I imagine all this came about because people like Britney Spears insist on forcing their ample breasts into push-up bras, then get upset when they "accidentally" spill out when all the live cameras are focused on their racks?:)
Heh. This still won't help. It won't help until either a) there's no more hornballs left behind the lenses, or b) there's nothing left of interest to point cameras at:)
Please, feel free to moderate this down. I just thought I'd snicker about this rather useless technological idea.
I work for a small company. I've worked for larger companies as well. I have NOT seen the above in a tech company. I DO get this when I call AT&T or Sprint, but they still tend to know thier
system better than I do (internal system).
Good for you. Like I said in my (apparently flamebait) rant, you're one of the intelligent ones. Congratulations. Now how long is it going to be before you're sick of being "suckered into support?" *YOU* are fiercely proud of the good work you do (and you should be) but you STILL don't like it. Otherwise why would you describe yourself as being "suckered"?
Now you also mentioned two weeks of training nets you people who can solve 50% of the calls you get. Adding knowledge of resolving IRQ conflicts adds 25% to that figure. Okay, great, now go *find* somebody with that kind of experience and knowledge (since other useful tidbits usually tag along) whose *also* willing to take the horrid pay usually offered by these help desk jobs.
You seem to imply that I've never done the job. Welp, I have. I'm not bashing something I don't understand. I *know* the smaller companies *sometimes* get lucky and do things right, with the right people. Getting that magic combination to work is truly a black art.
For the rest, well, I'd honestly rather not deal with "the support people." Trained monkeys are not my thing.
Well, why don't you get your smart ass on a helpdesk and you can set everyone straight.
Well, since you asked...
Recording an attempt to trick a phone monkey into saying something in your favor is not going to get said phone monkey fired.
Your post, however, indicates that you obviously represent the overwhelming majority of said phone monkeys out there. Having "done my time" as a phone monkey myself, I have this to say about the job and the people who fill it:
Your statement, "Helpdesk is a shitkicker job" is spot-on accurate. It is without a doubt the single worst possible occupation in the computing industry. The people who work on the manufacturing lines are treated better.
The people who typically field these positions as phone monkeys are true idiots. Completely and utterly. This sounds cruel, but before you don your trusty flamethrower, hear me out.
Almost ALL entry-level phone monkeys are obtained straight off the street with ZERO, that's right, ZERO training. They are shunted into a two-week training class and put on the phones. Guess what? These are the "quite smart" people you talk to when you make your phone call to tech support!
Anyone with any intelligence, skill, and/or experience gets promoted up out of first-tier support really fast, and plays phone monkey for more intelligent people for awhile. Anyone with a nominal amount of intelligence stays for six months (to put decent experience on a resume) and finds better paying, more fulfilling work somewhere outside the phone monkey (er, "customer service") industry.
Phone monkeys do not work hard. They sit at a desk all day and talk. They run through scripts. They listen to people whine and moan. Nobody is ever happy when they finally reach the phone monkey (do *you* ever call @home solely to thank them for their wonderful service?). If a phone monkey's scripts don't solve the customer's problem, they dip into their vast (watch out -- sarcasm warning!) wealth of personal experience and knowledge to try to solve the problem. If that veritable encyclopedia fails to solve the problem (roughly 20 seconds are wasted discovering that this *never* solves any problems) the phone monkey runs off immediately to ask a supervisor. The problem doesn't actually reach anyone with any intellect for ages, if ever.
That's not working harder, that's trying to survive in an absolutely shitty, horrid, miserable job that thanks you less than your children and spouse do.
Anyone who has ever been a phone monkey knows that it's one of the few worst types of jobs out there -- the kind that from the day you start, you're looking for something better. Without exception, the goal at each employee's top of the list is "find a better job."
Unskilled people are hired to do the work, and when they can't hack it, they find better jobs. When a skilled person is hired by accident, he immediately hates being surrounded by clueless dolts and also finds a better job. Turnover in phone monkey companies rarely exceeds 1 year. And *those* are the people who get promoted a bit, just to keep them around.
So how do these highly intelligent people behave on the job? Well, they do a few things:
Stay in "ready" or "auto-in" as little as possible between calls, avoiding as many calls as possible
During calls, hit the mute button to openly laugh and poke fun at clueless idiotic questions from users, exchanging jokes and insults with each other across the open-plan office floors, and whining about how many hours they've got left today.
During calls when actually *listening* to the customer, you'll find the average phone monkey franticly tearing through shoddy, poorly-developed and even more poorly-filled knowledge bases looking for solutions (if they're not on the scripts already).
An average phone monkey's cubicle or partition will usually be filled to the brim with clever little quips such as "I don't have an attitude problem, you have a perception problem," or "Lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part." You'll find these quips on crudely photocopied "lists of..." except in cubicles occupied by the skilled phone monkeys (who are too busy looking for a new job to be helpful on the phone) where you'll see neatly typed and freshly printed versions of the same lists.
Frequent breaks are also taken, with and without permission from superiors. Statistics and performance metrics, which are promptly ignored then thrown away, are used only to separate the monkeys into two groups: those who will be promoted to jobs with more responsibilities but no more pay, and those who won't.
Phone monkeys also frequently worry about being laid off, since hirings and firings tend to go in cycles, and almost never involve just one monkey.
Am I being harsh? Well, if honesty is harsh, then hell yes. I worked in the phone monkey industry for just under a year, plenty of time for me to realize how hard it sucked, and also plenty of time to line up a selection of better jobs before pouncing on one when the offers started coming in.
Anyone who works as a phone monkey hates it. Anyone who leaves considers it "escape," not "I quit and found a real job." Being fired from a phone monkey job inspires more pride and confidence than being fired from a Taco Bell(tm) restaraunt (I'm *not* being sarcastic -- it's an honor to push the phone monkey machine hard enough to fire someone without a layoff going on:)
Before you blast someone for trying to have a phone monkey fired, think about what he's *really* trying to accomplish. You really think "Tracy," who took that phone call that got recorded six months before they caught Mr. Lan-at-Home, is even going to still be employed at the external company @home undoubtedly outsources their support to? If you do, can I have some of that nifty stuff you're smoking?
The intended effect of recording that kind of conversation isn't to get the phone monkey fired, it's to have a piece of solid evidence in court.
@home gets to modify its terms of service agreement *whenever* it feels like it. That already puts it on slightly shaky ground. Alone, you can't challenge that, but with a tape recording of a representative of the company freely approving your specific request, effectively making a verbal change in the terms of service agreement (a verbal contract, also legal if it can be proven, by, say, a tape:), you can laugh their legal team straight out of the courtroom.
Sorry for this lengthy rant. I just hate seeing people stick up for the phone monkeys. I learned while serving my time as one that you don't make your job better by hoping others will stick up for you. Instead, you make your job better by taking up a different one.
You read about stuff like this and suddenly realize your problems are really damned insignificant in the grand scheme of things. I don't believe I ever had the pleasure of chatting or working with Espa, but since Debian 2.2 is the distro that runs all my boxes, his work on 2.2 has had an impact on the systems I work with. I'm proud to have some of my work in Debian 2.2 (LCDproc v0.3.4). Thanks, Espa, for all your hard work, and farewell.
I wouldn't call it a lack of compassion, really. Nor am I dodging the world's problems. I will admit feeling next to no desire to help out, because I know full well that if *I* were in need, I'd get a huge pile of nothing. I'm also not on either side of the issue in full. As my previous post should have demonstrated, I don't believe all people receiving handouts are abusing the privilege. Perhaps I've just known too many people who lacked the moral fibre to improve themselves instead of just living on public money, but it seems to me that just handing people steady cash or food every month isn't doing the trick. Slamming people who oppose doing so isn't going to help either.
Perhaps a discussion of how or why this story matters to more than 1% of Slashdot's readers would be a more interesting read than this crap. Well, I just got handed your crap, so how is this article any different? Just maybe, somebody's got different interests than you've got. Just a thought -- I've been wrong before.
Really?!?! God, I've been soooo confused all these years!!! Yes, it looks that way. Why is it, then, that a sizable portion of the US population is food-insecure? For many of the same reasons that other, "poorer" countries are. People are incredibly stupid, lazy and manipulative. Yes, there are people out there who genuinely cannot work because of a physical or mental disability, and sure, these people could use a hand. They are in the minority, however, mixed in with a huge jungle of people who demand handouts in exchange for nothing. I might not have the perfect answer to your query -- but I can answer the inverse question: why am *I* food-secure? Why do I have food to eat? Because I fucking work. I do something that my employer considers valuable enough to pay me money, that I might exchange it for foodstuffs. An incredibly simple concept that seems to have blasted over your head... It's a real pisser that some children get born into absolutely horrid living conditions. I really do feel sorry for them. But hey, I have to eat, too. Natural selection's a real bitch, isn't it? There's countless solutions, but these people don't want to put forth any effort to implement a single one of them. > [more I-know-it-all, I-know-what-you're-thinking, you're-naïve drivel deleted] Quit your strawman arguments. Such as? I didn't see any strawman arguments. I read some rather intelligent counterpoints leveled squarely at your simplistic ideas. I also note that I don't see any intelligent arguments in *your* reply to the above. And by the way, one word about your subject line: "lame." Yup, mine too, but I had to get your attention somehow:P
I wish I could do that with RedHat. You should try Debian, then. You feed it a few (up to 5) disks and an ethernet port, and off you go. That includes PCMCIA support, as well.
The EMPEG is quite cool. It's as close as I've ever seen to the "perfect" MP3 player sitting in my brain. Since no one else can (hopefully) see into my brain, here's a brief description of my idea of the perfect MP3 player (this, btw, is the perfect car stereo MP3 player). When I bought my truck two years ago (Dodge Ram 1500, 1998), I purchased the six-speaker sound system and the best stereo to along with it. It's 1.5 DIN, has a CD player *and* a cassette deck, along with an AM/FM tuner. Before you get on me about buying (and praising) a "factory stereo," keep in mind a few things. First, I didn't have to install *squat*. It just appeared along with the truck when it was driven off the delivery truck:). Second, it still trounces most of these after-market stereos all the gang bangers seem to flock to. You could do three things to improve this deck: replace most of the controls (leaving only the round volume knob, which is digital but seems to "feel" better than a push-button volume control) with a touch-sensitive display (bigger than the display currently in the unit), add the ability to dig through CD-ROMs inserted into it searching for playable MPEG audio (while still playing audio CDs, naturally), and finally, stick some brains in. By brains I mean intelligent playlist handling, automatic AM/FM station searching, AM/FM station "killfiling" (there's some religious stations around and some annoying others that never play anything good that always show up while my deck searches for a tunable station), integration with the vehicle's headlights (dim the display or trigger some other behavior when they are turned on/off, etc.) I know, I know. "Build it yourself!" Okay. How? I know the EMPEG guys busted their butts to build the beast, and it's truly a remarkable device. I'm quite sure I don't have the technical skill to actually *build* the thing. I could certainly take a stab at building the UI though. I happen to dabble in LCD stuff anyways (look at my link above;) and have always wanted an excuse to play with a touch-sensitive one. Speaking of, does anyone know where to find/buy touch-sensitive LCDs? Hopefully with a reasonable interface? (serial is ideal, or parallel, or even I2O)
Ugh. Forgot about that:) I could be crass and say "well everyone *important* has already seen it" but no number of smileys or layers asbestos underwear would save me from the ensuing flames:) And I don't believe that anyway:) That's totally my fault -- thinking like a true American(tm): "We're all that matters." My sincerest apologies. Still, does anyone worldwide seriously pay any heed to the Oscars?
Heh. Particularly since a movie gets a nomination or award from the Oscars *after* everyone's already seen it and decided whether it sucked or not, there's exactly zero use for them in my mind. I say let 'em rot. People seem to be finding less and less use for them as the years go on. So be it. Let them die in obscurity. I'm sure there's plenty of folks online who wouldn't mind banding together to form some high-prestige awards group:P... hell, sign me up:)
Re:I don't think they knew their target audience
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Review: 'Titan A.E.'
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· Score: 1
Can't we read reviews in a million other places? Sure. I guess freedom of speech/press is okay just as long as it's something you want to read, eh? I don't recall Slashdot ever forcing *me* to read something I didn't want to read. The cool content is still here. What's "cool," however, is subjective. And guess what? It's not your site, now is it? Perhaps those who post to it get to decide what's cool here. Great. That's precisely how journalism is supposed to work. Don't agree with the Slashdot definition of "cool"? Find another site that better matches your needs, instead of whining about it here.
Re:Mandrake and Compaq? I sort of hope not ...
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Linux Mergers?
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I, too, usually balk when I see the Compaq logo on a product. I must admit, though, the Armada 1700 kicks a good chunk of arse. Good battery life (6-8 hours on two batteries), CD-ROM was built in so it was still available even with two batteries in the machine, piece-of-cake X and sound setup, PCMCIA is easy, supports the framebuffer stuff, moderately fast (it's older stuff, P2-266 and up), big beautiful screen (14.1" I think:), flawless APM handling (suspend and hiberation worked perfectly, even *gasp* in 'doze in most cases;), and a trackpad (matter of taste on that though). I didn't find it *too* ugly, either. There's that damned taste again. Mine have certainly never been used as a reference:)
I never liked Debian anyway. Okay. Now, would you care to justify this statement at all, with, oh any kind of experiences or evidence, or would you rather just let this bonehead statement stand on its own? I rather like Debian. To make my point, though, I'm not going to bother explaining why I like it. I just do. So there. I'm honestly starting to wonder why I still stick up for the ACs... sure I think anonymity is important, but why is it that it's always used to shelter stupidity, unchecked emotion, and intentional baiting instead of being used to protect someone with a "dangerous," but still valid opinion or experience?
Alright, forgive me for feeding the trolls, but here we go. I'll paraphrase Louis Black (an amusing comedian): [Screws up face, shakes head violently] IDIOT! I'm sorry. I know name calling doesn't help a lot and only serves to piss people off, but it makes me feel better too. You, and every other anonymous pansy who insists on posting absolutely STUPID drivel like this without backing it up with even a single piece of real information, make me absolutely sick. I have one question: Has Slashdot ever actually deleted even one fucking post?!?!?! Have they? You stupid monkey, if something gets moderated down, for whatever reason (biased or not), you can still fucking read it if you're *that* desperate to read it, by lowering your damned threshold. Can you even begin to comprehend how the moderation system actually works?!?! If you don't want to trust the moderators' opinion, set your threshold to zero and shut up! Have your precious trolls, flamebaits, and hotgrits posts. Or you could come out from behind your shelter of anonymity, register to get a real account, then *moderate* something of your own! *EVERY* Slashdot user here who's not too cowardly to use even a fake monicker is given the opportunity to moderate here. You seem to think it's only a small group of people. Perhaps it is -- perhaps it's the small group of people who are absolutely fucking sick of AC's such as yourself trolling for your own pathetic entertainment. Assface.
(Relax, I didn't take this as a flame:) And even if it did work, why should anyone have to take any action to prevent spam? What if I have kids (I don't), and I don't want them receiving "HOT BACKDOOR SLUTZ!!!" emails? Well, honestly, if you don't want them receiving that kind of thing in their e-mail, either supervise their internet usage, don't give them an e-mail account (or monitor it before letting them use it), or don't let them surf. This sort of bridges two issues here, but quite simply the easiest way to prevent this stuff from reaching supposedly "innocent eyes" is to stop them playing around on the internet in the first place. BTW, I wonder when people will finally realize that kids aren't the braindead sponges they appear to be -- "My kid will never see pornography! I monitor all his TV usage." Yeah, except when he's at his friend's house whose dad leaves the XXX tape rack out in the open by the VCR:) > complain to the uplinkI'm not sure if you mean "mail server" or "ISP" by that. But, surprise, surprise, most SPAM is anonymous, and comes without valid headers showing who sent it. It sneaks in through open SMTP servers. I meant the ISP. I must say whenever I've complained about spam to a provider, I've gotten a response. Sometimes the response even includes notice of that account's cancellation. Even when your complaint doesn't nail an individual person or account, ISPs take notice. Hell, even when an open SMTP server allows relaying, if the ISP receives enough complaints (or sees unusually high traffic), they'll usually close the holes. If you don't complain at all, there's not even any chance that anything will be corrected. > Set up a junk account.But then to see your order status or any other mail you still need to visit the junk account. Nope, not at all. But by using a "junk" account for all your online transaction stuff, you reduce the crap that pours into your "normal" account. Y'know, the one you give friends & family & cohorts:) You just check the junk box occasionally (or more frequently when you've ordered something recently). Junkbusters does rock, both the site and the proxy. As far as the AT&T bit, write down the times & dates you've told them to piss off, and if they do it more than three times, go to small claims. Spend $70, a couple of hours, and come home with $500 plus your court costs. And a big ego:P Please don't take this as a flame in any way, I just don't think you've really tried the solutions you propose. Have too. Pthbtbtbtbtbt! (raspberry):) Seriously, though, yes, I have done some of these. I report spammers frequently, get accounts closed, have a spare account that collects much of my junk (the best part is I recently closed it since I haven't ordered anything for awhile... next time I order stuff I'll use the new one. Hehehehe. Bouncing spam.:), etc. I haven't had the pleasure of suing a telemarketer, but my folks have. That was fun to watch. Hehehehehe. LCDproc looks pretty damn cool, BTW. Hehehe thanks:)
Aren't there enough laws on the books not being enforced properly or doing what they were meant to?:) There's a *whole* bunch of ways to stop (or help stop) spam without losing one's ability to receive e-mail.
Blacklist known spammer sites. (Duh:)
Opt-out or complain to the uplink. When a spam arrives from a "reputable" company like Caldera, raise one hell of a stink. If it's from some fly-by-night, whine and moan at the ISP until the account's yanked. Usually only takes once.
Set up a junk account. Go to any of the free "can we please send you ads while you read your mail?" mail sites, like yahoo.com or netscape.com (or even the open-source free ones that thankfully don't toss ads as badly:), and use *that* address whenever registering software or handing out e-mail addresses on sites.
The important thing to remember is these people are just as persistent as telemarketers. If you just bitch about their existence, they won't ever leave you alone. If you do something about them, they tend to leave you alone. Hanging up on a newspaper salesman (damn you, Rocky Mountain News!) tells his numebers-based machines that you just didn't want to talk to him right now, and that he should call back; maybe you'll be more receptive later, right? If you instead bark specific orders at them, like "put me on your do not call list, and never call me back," then taking legal action if they do it again, they learn real fast. I suppose it does suck that we can't really sue people for spamming us repeatedly. I think adding more laws would be a mistake, though. I don't want to get sued for sending a "hey how's it going?" message to someone I haven't heard from for a few weeks.:) And incidentally, how come the porn spams are the ones we pick on first? Which is worse? Giving somebody material to jerk off to, or a means to possibly lose lots of money?:)
Mrreooow! Settle down, Beavis:) You can't expect to make an inflamatory comment about a product, mentioning no details or circumstances, and not get some nasty responses back. So, which "reliable name brand" were they, troll? Incidentally, I don't run Windoze much anymore for precisely the same reason you mention -- I want to get stuff done, which requires Real Software(tm):)
Okay, I know this message might fit the technical definition of "troll" given that it expresses an opinion without supporting it with any arguments, but how can this be labelled a troll when the opinion expressed matches those of most (yes, a generalization -- deal:) of the folks around here? Just a thought:)
My science might be way off here (okay, it probably is) but I was under the impression that during an atmospheric entry, one's communications are broken off. Particularly radio. I think they call it "ionization blackout." Now somehow I think being *WAAAAAY* off in space *and* trying to transmit through that reentry noise might be a bit tricky.
I followed this fairly closely when they first announced the beastie was ready to make its descent onto Mars' surface. I was also very bummed when I heard they didn't hear from it after that. Now it seems it's permanently silent (as far as we're concerned, anyway). Before we start slamming NASA for the failure, we should bear in mind how many successes they've had, both lately and throughout their history. Yes, a multi-million dollar machine went AWOL on us, but compared to the other failures (Apollo 13, Challenger), this one's *cheap*. Hopefully they just learn from their mistakes, find out what was wrong, stop it from happening again, and move on. Brush it off, guys, we know you're trying:)
Sorry, evolution is an idea, not a belief. Subtle difference. I don't believe in evolution -- that would imply some random force I can't control inside my mind makes me just "know" it's correct. Instead, I found this nifty switch in my head marked "On/Off" when I was much younger, and flipped it on. When that happened, and my mind pondered "god" versus evolution, well, evolution seemed to make at least a *little* more sense to me. And yes, I check frequently that the switch is left in the "On" position. Although it'd be nice to find a "More Magic" position.:)
<SARCASM> Perhaps it's just because "god" never loved me. </SARCASM> But it seems to me there's lots more convincing evidence supporting evolution than there is supporting "god." I will admit, though, that for me, the biggest hole in the evolution theory is that "survival of the fittest" bit -- if that's supposedly going on, where in the name of smeg did all these complete MORONS come from? No, I'm not addressing you, just pointing out that hair dryers must ship with labels insisting folks don't use them in the shower.
And yes, you're right, that evolution is a theory should be taught right alongside the concept that "god" is a theory too. The assorted religions of the world have had *far* too much access to children throughout human history. "God" presented as fact, with this fledgling idiot Darwin prancing around talking about fish all the time.
Don't even start on the "evolution has lots of plot holes" thread, because there's a veritable army of people out there with whole books describing the plot holes in your beloved bible.
I'd try to put a disclaimer here, but avoiding people's hatred, particularly when it comes to religious discussion, is impossible. I will go hide the broom before anyone spots it, though.:)
This sounds corny, but there's just a few little things that make a place worth living in:
Affordable housing - either affordable rent or non-sky-high prices on homes & land. Nasty property taxes don't help either.
Effective and inexpensive public transportation - Use buses, a lightrail, monorail, or a subway, but dammit just do something. Parking is a nightmare in most big cities, and if it were easier and not bank-breaking to get to/from work on a bus or train, then great!
Broadband - DSL, cable, cheap ISDN, satellite, whatever. Make sure geeks can keep away from 56k if they want to.
Good places to shop - Not too tough in a big city with good public transportation.
Decent entertainment - Again, easy with good public transit, but make sure there's movie theatres, clubs, video stores, etc. around.
I know it seems like I'm just pushing public transit, but, heh, well maybe I am. I can tell you it's *SO* much easier to park in a big lot a few miles away from work and ride a bus into downtown Denver... parking there is upwards of $10 a *DAY*. Geeks are probably very simple to amuse. We order stuff we want unless we spot it cheaper somewhere locally, don't get out *too* much, and when we do, we tend to do things that are fun but not too expensive. Just my $0.02:) That's sure what'd get *me* to move into The City(tm).:)
Slashdot Mirror
I imagine all this came about because people like Britney Spears insist on forcing their ample breasts into push-up bras, then get upset when they "accidentally" spill out when all the live cameras are focused on their racks? :)
Heh. This still won't help. It won't help until either a) there's no more hornballs left behind the lenses, or b) there's nothing left of interest to point cameras at :)
Please, feel free to moderate this down. I just thought I'd snicker about this rather useless technological idea.
I work for a small company. I've worked for larger companies as well. I have NOT seen the above in a tech company. I DO get this when I call AT&T or Sprint, but they still tend to know thier system better than I do (internal system). Good for you. Like I said in my (apparently flamebait) rant, you're one of the intelligent ones. Congratulations. Now how long is it going to be before you're sick of being "suckered into support?" *YOU* are fiercely proud of the good work you do (and you should be) but you STILL don't like it. Otherwise why would you describe yourself as being "suckered"? Now you also mentioned two weeks of training nets you people who can solve 50% of the calls you get. Adding knowledge of resolving IRQ conflicts adds 25% to that figure. Okay, great, now go *find* somebody with that kind of experience and knowledge (since other useful tidbits usually tag along) whose *also* willing to take the horrid pay usually offered by these help desk jobs. You seem to imply that I've never done the job. Welp, I have. I'm not bashing something I don't understand. I *know* the smaller companies *sometimes* get lucky and do things right, with the right people. Getting that magic combination to work is truly a black art. For the rest, well, I'd honestly rather not deal with "the support people." Trained monkeys are not my thing.
Well, why don't you get your smart ass on a helpdesk and you can set everyone straight.
Well, since you asked... Recording an attempt to trick a phone monkey into saying something in your favor is not going to get said phone monkey fired. Your post, however, indicates that you obviously represent the overwhelming majority of said phone monkeys out there. Having "done my time" as a phone monkey myself, I have this to say about the job and the people who fill it: Your statement, "Helpdesk is a shitkicker job" is spot-on accurate. It is without a doubt the single worst possible occupation in the computing industry. The people who work on the manufacturing lines are treated better.The people who typically field these positions as phone monkeys are true idiots. Completely and utterly. This sounds cruel, but before you don your trusty flamethrower, hear me out.
Almost ALL entry-level phone monkeys are obtained straight off the street with ZERO, that's right, ZERO training. They are shunted into a two-week training class and put on the phones. Guess what? These are the "quite smart" people you talk to when you make your phone call to tech support!
Anyone with any intelligence, skill, and/or experience gets promoted up out of first-tier support really fast, and plays phone monkey for more intelligent people for awhile. Anyone with a nominal amount of intelligence stays for six months (to put decent experience on a resume) and finds better paying, more fulfilling work somewhere outside the phone monkey (er, "customer service") industry.
Phone monkeys do not work hard. They sit at a desk all day and talk. They run through scripts. They listen to people whine and moan. Nobody is ever happy when they finally reach the phone monkey (do *you* ever call @home solely to thank them for their wonderful service?). If a phone monkey's scripts don't solve the customer's problem, they dip into their vast (watch out -- sarcasm warning!) wealth of personal experience and knowledge to try to solve the problem. If that veritable encyclopedia fails to solve the problem (roughly 20 seconds are wasted discovering that this *never* solves any problems) the phone monkey runs off immediately to ask a supervisor. The problem doesn't actually reach anyone with any intellect for ages, if ever.
That's not working harder, that's trying to survive in an absolutely shitty, horrid, miserable job that thanks you less than your children and spouse do.
Anyone who has ever been a phone monkey knows that it's one of the few worst types of jobs out there -- the kind that from the day you start, you're looking for something better. Without exception, the goal at each employee's top of the list is "find a better job."
Unskilled people are hired to do the work, and when they can't hack it, they find better jobs. When a skilled person is hired by accident, he immediately hates being surrounded by clueless dolts and also finds a better job. Turnover in phone monkey companies rarely exceeds 1 year. And *those* are the people who get promoted a bit, just to keep them around.
So how do these highly intelligent people behave on the job? Well, they do a few things:
- Stay in "ready" or "auto-in" as little as possible between calls, avoiding as many calls as possible
- During calls, hit the mute button to openly laugh and poke fun at clueless idiotic questions from users, exchanging jokes and insults with each other across the open-plan office floors, and whining about how many hours they've got left today.
- During calls when actually *listening* to the customer, you'll find the average phone monkey franticly tearing through shoddy, poorly-developed and even more poorly-filled knowledge bases looking for solutions (if they're not on the scripts already).
- An average phone monkey's cubicle or partition will usually be filled to the brim with clever little quips such as "I don't have an attitude problem, you have a perception problem," or "Lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part." You'll find these quips on crudely photocopied "lists of..." except in cubicles occupied by the skilled phone monkeys (who are too busy looking for a new job to be helpful on the phone) where you'll see neatly typed and freshly printed versions of the same lists.
- Frequent breaks are also taken, with and without permission from superiors. Statistics and performance metrics, which are promptly ignored then thrown away, are used only to separate the monkeys into two groups: those who will be promoted to jobs with more responsibilities but no more pay, and those who won't.
- Phone monkeys also frequently worry about being laid off, since hirings and firings tend to go in cycles, and almost never involve just one monkey.
Am I being harsh? Well, if honesty is harsh, then hell yes. I worked in the phone monkey industry for just under a year, plenty of time for me to realize how hard it sucked, and also plenty of time to line up a selection of better jobs before pouncing on one when the offers started coming in. Anyone who works as a phone monkey hates it. Anyone who leaves considers it "escape," not "I quit and found a real job." Being fired from a phone monkey job inspires more pride and confidence than being fired from a Taco Bell(tm) restaraunt (I'm *not* being sarcastic -- it's an honor to push the phone monkey machine hard enough to fire someone without a layoff going onYou read about stuff like this and suddenly realize your problems are really damned insignificant in the grand scheme of things. I don't believe I ever had the pleasure of chatting or working with Espa, but since Debian 2.2 is the distro that runs all my boxes, his work on 2.2 has had an impact on the systems I work with. I'm proud to have some of my work in Debian 2.2 (LCDproc v0.3.4). Thanks, Espa, for all your hard work, and farewell.
I thought it was Brian. *shrug* Oh well :)
I wouldn't call it a lack of compassion, really. Nor am I dodging the world's problems. I will admit feeling next to no desire to help out, because I know full well that if *I* were in need, I'd get a huge pile of nothing. I'm also not on either side of the issue in full. As my previous post should have demonstrated, I don't believe all people receiving handouts are abusing the privilege. Perhaps I've just known too many people who lacked the moral fibre to improve themselves instead of just living on public money, but it seems to me that just handing people steady cash or food every month isn't doing the trick. Slamming people who oppose doing so isn't going to help either.
Perhaps a discussion of how or why this story matters to more than 1% of Slashdot's readers would be a more interesting read than this crap. Well, I just got handed your crap, so how is this article any different? Just maybe, somebody's got different interests than you've got. Just a thought -- I've been wrong before.
...the most disgusting piece of crap ever... Hell, at least *they're* trying. No pleasing some people...
Really?!?! God, I've been soooo confused all these years!!! Yes, it looks that way. Why is it, then, that a sizable portion of the US population is food-insecure? For many of the same reasons that other, "poorer" countries are. People are incredibly stupid, lazy and manipulative. Yes, there are people out there who genuinely cannot work because of a physical or mental disability, and sure, these people could use a hand. They are in the minority, however, mixed in with a huge jungle of people who demand handouts in exchange for nothing. I might not have the perfect answer to your query -- but I can answer the inverse question: why am *I* food-secure? Why do I have food to eat? Because I fucking work. I do something that my employer considers valuable enough to pay me money, that I might exchange it for foodstuffs. An incredibly simple concept that seems to have blasted over your head... It's a real pisser that some children get born into absolutely horrid living conditions. I really do feel sorry for them. But hey, I have to eat, too. Natural selection's a real bitch, isn't it? There's countless solutions, but these people don't want to put forth any effort to implement a single one of them. > [more I-know-it-all, I-know-what-you're-thinking, you're-naïve drivel deleted] Quit your strawman arguments. Such as? I didn't see any strawman arguments. I read some rather intelligent counterpoints leveled squarely at your simplistic ideas. I also note that I don't see any intelligent arguments in *your* reply to the above. And by the way, one word about your subject line: "lame." Yup, mine too, but I had to get your attention somehow :P
I wish I could do that with RedHat. You should try Debian, then. You feed it a few (up to 5) disks and an ethernet port, and off you go. That includes PCMCIA support, as well.
The EMPEG is quite cool. It's as close as I've ever seen to the "perfect" MP3 player sitting in my brain. Since no one else can (hopefully) see into my brain, here's a brief description of my idea of the perfect MP3 player (this, btw, is the perfect car stereo MP3 player). When I bought my truck two years ago (Dodge Ram 1500, 1998), I purchased the six-speaker sound system and the best stereo to along with it. It's 1.5 DIN, has a CD player *and* a cassette deck, along with an AM/FM tuner. Before you get on me about buying (and praising) a "factory stereo," keep in mind a few things. First, I didn't have to install *squat*. It just appeared along with the truck when it was driven off the delivery truck :). Second, it still trounces most of these after-market stereos all the gang bangers seem to flock to. You could do three things to improve this deck: replace most of the controls (leaving only the round volume knob, which is digital but seems to "feel" better than a push-button volume control) with a touch-sensitive display (bigger than the display currently in the unit), add the ability to dig through CD-ROMs inserted into it searching for playable MPEG audio (while still playing audio CDs, naturally), and finally, stick some brains in. By brains I mean intelligent playlist handling, automatic AM/FM station searching, AM/FM station "killfiling" (there's some religious stations around and some annoying others that never play anything good that always show up while my deck searches for a tunable station), integration with the vehicle's headlights (dim the display or trigger some other behavior when they are turned on/off, etc.) I know, I know. "Build it yourself!" Okay. How? I know the EMPEG guys busted their butts to build the beast, and it's truly a remarkable device. I'm quite sure I don't have the technical skill to actually *build* the thing. I could certainly take a stab at building the UI though. I happen to dabble in LCD stuff anyways (look at my link above ;) and have always wanted an excuse to play with a touch-sensitive one. Speaking of, does anyone know where to find/buy touch-sensitive LCDs? Hopefully with a reasonable interface? (serial is ideal, or parallel, or even I2O)
Ugh. Forgot about that :) I could be crass and say "well everyone *important* has already seen it" but no number of smileys or layers asbestos underwear would save me from the ensuing flames :) And I don't believe that anyway :) That's totally my fault -- thinking like a true American(tm): "We're all that matters." My sincerest apologies. Still, does anyone worldwide seriously pay any heed to the Oscars?
Heh. Particularly since a movie gets a nomination or award from the Oscars *after* everyone's already seen it and decided whether it sucked or not, there's exactly zero use for them in my mind. I say let 'em rot. People seem to be finding less and less use for them as the years go on. So be it. Let them die in obscurity. I'm sure there's plenty of folks online who wouldn't mind banding together to form some high-prestige awards group :P ... hell, sign me up :)
Can't we read reviews in a million other places? Sure. I guess freedom of speech/press is okay just as long as it's something you want to read, eh? I don't recall Slashdot ever forcing *me* to read something I didn't want to read. The cool content is still here. What's "cool," however, is subjective. And guess what? It's not your site, now is it? Perhaps those who post to it get to decide what's cool here. Great. That's precisely how journalism is supposed to work. Don't agree with the Slashdot definition of "cool"? Find another site that better matches your needs, instead of whining about it here.
I, too, usually balk when I see the Compaq logo on a product. I must admit, though, the Armada 1700 kicks a good chunk of arse. Good battery life (6-8 hours on two batteries), CD-ROM was built in so it was still available even with two batteries in the machine, piece-of-cake X and sound setup, PCMCIA is easy, supports the framebuffer stuff, moderately fast (it's older stuff, P2-266 and up), big beautiful screen (14.1" I think :), flawless APM handling (suspend and hiberation worked perfectly, even *gasp* in 'doze in most cases ;), and a trackpad (matter of taste on that though). I didn't find it *too* ugly, either. There's that damned taste again. Mine have certainly never been used as a reference :)
I never liked Debian anyway. Okay. Now, would you care to justify this statement at all, with, oh any kind of experiences or evidence, or would you rather just let this bonehead statement stand on its own? I rather like Debian. To make my point, though, I'm not going to bother explaining why I like it. I just do. So there. I'm honestly starting to wonder why I still stick up for the ACs ... sure I think anonymity is important, but why is it that it's always used to shelter stupidity, unchecked emotion, and intentional baiting instead of being used to protect someone with a "dangerous," but still valid opinion or experience?
Alright, forgive me for feeding the trolls, but here we go. I'll paraphrase Louis Black (an amusing comedian): [Screws up face, shakes head violently] IDIOT! I'm sorry. I know name calling doesn't help a lot and only serves to piss people off, but it makes me feel better too. You, and every other anonymous pansy who insists on posting absolutely STUPID drivel like this without backing it up with even a single piece of real information, make me absolutely sick. I have one question: Has Slashdot ever actually deleted even one fucking post?!?!?! Have they? You stupid monkey, if something gets moderated down, for whatever reason (biased or not), you can still fucking read it if you're *that* desperate to read it, by lowering your damned threshold. Can you even begin to comprehend how the moderation system actually works?!?! If you don't want to trust the moderators' opinion, set your threshold to zero and shut up ! Have your precious trolls, flamebaits, and hotgrits posts. Or you could come out from behind your shelter of anonymity, register to get a real account, then *moderate* something of your own! *EVERY* Slashdot user here who's not too cowardly to use even a fake monicker is given the opportunity to moderate here. You seem to think it's only a small group of people. Perhaps it is -- perhaps it's the small group of people who are absolutely fucking sick of AC's such as yourself trolling for your own pathetic entertainment. Assface.
(Relax, I didn't take this as a flame :) And even if it did work, why should anyone have to take any action to prevent spam? What if I have kids (I don't), and I don't want them receiving "HOT BACKDOOR SLUTZ!!!" emails? Well, honestly, if you don't want them receiving that kind of thing in their e-mail, either supervise their internet usage, don't give them an e-mail account (or monitor it before letting them use it), or don't let them surf. This sort of bridges two issues here, but quite simply the easiest way to prevent this stuff from reaching supposedly "innocent eyes" is to stop them playing around on the internet in the first place. BTW, I wonder when people will finally realize that kids aren't the braindead sponges they appear to be -- "My kid will never see pornography! I monitor all his TV usage." Yeah, except when he's at his friend's house whose dad leaves the XXX tape rack out in the open by the VCR :) > complain to the uplink I'm not sure if you mean "mail server" or "ISP" by that. But, surprise, surprise, most SPAM is anonymous, and comes without valid headers showing who sent it. It sneaks in through open SMTP servers. I meant the ISP. I must say whenever I've complained about spam to a provider, I've gotten a response. Sometimes the response even includes notice of that account's cancellation. Even when your complaint doesn't nail an individual person or account, ISPs take notice. Hell, even when an open SMTP server allows relaying, if the ISP receives enough complaints (or sees unusually high traffic), they'll usually close the holes. If you don't complain at all, there's not even any chance that anything will be corrected. > Set up a junk account. But then to see your order status or any other mail you still need to visit the junk account. Nope, not at all. But by using a "junk" account for all your online transaction stuff, you reduce the crap that pours into your "normal" account. Y'know, the one you give friends & family & cohorts :) You just check the junk box occasionally (or more frequently when you've ordered something recently). Junkbusters does rock, both the site and the proxy. As far as the AT&T bit, write down the times & dates you've told them to piss off, and if they do it more than three times, go to small claims. Spend $70, a couple of hours, and come home with $500 plus your court costs. And a big ego :P Please don't take this as a flame in any way, I just don't think you've really tried the solutions you propose. Have too. Pthbtbtbtbtbt! (raspberry) :) Seriously, though, yes, I have done some of these. I report spammers frequently, get accounts closed, have a spare account that collects much of my junk (the best part is I recently closed it since I haven't ordered anything for awhile ... next time I order stuff I'll use the new one. Hehehehe. Bouncing spam. :), etc. I haven't had the pleasure of suing a telemarketer, but my folks have. That was fun to watch. Hehehehehe. LCDproc looks pretty damn cool, BTW. Hehehe thanks :)
- Blacklist known spammer sites. (Duh
:) - Opt-out or complain to the uplink. When a spam arrives from a "reputable" company like Caldera, raise one hell of a stink. If it's from some fly-by-night, whine and moan at the ISP until the account's yanked. Usually only takes once.
- Set up a junk account. Go to any of the free "can we please send you ads while you read your mail?" mail sites, like yahoo.com or netscape.com (or even the open-source free ones that thankfully don't toss ads as badly
:), and use *that* address whenever registering software or handing out e-mail addresses on sites.
The important thing to remember is these people are just as persistent as telemarketers. If you just bitch about their existence, they won't ever leave you alone. If you do something about them, they tend to leave you alone. Hanging up on a newspaper salesman (damn you, Rocky Mountain News!) tells his numebers-based machines that you just didn't want to talk to him right now, and that he should call back; maybe you'll be more receptive later, right? If you instead bark specific orders at them, like "put me on your do not call list, and never call me back," then taking legal action if they do it again, they learn real fast. I suppose it does suck that we can't really sue people for spamming us repeatedly. I think adding more laws would be a mistake, though. I don't want to get sued for sending a "hey how's it going?" message to someone I haven't heard from for a few weeks.Mrreooow! Settle down, Beavis :) You can't expect to make an inflamatory comment about a product, mentioning no details or circumstances, and not get some nasty responses back. So, which "reliable name brand" were they, troll? Incidentally, I don't run Windoze much anymore for precisely the same reason you mention -- I want to get stuff done, which requires Real Software(tm) :)
Okay, I know this message might fit the technical definition of "troll" given that it expresses an opinion without supporting it with any arguments, but how can this be labelled a troll when the opinion expressed matches those of most (yes, a generalization -- deal :) of the folks around here? Just a thought :)
My science might be way off here (okay, it probably is) but I was under the impression that during an atmospheric entry, one's communications are broken off. Particularly radio. I think they call it "ionization blackout." Now somehow I think being *WAAAAAY* off in space *and* trying to transmit through that reentry noise might be a bit tricky.
I followed this fairly closely when they first announced the beastie was ready to make its descent onto Mars' surface. I was also very bummed when I heard they didn't hear from it after that. Now it seems it's permanently silent (as far as we're concerned, anyway). Before we start slamming NASA for the failure, we should bear in mind how many successes they've had, both lately and throughout their history. Yes, a multi-million dollar machine went AWOL on us, but compared to the other failures (Apollo 13, Challenger), this one's *cheap*. Hopefully they just learn from their mistakes, find out what was wrong, stop it from happening again, and move on. Brush it off, guys, we know you're trying :)
Sorry, evolution is an idea, not a belief. Subtle difference. I don't believe in evolution -- that would imply some random force I can't control inside my mind makes me just "know" it's correct. Instead, I found this nifty switch in my head marked "On/Off" when I was much younger, and flipped it on. When that happened, and my mind pondered "god" versus evolution, well, evolution seemed to make at least a *little* more sense to me. And yes, I check frequently that the switch is left in the "On" position. Although it'd be nice to find a "More Magic" position. :)
<SARCASM> Perhaps it's just because "god" never loved me. </SARCASM> But it seems to me there's lots more convincing evidence supporting evolution than there is supporting "god." I will admit, though, that for me, the biggest hole in the evolution theory is that "survival of the fittest" bit -- if that's supposedly going on, where in the name of smeg did all these complete MORONS come from? No, I'm not addressing you, just pointing out that hair dryers must ship with labels insisting folks don't use them in the shower.
And yes, you're right, that evolution is a theory should be taught right alongside the concept that "god" is a theory too. The assorted religions of the world have had *far* too much access to children throughout human history. "God" presented as fact, with this fledgling idiot Darwin prancing around talking about fish all the time.
Don't even start on the "evolution has lots of plot holes" thread, because there's a veritable army of people out there with whole books describing the plot holes in your beloved bible.
I'd try to put a disclaimer here, but avoiding people's hatred, particularly when it comes to religious discussion, is impossible. I will go hide the broom before anyone spots it, though. :)
- Affordable housing - either affordable rent or non-sky-high prices on homes & land. Nasty property taxes don't help either.
- Effective and inexpensive public transportation - Use buses, a lightrail, monorail, or a subway, but dammit just do something. Parking is a nightmare in most big cities, and if it were easier and not bank-breaking to get to/from work on a bus or train, then great!
- Broadband - DSL, cable, cheap ISDN, satellite, whatever. Make sure geeks can keep away from 56k if they want to.
- Good places to shop - Not too tough in a big city with good public transportation.
- Decent entertainment - Again, easy with good public transit, but make sure there's movie theatres, clubs, video stores, etc. around.
I know it seems like I'm just pushing public transit, but, heh, well maybe I am. I can tell you it's *SO* much easier to park in a big lot a few miles away from work and ride a bus into downtown Denver