of the market, especially retailers or other commercial interests? You know that right now it's more important to court them anyway to build interest and revenue for development. Leave all possibilities possibilities, and all kinds of parties will step forward.
Looks like some real morons got the latest crop of mod points. The parent is NOT offtopic, NOR is it flamebait. If it's anything negative at all, it's overrated. Personally, I think it's insightful, but who cares, right?
I think women can be better players in general because they are less prone to having rage cloud their focus. For example, women tend to pick up consistent golf play much more readily than men, and if you watch women and men together taking lessons or just hitting balls at the range you can see why. Women focus on the mechanics while the men, who may initially focus on the mechanics, tend to get frustrated and take it out on the club and the ball... and therefore, their backs as well.
...dealing with the reality of the situation is kinda important...
Absolutely. The positive experiences from the game need to be transferred in some way to "real-life."
My mother passed away when I was too young to have ever really experienced losing someone but old enough to be terrified and detroyed emotionally by it. My siblings and I all coped differently, but the death was sudden and unusual, giving us no time in advance for any kind of emotional preparation.
Without any mechanism to make the transition, something like The Sims might allow a mourner an opportunity to phase-out, to some minor degree, the daily interaction that, now absent, makes the process so awful. Would it have helped me? Probably not, my coping mechanism was in part to enforce the separation by not staring at photos, not watching old home movies, not reminiscing, etc... but we all deal with it differently.
There is nothing scary about how someone deals with the loss of a loved one as long as it doesn't cause harm to the mourner or others. In reality, it seems The Sims could serve as another vehicle for (limited) role-playing, a tool sometimes used in therapy to treat emotional distress. There aren't too many hard and fast rules when it comes to effective ways to deal with death, so anything that brings relief and closure that doesn't hurt the mourner or others should be seen as a good thing.
I'm still a loyal pine user, having cut my teeth first with "mail". What I've noticed, however, is that just about everyone I know who was a happy pine user is now a happy mutt user. I'm only a holdout on switching because I haven't really investigated the differences (if it ain't broke...), but my sense is that by popular majority among CLI mail readers I know, mutt is where you go to get "better-than-pine".
Its like with religion or politics, really young kids shouldn't just be indoctrinated in one side or the other just because thats what the parents prefer.
Actually, I disagree. Bring your kids up with what you believe in. When they're young, they'll follow along and soak it up. When they get old enough, they'll start to learn about alternatives and may want to explore them. This is where you as a parent should get out of the way.
Now it's actually a Good Thing to crank the stereo at grandma's house. Of course, now that I think about it, it is grandma's house: the old Wallensack really can't get all that loud...
I think/. has a goldmine here. Anytime the editors want a mad rush of attention to a topic, post OS vs. OS material (I know, duh). Anyone know what the record number of comments posted to a single item are?
If what MS is doing with Xbox is in fact illegal, they won't be going to court over it until the competitors (in this case, Sony and Nintendo) make enough of an issue out of it to force action by the government.
From what I've been reading, Sony and Nintendo both seem to be doing just fine and I imagine have plenty of other fish (note: not "bigger") to fry.
My productivity has been forced up so high that I can't draft an interesting response to this article. When the bubble starts to grow again, I'll get back to you.
(1) Operating systems are relics of the past (2) We should be able to access data anytime/anywhere, by (3) seeing a stream of 3D documents(?), so (4) he's written such software, and (5) that's all you should care about so it doesn't matter that it runs under windows, so (6) ??? (7) PROFIT!
Slashdot Mirror
Recently it was announced that Tony Kornheiser, another well-known columnist, might be the subject of a situation comedy going into development. Were you pleased overall with how you were portrayed in the television series based on your life, Dave's World? How did you feel when it left the air? Is it in syndication anywhere these days?
I can do that already. When Pauly Shore shows up on my screen, I hit the little "FF" button.
The way things are going, a DVD player will be a box with two visible features: a tray for the DVD and a single button: open/close.
I'm so scarred by the daily battles with spam that the whole thought of opting-out of anything repulses me... I feel like if I get on some DNC list that a bunch of offshore telemarketers will get their hands on that list so they have "live" targets.
My wife recently told me that she was clicking on an opt-out link on some bit of spam and I nearly tackled her out of her chair to keep her from doing it.
You can't let them know you're there! Pull the shades! Rip the phone out of the wall! Gag the dog!
update: sorry bout the misspelling, don't know how I missed that
psst... it's spelled about...
If you're a programmer (well, IT geek in general, really), you're also:
Supposed to hate watching football (US-style) and love to tell everyone about it,
Attack people on message boards in a way you never would dare to in person,
Let yourself go physically and emotionally so you're nothing but a soft shell that likes to poke holes in anything anyone says, and
Lean way to the left.
So, get going, it seems you have some work to do.
This doesn't even take into account the 99.9% of web pages suck or are unnecessary anyways.
Who said that root calls were always about finding web pages (poor or not)?
1. People - some people are simply better troubleshooters and problem-solvers than others. Attitude is a big part of the equation as well: if the helper doesn't care too much about the call, he'll end up providing shoddy service. People in support positions need to want to help to some degree or suffering will occur somewhere in the chain.
2. Processes - The help desk personnel need to know who to go to for what and in what circumstances. If this is unclear, start logging calls and the results of their handling. This gives you a baseline to examine for problem areas, and all kinds of things will be pointed to: the processes themselves, the people, attitudes, the product, etc.
3. Communication - Someone else pointed this out, and it's critical. When departments and their personnel don't know what's happening across the hall, it leaves a lot of cluelessness, and this will kill a help desk. What ends up suffering in the end is morale and therefore attitude, which comes across in such a high visibility department.
4. Know-how - Once the right people and processes are in place (which you'll know because proper communication gets it across), fill in holes in the knowledge of the help desk reps to reduce overhead in time spent per issue. This kind of training can come from inside or outside, and provides possible promotion material down the road.
"Blog" isn't any more of a word than "zpolit" and "phthoom". Jesus, michael, you're an editor for this site! Have some respect for your work and please stop using whatever the trendy neologism of the day is!
currently the RFID industry seems to be giving 'mixed' signals about whether the tags will be disabled or left enabled by default.
Of course they are. Why alienate either end of the market, especially retailers or other commercial interests? You know that right now it's more important to court them anyway to build interest and revenue for development. Leave all possibilities possibilities, and all kinds of parties will step forward.
- DDT
Which also costs $1/TB.
Looks like some real morons got the latest crop of mod points. The parent is NOT offtopic, NOR is it flamebait. If it's anything negative at all, it's overrated. Personally, I think it's insightful, but who cares, right?
Now this... this is offtopic.
The link was described as a "detailed preview." That would be why it wasn't really a review.
- DDT
Christ, enough with the incompetent moderating. Please, let's take the points away from these uptight, trigger-happy douchebags already.
Yikes... Rob and the boys must not have provided terribly high marks.
- DDT
I think women can be better players in general because they are less prone to having rage cloud their focus. For example, women tend to pick up consistent golf play much more readily than men, and if you watch women and men together taking lessons or just hitting balls at the range you can see why. Women focus on the mechanics while the men, who may initially focus on the mechanics, tend to get frustrated and take it out on the club and the ball... and therefore, their backs as well.
- DDT
Some would say that Ultima IX was never finished...
- DDT
...dealing with the reality of the situation is kinda important...
Absolutely. The positive experiences from the game need to be transferred in some way to "real-life."
My mother passed away when I was too young to have ever really experienced losing someone but old enough to be terrified and detroyed emotionally by it. My siblings and I all coped differently, but the death was sudden and unusual, giving us no time in advance for any kind of emotional preparation.
Without any mechanism to make the transition, something like The Sims might allow a mourner an opportunity to phase-out, to some minor degree, the daily interaction that, now absent, makes the process so awful. Would it have helped me? Probably not, my coping mechanism was in part to enforce the separation by not staring at photos, not watching old home movies, not reminiscing, etc... but we all deal with it differently.
- DDT
There is nothing scary about how someone deals with the loss of a loved one as long as it doesn't cause harm to the mourner or others. In reality, it seems The Sims could serve as another vehicle for (limited) role-playing, a tool sometimes used in therapy to treat emotional distress. There aren't too many hard and fast rules when it comes to effective ways to deal with death, so anything that brings relief and closure that doesn't hurt the mourner or others should be seen as a good thing.
- DDT
I'm still a loyal pine user, having cut my teeth first with "mail". What I've noticed, however, is that just about everyone I know who was a happy pine user is now a happy mutt user. I'm only a holdout on switching because I haven't really investigated the differences (if it ain't broke...), but my sense is that by popular majority among CLI mail readers I know, mutt is where you go to get "better-than-pine".
- DDT
Its like with religion or politics, really young kids shouldn't just be indoctrinated in one side or the other just because thats what the parents prefer.
Actually, I disagree. Bring your kids up with what you believe in. When they're young, they'll follow along and soak it up. When they get old enough, they'll start to learn about alternatives and may want to explore them. This is where you as a parent should get out of the way.
- DDT
Now it's actually a Good Thing to crank the stereo at grandma's house. Of course, now that I think about it, it is grandma's house: the old Wallensack really can't get all that loud...
- DDT
I think /. has a goldmine here. Anytime the editors want a mad rush of attention to a topic, post OS vs. OS material (I know, duh). Anyone know what the record number of comments posted to a single item are?
Thanks to schnell, the user who started all this.
- DDT
If what MS is doing with Xbox is in fact illegal, they won't be going to court over it until the competitors (in this case, Sony and Nintendo) make enough of an issue out of it to force action by the government.
From what I've been reading, Sony and Nintendo both seem to be doing just fine and I imagine have plenty of other fish (note: not "bigger") to fry.
- DDT
My productivity has been forced up so high that I can't draft an interesting response to this article. When the bubble starts to grow again, I'll get back to you.
- DDT
(1) Operating systems are relics of the past
(2) We should be able to access data anytime/anywhere, by
(3) seeing a stream of 3D documents(?), so
(4) he's written such software, and
(5) that's all you should care about so it doesn't matter that it runs under windows, so
(6) ???
(7) PROFIT!
- DDT