I didn't see anything in the post that indicated he was interested in projecting a "crappy service attitude". What I saw was that he was interested in projecting - and educating customers about - a quality product. Some customers ARE morons. Sure, you can give them what they want - but if any other customers - or your competitors - find out what crap you're serving, it will reflect on the company.
In other words, your analysis is the typical/. smug, elitist bullshit. Shove it.
It's not a suggestion box. In the US a suggestion box in a company is a joke - and usually empty - which tells you all you need to know about it.
The article describes what is basically a "trouble ticket" system for the company as a whole and management in particular - and only the employees can close out the tickets.
Try that in the US and most managers would fire the employees.
It's new because in the US all such things are treated as jokes by management. Don't you think Enron had an 800 number to report "ethical violations"? In the company in the article, only the employees can close out those tickets. And they are all posted for everyone to see, which is almost never done in the US.
It's not rocket science and it's not really a "new management system" - it's just one decent manager for a change. The fact that it's NEWS is what proves the point.
"this company has apparently implemented the electronic version of the suggestion box."
Bullshit. Read the article.
In the US, a suggestion box is a joke. For this guy in the article, only the employees can close out those tickets. Try that under US management.
Face it, folks. US management - 98% percent of it - is based on the military-Catholic Church model: do it or I fuck up your life; in fact, I'll fuck up your life by even asking you to do it. Anything goes wrong, it's your fault; anything goes right, I take the credit. Oh, and get me a cup of coffee while you're at it.
This guy has a better way. And it's working for the company - so calling it a "PR stunt" is just sour grapes that the critic doesn't work there.
This guy is just a good manager. The only complaint I have about the article is calling what he does a "management system." Technically I suppose it is, but in reality it's just this one guy (and those employees who go along with him.)
The other point people should note is that presumably in India the culture is different than the US and personal behavior is different. I don't know Indian culture that well - most Indians I've seen in the US seem to have really bad tempers - but I suspect it's more like Japan where politeness and respect are more important than it is in the US, as a result of the population pressures.
It probably also matters that people in India probably aren't as interested in job hopping as US employees are - although US employees are that way because management in the US generally sucks rocks. If you treat people well (including pay), they have no incentive to move along, so I believe the drop in attrition rate that the article cites.
None of this is new. Management researchers have been advocating this sort of approach for decades. The only problem is that humans tend to be primates that are hardwired to compete with every other member of their species. Cooperation is a secondary tactic - and only that, a tactic.
"Given Kerry or Bush in America, (practically by definition) Bush was a lot closer to the mode than Kerry was."
That part is unfortunately true.
However, had Kerry won, we would STILL be in Iraq (the only reason he's flip-flopping now is because it's become fairly obvious - only a religious fanatic like Bush would stay there) and we would STILL be planning to invade Iran.
The Democrats are part of the War Party, too, as Justin Raimondo likes to say.
Last year when I had my problem with Windows 2000 hosing my system's partition table because installing it with Service Pack 3 on, THEN installing Service Pack 4 was insufficient to prevent it from hosing the partition table on a big disk when the outer portions of the disk eventually ended up being used, I finally dug up a Microsoft Knowledgebase article that admitted that "some disks" geometry wouldn't be read correctly in that situation.
Nowhere did Microsoft identify WHAT disks, WHY, or HOW. It was a "throwaway line" like that referenced in the present article. Microsoft was happy to say that LBA48 was supported by Windows 2000 Service Pack 4, but NOT that if you installed it first WITHOUT Service Pack 4 and then installed SP4, that Windows 2000 would silently wait until you actually tried to use the larger partitions before trashing your hard drive.
I agree. I would guess a lot of companies take SOME care about using illegal stuff, but for the most part nobody cares because they aren't reselling - it's all for "personal use" - except in this case the "personal" is the company.
I suspect if you really examined every single image, every single logo, every single typeface, etc., etc. in every magazine and every TV broadcast and every Web site, etc., etc., you'd find TONS of so-called "copyright infringement." And if you didn't, you find TONS of "fair use" where the copyright holder would still complain - rightly or wrongly.
NOBODY has time to make sure EVERYTHING is "legal". It simply isn't possible.
The only beneficiaries are, as usual, the lawyers.
"Of course, if the hard drive dies and nobody bothered to make a set of recovery discs then you have a problem. I would say the majority of customers do not make these discs."
Got that right. This "recovery partition" scam is just a way for OEMs to save on CD/DVD reproduction expenses. Sure, it's easier than getting a tech to really solve the problem, but in the end it's a scam.
"removing the 20 or so pieces of demo software that every brand PC includes"
Now THAT's a good service! Most of that stuff is utter crap and consumers should complain that most of the major OEMs do this. Removing this junk in fact can damage the OS. I had a client with a brand new Dell desk machine. They had included McAfee AV on there even though she had asked them not to because she already had the Norton service. I uninstalled the McAfee and I suspect that's why we then had problems getting her wireless router to work. When we called Dell (after Geek Squad had told her the NIC was bad - which was bullshit), they instructed me to reload the system image, which solved the problem.
No doubt the reason the hard drive suddenly got bigger is that your previous version of Windows was limited to 2GB partitions by using the FAT16 file system. When they reinstalled with a later version, it used the whole disk by using FAT32.
I've had clients with hard drives that "filled up" and when I looked they had 2GB partitions with 4GB sitting there unused. Unfortunately they'd already bought a new 40GB hard drive!
Raymond Burr had utterly nothing to do with "Mod Squad"!
What part of "Mod" didn't you understand? When was Raymond Burr ever considered "Mod"?
You're thinking of "Ironside". The reason I remember that show is because Barbara Anderson was one of the hottest blondes on television at the time. They also had an episode where Ironside hooked up with his old flame played by German actress Karin Dor, who was major hot and a fave of mine.
Mod Squad had Peggy Lipton (who was pretty hot), Clarence Williams III and Michael Cole. Everybody remembers Clarence for that bizarre afro he always wore.
"As a side effect it cleans out the registry and system folders of potentially years of crud build up."
Which is the problem in the first place = the fucking Windows Registry and system folders.
I agree that reinstalling takes less time in many cases - that's why virtually all the manufacturers now use hidden reload partitions (until, of course, something goes wrong with that, as a client I had recently had a problem. Then they're screwed until they can order a reload CD.)
The problem is that it doesn't solve the problem. It just postpones its re-occurence - especially in the case of spyware, software crud, third-party hardware and software, etc.
You also don't learn anything. In some cases, especially on Windows, you CAN'T learn anything because it's nearly impossible to find out what happened. But in other cases, learning what caused the problem might make it possible to fix the problem in other situations where a reinstall really would take longer.
I say, try to solve the problem until it's apparent it isn't going to be solved easily.
But even then, the client may be pissed off and think it's just because you aren't SMART enough to solve the problem that he has to go and reinstall. That's not good for your business.
Well, to be fair, unless you know every fucking key in the Windows Registry (which gets ten times bigger with every release), it's a little hard to be able to fix Windows when it suddently stops working. Especially if the problem is caused by third party software instead of Windows itself. It doesn't help to blame the third-party software, either, but you STILL don't know which one or how it in fact screwed up the Registry.
In some cases, you can do a Google and somebody has figured out what went wrong, or at least a smart way to fix it. In many cases, a reinstall is the ONLY way to get Windows back in operation.
With Linux, almost always fixing one config file or doing some other minor file juggling will fix the problem. Failing that, an upgrade to a later version of the particular failing software will. You almost NEVER have to reinstall to fix Linux. Admittedly, sometimes it is VERY hard to figure out where in the maze of config files (usually due to the desktops) the problem lies. But the underlying services are usually fixable without too much searching. You might have to suddenly become an expert on, say, Linux font servers, but that's easier than figuring out the Windows Registry.
Yup - once again the US penchant for hiring locals to work in sensitive areas bites us in the ass. We're the ONLY country that does this. The Russians think we're totally insane.
"There weren't enough classified authorized computers to work on, so we frequently needed to take classified files onto unclassified computers."
That's probably caused by somebody classifying EVERYTHING whether it needs to be classified or not. That's common in the government, as numerous GAO studies have shown.
None of that is likely to happen. How the FUCK is Al Qaeda going to sneak into the United States, kidnap or kill one lousy family, and somehow make an effect? Al Qaeda is not all powerful, and they have much better targets to pick than randomly trying to kill some US soldier's family. In fact, trying that would motivate US troops far more than anything else they might do.
Pay records are completely useless to Al Qaeda and the Taliban - except possibly to indicate the US force strength and composition of forces, which is obviously useful, but easy to obtain just by letting locals who are allowed on and around the base use their eyes.
Unless the USBs contained military supply records, transportation and logistics information, or actual strategic or tactical operational planning, they were probably useless to the Taliban - which is probably why the reporters could get them at all - otherwise they would have been long gone.
In fact, the reporters should be more worried about the ones that were already BOUGHT by someone else - since they obviously WERE valuable.
Actually, I doubt the Taliban need much of that info. What they need to do is stay out of the way of direct confrontation with US and NATO troops, or they get killed. They know that. So as long as they're engaged in an insurgency primarily against the Afghan state forces, they really don't need a lot of complicated intelligence about the US and NATO forces - just enough to stay out of their way. And they probably have PLENTY of spies inside the Afghan state forces that they can get all the intelligence they need to set up ambushes and the like.
In Vietnam, the US military black market was HUGE.
I knew one guy who came back who was a barracks mate of mine at Fort Rucker in 1969 who claimed he made over $10,000 selling stuff - and he was just one guy. Supposedly there was a HUGE black market run by senior NCOs and officers that got busted up at one point - millions of dollars involved.
Most of the US troops into this would refuse to sell weapons, but they'd sell anything else that wasn't nailed down.
This part is amusing: "Air Force crews at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland carefully inspect the plane, and the runway, before every flight."
I guess they missed the part where Richard Marcinko and his Red Cell SEAL Team managed to put fake IEDs on Air Force One in the hangar.
Also, here are the anti-missile defenses courtesy of Cryptome, who's really fast on the draw at saving info before it vanishes: Air Force One Defenses and also here about the Air Force One rescue system (the "oxygen bottles" everyone is afraid some sniper will blow up.)
Slashdot Mirror
None of which is relevant to his point. Just because his terminology is wrong, his analogy is still correct.
Thanks for the culinary lesson, Chef Asshat.
I didn't see anything in the post that indicated he was interested in projecting a "crappy service attitude". What I saw was that he was interested in projecting - and educating customers about - a quality product. Some customers ARE morons. Sure, you can give them what they want - but if any other customers - or your competitors - find out what crap you're serving, it will reflect on the company.
/. smug, elitist bullshit. Shove it.
In other words, your analysis is the typical
It's not a suggestion box. In the US a suggestion box in a company is a joke - and usually empty - which tells you all you need to know about it.
The article describes what is basically a "trouble ticket" system for the company as a whole and management in particular - and only the employees can close out the tickets.
Try that in the US and most managers would fire the employees.
It's new because in the US all such things are treated as jokes by management. Don't you think Enron had an 800 number to report "ethical violations"? In the company in the article, only the employees can close out those tickets. And they are all posted for everyone to see, which is almost never done in the US.
It's not rocket science and it's not really a "new management system" - it's just one decent manager for a change. The fact that it's NEWS is what proves the point.
"this company has apparently implemented the electronic version of the suggestion box."
Bullshit. Read the article.
In the US, a suggestion box is a joke. For this guy in the article, only the employees can close out those tickets. Try that under US management.
Face it, folks. US management - 98% percent of it - is based on the military-Catholic Church model: do it or I fuck up your life; in fact, I'll fuck up your life by even asking you to do it. Anything goes wrong, it's your fault; anything goes right, I take the credit. Oh, and get me a cup of coffee while you're at it.
This guy has a better way. And it's working for the company - so calling it a "PR stunt" is just sour grapes that the critic doesn't work there.
Horseshit. Nothing wrong with his approach.
This guy is just a good manager. The only complaint I have about the article is calling what he does a "management system." Technically I suppose it is, but in reality it's just this one guy (and those employees who go along with him.)
The other point people should note is that presumably in India the culture is different than the US and personal behavior is different. I don't know Indian culture that well - most Indians I've seen in the US seem to have really bad tempers - but I suspect it's more like Japan where politeness and respect are more important than it is in the US, as a result of the population pressures.
It probably also matters that people in India probably aren't as interested in job hopping as US employees are - although US employees are that way because management in the US generally sucks rocks. If you treat people well (including pay), they have no incentive to move along, so I believe the drop in attrition rate that the article cites.
None of this is new. Management researchers have been advocating this sort of approach for decades. The only problem is that humans tend to be primates that are hardwired to compete with every other member of their species. Cooperation is a secondary tactic - and only that, a tactic.
"Given Kerry or Bush in America, (practically by definition) Bush was a lot closer to the mode than Kerry was."
That part is unfortunately true.
However, had Kerry won, we would STILL be in Iraq (the only reason he's flip-flopping now is because it's become fairly obvious - only a religious fanatic like Bush would stay there) and we would STILL be planning to invade Iran.
The Democrats are part of the War Party, too, as Justin Raimondo likes to say.
Last year when I had my problem with Windows 2000 hosing my system's partition table because installing it with Service Pack 3 on, THEN installing Service Pack 4 was insufficient to prevent it from hosing the partition table on a big disk when the outer portions of the disk eventually ended up being used, I finally dug up a Microsoft Knowledgebase article that admitted that "some disks" geometry wouldn't be read correctly in that situation.
Nowhere did Microsoft identify WHAT disks, WHY, or HOW. It was a "throwaway line" like that referenced in the present article. Microsoft was happy to say that LBA48 was supported by Windows 2000 Service Pack 4, but NOT that if you installed it first WITHOUT Service Pack 4 and then installed SP4, that Windows 2000 would silently wait until you actually tried to use the larger partitions before trashing your hard drive.
You tell people what you're doing to their systems.
It's that simple.
Security reasons, or no security reasons, you tell people. Anything else is misleading, which equates to lying.
They own the systems, not you, regardless of your fucking EULA.
Then if anybody doesn't care or doesn't want to know, it's on them.
I've heard it called a drug before, though.
As in: "Here, try this nice PC with the built-in Windows OS - won't cost you anything for a hit!"
As in: 'Here, just pony up two million bucks for our Software Assurance Contract - guaranteed new OS in three years!"
As in: "Whatdayamean, you didn't get no new OS in three years! It's coming out this November! Shut the fuck up and pay up!"
I agree. I would guess a lot of companies take SOME care about using illegal stuff, but for the most part nobody cares because they aren't reselling - it's all for "personal use" - except in this case the "personal" is the company.
I suspect if you really examined every single image, every single logo, every single typeface, etc., etc. in every magazine and every TV broadcast and every Web site, etc., etc., you'd find TONS of so-called "copyright infringement." And if you didn't, you find TONS of "fair use" where the copyright holder would still complain - rightly or wrongly.
NOBODY has time to make sure EVERYTHING is "legal". It simply isn't possible.
The only beneficiaries are, as usual, the lawyers.
"Of course, if the hard drive dies and nobody bothered to make a set of recovery discs then you have a problem. I would say the majority of customers do not make these discs."
Got that right. This "recovery partition" scam is just a way for OEMs to save on CD/DVD reproduction expenses. Sure, it's easier than getting a tech to really solve the problem, but in the end it's a scam.
"removing the 20 or so pieces of demo software that every brand PC includes"
Now THAT's a good service! Most of that stuff is utter crap and consumers should complain that most of the major OEMs do this. Removing this junk in fact can damage the OS. I had a client with a brand new Dell desk machine. They had included McAfee AV on there even though she had asked them not to because she already had the Norton service. I uninstalled the McAfee and I suspect that's why we then had problems getting her wireless router to work. When we called Dell (after Geek Squad had told her the NIC was bad - which was bullshit), they instructed me to reload the system image, which solved the problem.
No doubt the reason the hard drive suddenly got bigger is that your previous version of Windows was limited to 2GB partitions by using the FAT16 file system. When they reinstalled with a later version, it used the whole disk by using FAT32.
I've had clients with hard drives that "filled up" and when I looked they had 2GB partitions with 4GB sitting there unused. Unfortunately they'd already bought a new 40GB hard drive!
"are you just being a cheeky, smug asshole with nothing insightful to say?"
/. don't you comprehend?
Uhm, what part of
Nothing like gaming the system to insure the company goes out of business.
Your service plan will then be worthless.
Okay, I know, Best Buy doesn't look like it's going out of business anytime soon. But you never know.
Got her number?
Geek Squad guys are supposed to give you their number, right? (Of course, the one time I had a client get it, the number was "out of service.")
Raymond Burr had utterly nothing to do with "Mod Squad"!
What part of "Mod" didn't you understand? When was Raymond Burr ever considered "Mod"?
You're thinking of "Ironside". The reason I remember that show is because Barbara Anderson was one of the hottest blondes on television at the time. They also had an episode where Ironside hooked up with his old flame played by German actress Karin Dor, who was major hot and a fave of mine.
Mod Squad had Peggy Lipton (who was pretty hot), Clarence Williams III and Michael Cole. Everybody remembers Clarence for that bizarre afro he always wore.
"As a side effect it cleans out the registry and system folders of potentially years of crud build up."
Which is the problem in the first place = the fucking Windows Registry and system folders.
I agree that reinstalling takes less time in many cases - that's why virtually all the manufacturers now use hidden reload partitions (until, of course, something goes wrong with that, as a client I had recently had a problem. Then they're screwed until they can order a reload CD.)
The problem is that it doesn't solve the problem. It just postpones its re-occurence - especially in the case of spyware, software crud, third-party hardware and software, etc.
You also don't learn anything. In some cases, especially on Windows, you CAN'T learn anything because it's nearly impossible to find out what happened. But in other cases, learning what caused the problem might make it possible to fix the problem in other situations where a reinstall really would take longer.
I say, try to solve the problem until it's apparent it isn't going to be solved easily.
But even then, the client may be pissed off and think it's just because you aren't SMART enough to solve the problem that he has to go and reinstall. That's not good for your business.
Well, to be fair, unless you know every fucking key in the Windows Registry (which gets ten times bigger with every release), it's a little hard to be able to fix Windows when it suddently stops working. Especially if the problem is caused by third party software instead of Windows itself. It doesn't help to blame the third-party software, either, but you STILL don't know which one or how it in fact screwed up the Registry.
In some cases, you can do a Google and somebody has figured out what went wrong, or at least a smart way to fix it. In many cases, a reinstall is the ONLY way to get Windows back in operation.
With Linux, almost always fixing one config file or doing some other minor file juggling will fix the problem. Failing that, an upgrade to a later version of the particular failing software will. You almost NEVER have to reinstall to fix Linux. Admittedly, sometimes it is VERY hard to figure out where in the maze of config files (usually due to the desktops) the problem lies. But the underlying services are usually fixable without too much searching. You might have to suddenly become an expert on, say, Linux font servers, but that's easier than figuring out the Windows Registry.
Yup - once again the US penchant for hiring locals to work in sensitive areas bites us in the ass. We're the ONLY country that does this. The Russians think we're totally insane.
"There weren't enough classified authorized computers to work on, so we frequently needed to take classified files onto unclassified computers."
That's probably caused by somebody classifying EVERYTHING whether it needs to be classified or not. That's common in the government, as numerous GAO studies have shown.
None of that is likely to happen. How the FUCK is Al Qaeda going to sneak into the United States, kidnap or kill one lousy family, and somehow make an effect? Al Qaeda is not all powerful, and they have much better targets to pick than randomly trying to kill some US soldier's family. In fact, trying that would motivate US troops far more than anything else they might do.
Pay records are completely useless to Al Qaeda and the Taliban - except possibly to indicate the US force strength and composition of forces, which is obviously useful, but easy to obtain just by letting locals who are allowed on and around the base use their eyes.
Unless the USBs contained military supply records, transportation and logistics information, or actual strategic or tactical operational planning, they were probably useless to the Taliban - which is probably why the reporters could get them at all - otherwise they would have been long gone.
In fact, the reporters should be more worried about the ones that were already BOUGHT by someone else - since they obviously WERE valuable.
Actually, I doubt the Taliban need much of that info. What they need to do is stay out of the way of direct confrontation with US and NATO troops, or they get killed. They know that. So as long as they're engaged in an insurgency primarily against the Afghan state forces, they really don't need a lot of complicated intelligence about the US and NATO forces - just enough to stay out of their way. And they probably have PLENTY of spies inside the Afghan state forces that they can get all the intelligence they need to set up ambushes and the like.
In Vietnam, the US military black market was HUGE.
I knew one guy who came back who was a barracks mate of mine at Fort Rucker in 1969 who claimed he made over $10,000 selling stuff - and he was just one guy. Supposedly there was a HUGE black market run by senior NCOs and officers that got busted up at one point - millions of dollars involved.
Most of the US troops into this would refuse to sell weapons, but they'd sell anything else that wasn't nailed down.
How Stuff Works
This part is amusing:
"Air Force crews at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland carefully inspect the plane, and the runway, before every flight."
I guess they missed the part where Richard Marcinko and his Red Cell SEAL Team managed to put fake IEDs on Air Force One in the hangar.
Also, here are the anti-missile defenses courtesy of Cryptome, who's really fast on the draw at saving info before it vanishes:
Air Force One Defenses and also here about the Air Force One rescue system (the "oxygen bottles" everyone is afraid some sniper will blow up.)
Well, that's useless. Who cares what the home address is of a soldier in another country (unless it's maybe the general of the entire army?)
What is Al Qaeda going to do - send nasty mail to his family?
Or spam? "Join with us! Praise Allah! Your dick will be bigger!"
Good point.
Better they sell US military secrets than heroin to the CIA that then comes straight into ghetto kids arms.