Well, in the case of Visa anyway, you are protected whether your visa card is a credit or a check card.
I used to think there was increased risk to using a check card (esp. online), but listening to Dave RamseyI found out about this feature (which you can read for yourself on the Visa website).
You don't necessarily need a credit score to get a mortgage. You can go with a lender that does manual underwriting. Instead of the low-effort, pull-your-credit-score route, they look at your actual employment history, savings and investments. If you avoid debt besides mortgages, you can still get a mortgage unless your lender is really lazy.
At this point, I think anyone that invests in Apple should understand what they're getting and how Apple operates. If not, then you can't fault a company or CEO for continuing to follow its precedents just because you weren't aware of them.
I decided to err on the side of Steve Jobs some time ago and it's worked out pretty well for me.
Greedy corporations tinker with the food supply to maximize profit. Unintended consequences devastate the population. The few remaining humans vow to learn from these mistakes. (Sequel: Until they forget and repeat the cycle).
I used to be a tech support rep and now I write training for other TSRs that is delivered at multiple sites WW. Lack of knowledgeable agents can have many causes. Here is my perspective on some causes and solutions:
You can develop great training material, but it can be delivered poorly or ignored altogether by the instructor. Solution, hire better instructors by spending more money.
You can have great training delivered well, but the time alloted to training is less than optimal. Solution: Train longer (which means pay people who aren't actually contributing to lowering your call volume yet). Translation: Spend more money. Note: The longer you have them in class, the more time they have to forget what they learned at the beginning, but well-designed training should be cumulative and include actual or realistic practice.
You can have great training, delivered well in the appropriate amount of time, but agents can't or don't absorb it. There's only so much you can do before the person being trained has to take an active role. You can lead a person to knowledge, but you can't make him think. Solution: Pay enough to attract people motivated enough to participate in their own learning. I think we start around $12 or maybe more. Then again, who will you get for $12 an hour? New college graduates? That's how I started.
You can have great training that is delievered well, in the right time and absorbed & remembered. Does that mean that they also have good customer service skills? Nothing can make a bad situation worse than utter lack of techical customer service skills. But, for the sake of argument, let's say they learn that and don't mess it up. Then how long do you expect those agents to stick around? More experienced agents expect more pay (rightly so) or tire of having to talk a novice customer through something they could do much more quickly in person. If my company is any indication, there are many, many jobs in tech support / customer service, but not so many "off the phones". It makes it worse when your home office is geographically removed in a much higher cost of living area. Maybe the company offers as many opportunities as it can, but that's still not enough to prevent large scale attrition. So, where do you get more people to replace them and start over? At some point, the local market is tapped out. You have to expand to other cities/countries (either directly or thru outsourcing).
Note that these solutions in my view come down to paying enough money at the appropriate levels to get the quality your customers deserve. But in the end, a company has to cover its costs and usually leave room for profit and/or inflation. That means you pass the costs along to customers. But if you have shareholders, they expect ROI. If your customers balk at the upfront price of your product before they appreciate what you're paying for, then you won't have so many customers, which means less revenue, which takes the money away to sustain the elements of quality support.
(Frankly, I'm surprised when customers buy solely on the basis of product price and are then surprised when they get "lowest cost" support, but I digress...)
So, in summary: - Lots of things contribute to poor quality support, and training is only 1 of them. - These things can (almost?) all be fixed by spending more money on your people (and systems) - The costs of good support have to be passed along to the customer to satisfy shareholders
It's quite a tap dance to meet the needs of employees AND customers AND shareholders at the same time. Kudos to any company that can manage that. If anyone can master and implement that formula, then they can probably write their own ticket.
I have worked on my church's podcasts and know that podcasts on iTunes can be DRM-free. Maybe the rules for music are different on the iT(M)S. Then again, individuals can submit pocasts but my indie band friend had to submit her albums through an intermediary.
Slashdot Mirror
"Kimchi"
You're welcome.
That's an "okie", and a sad, lower life form to be sure.
Hook 'em Horns!
They were hardly kids. Childish, sure. But definitely adult (and not just barely legal either).
Actually, it was probably not an iPhone 3G S.
"64 bits ought to be enough for anybody!"
- Bill Gateways
"Why is it playing Nirvana and Pink Floyd all of the time?"
Try Churchill Mortgage and see what they say.
http://www.churchhillmortgage.com/
Well, in the case of Visa anyway, you are protected whether your visa card is a credit or a check card.
I used to think there was increased risk to using a check card (esp. online), but listening to Dave RamseyI found out about this feature (which you can read for yourself on the Visa website).
There is always the option of "manual underwriting"I d=6260
http://www.daveramsey.com/etc/askdave/?intContent
They qualify you based on actual analysis of your financial situation, and not just a credit score.
You don't necessarily need a credit score to get a mortgage. You can go with a lender that does manual underwriting. Instead of the low-effort, pull-your-credit-score route, they look at your actual employment history, savings and investments. If you avoid debt besides mortgages, you can still get a mortgage unless your lender is really lazy.
At this point, I think anyone that invests in Apple should understand what they're getting and how Apple operates. If not, then you can't fault a company or CEO for continuing to follow its precedents just because you weren't aware of them.
I decided to err on the side of Steve Jobs some time ago and it's worked out pretty well for me.
But some people are more equal than others.
This has all of the makings of a Sci-Fi plot.
Greedy corporations tinker with the food supply to maximize profit.
Unintended consequences devastate the population.
The few remaining humans vow to learn from these mistakes.
(Sequel: Until they forget and repeat the cycle).
Where have I seen this before?
I used to be a tech support rep and now I write training for other TSRs that is delivered at multiple sites WW. Lack of knowledgeable agents can have many causes. Here is my perspective on some causes and solutions:
You can develop great training material, but it can be delivered poorly or ignored altogether by the instructor. Solution, hire better instructors by spending more money.
You can have great training delivered well, but the time alloted to training is less than optimal. Solution: Train longer (which means pay people who aren't actually contributing to lowering your call volume yet). Translation: Spend more money. Note: The longer you have them in class, the more time they have to forget what they learned at the beginning, but well-designed training should be cumulative and include actual or realistic practice.
You can have great training, delivered well in the appropriate amount of time, but agents can't or don't absorb it. There's only so much you can do before the person being trained has to take an active role. You can lead a person to knowledge, but you can't make him think. Solution: Pay enough to attract people motivated enough to participate in their own learning. I think we start around $12 or maybe more. Then again, who will you get for $12 an hour? New college graduates? That's how I started.
You can have great training that is delievered well, in the right time and absorbed & remembered. Does that mean that they also have good customer service skills? Nothing can make a bad situation worse than utter lack of techical customer service skills. But, for the sake of argument, let's say they learn that and don't mess it up. Then how long do you expect those agents to stick around? More experienced agents expect more pay (rightly so) or tire of having to talk a novice customer through something they could do much more quickly in person. If my company is any indication, there are many, many jobs in tech support / customer service, but not so many "off the phones". It makes it worse when your home office is geographically removed in a much higher cost of living area. Maybe the company offers as many opportunities as it can, but that's still not enough to prevent large scale attrition. So, where do you get more people to replace them and start over? At some point, the local market is tapped out. You have to expand to other cities/countries (either directly or thru outsourcing).
Note that these solutions in my view come down to paying enough money at the appropriate levels to get the quality your customers deserve. But in the end, a company has to cover its costs and usually leave room for profit and/or inflation. That means you pass the costs along to customers. But if you have shareholders, they expect ROI. If your customers balk at the upfront price of your product before they appreciate what you're paying for, then you won't have so many customers, which means less revenue, which takes the money away to sustain the elements of quality support.
(Frankly, I'm surprised when customers buy solely on the basis of product price and are then surprised when they get "lowest cost" support, but I digress...)
So, in summary:
- Lots of things contribute to poor quality support, and training is only 1 of them.
- These things can (almost?) all be fixed by spending more money on your people (and systems)
- The costs of good support have to be passed along to the customer to satisfy shareholders
It's quite a tap dance to meet the needs of employees AND customers AND shareholders at the same time. Kudos to any company that can manage that. If anyone can master and implement that formula, then they can probably write their own ticket.
True, but all currently-shipping Macs are Intel Macs.
Hint: You can't get Leopard seeds with a free account.
Hint: Try it before you suggest it.
That must have been ID's Pong redone with the Doom 3 engine.
I'm not as old as those Apple // guys.
MacKido has a great big list.
The ones I remember off of the top of my head:
Iguana Flag
Hidden Breakout Game
Rosetta Rosetta Rosetta
Maybe it's some sort of buffer overflow? He can only store 1 byte's worth of eggs (or is it really 3 bits?), so he can't count any higher?
Just don't get caught growing your "herbs" in a box.
I thought the benefit was that it was a smaller file size for the same quality, and that it was part of the MPEG-4 standard.
Isn't it a pay cut?
I have worked on my church's podcasts and know that podcasts on iTunes can be DRM-free. Maybe the rules for music are different on the iT(M)S. Then again, individuals can submit pocasts but my indie band friend had to submit her albums through an intermediary.
According to this article:0 14
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93
There is a way to deauthorize computers you previously authorized but no longer have.
The other program was Music Match and that was before they had iTunes for Windows, IIRC.