How long until the wearer starts suffering from the effects of focusing up close for.. hours at a time?
A third to half the day, every day for a week ?
I know my eye doctor told me to glance away from my monitor and focus at something far away a few times an hour, for a moment or two and rest my lenses.
Don't sit to close to the TV... no, have a 52" TV 6cm in front of your face ?
from the site: is not being released on the DVD format in 2000 or for the foreseeable future
the 'forseeable' future? why use such a vague term? so next year they can? or at their leisure they can say "oh, we didn't see this far into the future, here's your DVD"
I worked at Dell for nine months, specializing in laptop support and beta testing the newest machines before they went out into the new world to be beat upon.
I sat in a chair for 8 hours a day, sometimes, taking calls that never let up, from people who'd spent three thousand dollars on a computer, and by god because excel wasn't working properly it was my fault, Dell's fault, and we were going to send someone to their house this instant to make their computer work the way it should. You calm them down, talk with them, and then tell them to call microsoft.
That's one extreme. Another would be the guy who calls up, asks a pretty simple question, and when you tell him he says 'oh, wow, DUH.. i can't *believe* i had to call to remember that.. thanks a lot' and hangs up.
Then.. there's the guy I sat next to at Dell. Wonderful guy - quiet, maybe a little shy, always spoke softly on a call, or in person. Young twenties, wanted to go to Seminary (learn to be a man of the cloth) - had his first child, an awesome little girl, a few months before I left the company -
Great coworker. Calm, cool, collected and relaxed.
Until he dealt with angry people, confused people, and in some cases what seems like really stupid people. I remember when he got off a long, hard, call and yelled, not really a scream, but a *yell* about "How can these people possibly keep BREATHING" or something to that effect.
Wow. That's what frustration can do to you.
I laugh like hell at User Friendly, when the tech support jokes aren't one's i've heard 'around the campfire' and the question is really a *funny joke* instead of just "Hey, i don't understand windows" - "Well you're an IDIOT! HAHAHAHHA"
no.. i don't think so
They are jokes, most of the time carefully phrased, and we love 'em. Cope.
Here's something that really happened to me, and now that it's out in the tech world I'm sure it will turn into an Urban Legend - but remember it happened, Dell has the call log, and I have the spiral notebook with the entry.
To explain:
Call from an average male. First computer was a laptop (for some reason, some people guess that an all-in-one package is better than a desktop solution for a first time user).. and he had chosen a background image (in Windows) but it didn't reach out to the edges of the screen.
No problem, I thought. While we aren't responsible for supporting things like the windows desktop, I could spend 4 seconds with this guy, he'd be happy as a clam. No reason to tell him 'uh, sir, i can't help you', that's just silly.
So, I ask him what's on his desktop - nothing he says, just icons and an arrow, no windows are open.
Great, I need you to place your arrow someplace blank on the desktop, and right click.
*tick*tick*tick*ding
Hmmm, he says, that didn't do anything.
I wonder why the hell I heard his box *ding* and some tick tack sounds.
Ok, well, try it again. Just make sure you click where there aren't any icons.
Ok..
*tick*tick*ding
and.. he says to me
"Huh.. well, I wrote click and it didn't do anything"
I remain very calm, do not react strangely at all, and say "let's try the right mouse button"
The guy says, oh, okay, and it works (little box comes up with 'display properties' in it)
...
I ended that call, put down the headset and told every last person I could. We laughed, we hung our heads in confusion, we felt the entire weight of the world in our frustration knowing that at any moment, there are dozens of people just like that calling us to help them.
I understand that 'right click' could translate to 'write click'... but I have some issues with this guy's thought process.
Even as a newbie, back in elementary school with the Apple ]['s.. i would NEVER have thought that TYPING the word CLICK would make a computer do ANYTHING.
Why would typing the word click do *anything*?
Ok.. I'm done.
Tech Support jokes are funny, if they are jokes or puns or paradoxes or whatever, not 3rd grade humor like "You're stupid because you don't know what mastication means".
A lot of these jokes happen. And we laughed then too.
It's healthy to have a sense of humor about one's species, culture and job. One word:
Today SONY released the newest device in the competitive portable MP3 player market, a slug bio-mass powered device called Slug3. Sony expects their device to be a hit, because users will never need batteries - they simply pluck slugs, crickets, snails, mice, roaches and other garden pests off the ground and place them in the cold fusion chamber of the player.
we have LARRY for a development web server, MOE serves up the finished sites. Our latest SQL server is SHEMP, and we haven't reused CURLY since that box died in the flames of faulty motherboard glory.
As for my workstation, I strayed from my typical dark, industrial music, goth sort of scheme and went for SUNSHINE. The next apache / shell box I brought up got SUNSET, and when I moved the cd recorder and scanner over to another machine, I had to name it SUNBURN just for the grimace when recognizing the horrible pun on people's faces as I burn a CD for them.
We've since been purchased by a much larger company, and our responsiblities now include setting up all of their servers. Hopefully we can maintain something more human-friendly than NTSVR_DNS_2_HOUSTON.
How many numbers are currently associated with your body?
Physical street address, land line telephone, wireless telephone, IP address for your box(es), email address(es), social security number, driver's license number, passport number, school ID numbers, etc, etc..
Consider eventually having an IPv6 address as an identification number. Emails route to it, snail mail routes to it, you have a small tattoo on the inside of your wrist to scan the large number, and a retinal scan to verify yourself. Local routing tables keep track of a physical locale to leave shipments - updating them when you drop into a hotel for a week, for instance, means packages, bills, whatever could possibly always get to you. The routing table has a permanent address in it as well, and when you sign up for a bill you indicate the floating address or the permanent - and the floating address can change from day to day, updated across the routing system like DNS propogates right now.
Of course, we'll get mugged - our wrists severed and one eye gouged out. No more 'give me your wallet'.
12.1 inch display? did apple just set back in time about 4 years? i beta tested laptops at dell last year, and 14.1 was the standard, with the 15 inch inspiron 7000 the premium.
and i love this quote from the site: "chances are your jacks--those little holes in the wall you plug your phone line into" - apple knows they cater to id10ts, and don't try to hide it.
they also mention playing multiplayer games. no way you'll get openGL support for this box's hardware, so you better be into bridge.
Slashdot Mirror
How long until the wearer starts suffering from the effects of focusing up close for.. hours at a time?
A third to half the day, every day for a week ?
I know my eye doctor told me to glance away from my monitor and focus at something far away a few times an hour, for a moment or two and rest my lenses.
Don't sit to close to the TV... no, have a 52" TV 6cm in front of your face ?
from the site: is not being released on the DVD format in 2000 or for the foreseeable future
the 'forseeable' future? why use such a vague term? so next year they can? or at their leisure they can say "oh, we didn't see this far into the future, here's your DVD"
or, do they really mean NO dvd for star wars ?
... and learn the value of personal freedom.
I worked at Dell for nine months, specializing in laptop support and beta testing the newest machines before they went out into the new world to be beat upon.
I sat in a chair for 8 hours a day, sometimes, taking calls that never let up, from people who'd spent three thousand dollars on a computer, and by god because excel wasn't working properly it was my fault, Dell's fault, and we were going to send someone to their house this instant to make their computer work the way it should. You calm them down, talk with them, and then tell them to call microsoft.
That's one extreme. Another would be the guy who calls up, asks a pretty simple question, and when you tell him he says 'oh, wow, DUH.. i can't *believe* i had to call to remember that.. thanks a lot' and hangs up.
Then.. there's the guy I sat next to at Dell. Wonderful guy - quiet, maybe a little shy, always spoke softly on a call, or in person. Young twenties, wanted to go to Seminary (learn to be a man of the cloth) - had his first child, an awesome little girl, a few months before I left the company -
Great coworker. Calm, cool, collected and relaxed.
Until he dealt with angry people, confused people, and in some cases what seems like really stupid people. I remember when he got off a long, hard, call and yelled, not really a scream, but a *yell* about "How can these people possibly keep BREATHING" or something to that effect.
Wow. That's what frustration can do to you.
I laugh like hell at User Friendly, when the tech support jokes aren't one's i've heard 'around the campfire' and the question is really a *funny joke* instead of just "Hey, i don't understand windows" - "Well you're an IDIOT! HAHAHAHHA"
no.. i don't think so
They are jokes, most of the time carefully phrased, and we love 'em. Cope.
Here's something that really happened to me, and now that it's out in the tech world I'm sure it will turn into an Urban Legend - but remember it happened, Dell has the call log, and I have the spiral notebook with the entry.
To explain:
Call from an average male. First computer was a laptop (for some reason, some people guess that an all-in-one package is better than a desktop solution for a first time user).. and he had chosen a background image (in Windows) but it didn't reach out to the edges of the screen.
No problem, I thought. While we aren't responsible for supporting things like the windows desktop, I could spend 4 seconds with this guy, he'd be happy as a clam. No reason to tell him 'uh, sir, i can't help you', that's just silly.
So, I ask him what's on his desktop - nothing he says, just icons and an arrow, no windows are open.
Great, I need you to place your arrow someplace blank on the desktop, and right click.
*tick*tick*tick*ding
Hmmm, he says, that didn't do anything.
I wonder why the hell I heard his box *ding* and some tick tack sounds.
Ok, well, try it again. Just make sure you click where there aren't any icons.
Ok..
*tick*tick*ding
and.. he says to me
"Huh.. well, I wrote click and it didn't do anything"
I remain very calm, do not react strangely at all, and say "let's try the right mouse button"
The guy says, oh, okay, and it works (little box comes up with 'display properties' in it)
...
I ended that call, put down the headset and told every last person I could. We laughed, we hung our heads in confusion, we felt the entire weight of the world in our frustration knowing that at any moment, there are dozens of people just like that calling us to help them.
I understand that 'right click' could translate to 'write click'... but I have some issues with this guy's thought process.
Even as a newbie, back in elementary school with the Apple ]['s.. i would NEVER have thought that TYPING the word CLICK would make a computer do ANYTHING.
Why would typing the word click do *anything*?
Ok.. I'm done.
Tech Support jokes are funny, if they are jokes or puns or paradoxes or whatever, not 3rd grade humor like "You're stupid because you don't know what mastication means".
A lot of these jokes happen. And we laughed then too.
It's healthy to have a sense of humor about one's species, culture and job. One word:
Cope.
-jthm
Today SONY released the newest device in the competitive portable MP3 player market, a slug bio-mass powered device called Slug3. Sony expects their device to be a hit, because users will never need batteries - they simply pluck slugs, crickets, snails, mice, roaches and other garden pests off the ground and place them in the cold fusion chamber of the player.
we have LARRY for a development web server, MOE serves up the finished sites. Our latest SQL server is SHEMP, and we haven't reused CURLY since that box died in the flames of faulty motherboard glory.
As for my workstation, I strayed from my typical dark, industrial music, goth sort of scheme and went for SUNSHINE. The next apache / shell box I brought up got SUNSET, and when I moved the cd recorder and scanner over to another machine, I had to name it SUNBURN just for the grimace when recognizing the horrible pun on people's faces as I burn a CD for them.
We've since been purchased by a much larger company, and our responsiblities now include setting up all of their servers. Hopefully we can maintain something more human-friendly than NTSVR_DNS_2_HOUSTON.
Quote from the article:
"The lack of high-end chips depressed profit margins, down slightly to 58.7 percent, and average selling prices."
how can intel possibly survive without a minimum 60 percent profit margin ?
oh, the humanity. they might have to stop bidding on irc servers on ebay.
how many companies enjoy a profit margin that large ?
How many numbers are currently associated with your body?
Physical street address, land line telephone, wireless telephone, IP address for your box(es), email address(es), social security number, driver's license number, passport number, school ID numbers, etc, etc..
Consider eventually having an IPv6 address as an identification number. Emails route to it, snail mail routes to it, you have a small tattoo on the inside of your wrist to scan the large number, and a retinal scan to verify yourself. Local routing tables keep track of a physical locale to leave shipments - updating them when you drop into a hotel for a week, for instance, means packages, bills, whatever could possibly always get to you. The routing table has a permanent address in it as well, and when you sign up for a bill you indicate the floating address or the permanent - and the floating address can change from day to day, updated across the routing system like DNS propogates right now.
Of course, we'll get mugged - our wrists severed and one eye gouged out. No more 'give me your wallet'.
12.1 inch display? did apple just set back in time about 4 years? i beta tested laptops at dell last year, and 14.1 was the standard, with the 15 inch inspiron 7000 the premium.
and i love this quote from the site: "chances are your jacks--those little holes in the wall you plug your phone line into" - apple knows they cater to id10ts, and don't try to hide it.
they also mention playing multiplayer games. no way you'll get openGL support for this box's hardware, so you better be into bridge.