Not really. The technologies are the zombies and we're necromancers (since we toy with the dead). Finally I have something interesting to put on my resume.
Granted the software could be designed better but some people are going to be buying this product to protect the computer from their own silly actions - like when they decide to download that fun little app that puts a dancing monkey on the desktop but turns the system in to a spambot.
"So you want this car? Well it's only $20 000, but we need $10 000 per year to install locks, alarm systems and a device that will automatically lock the doors if you stop on a dark and lonely desert road and offer a lift to a hitcher carrying a mysterious chopped-up-human-shaped soggy bag."
In practice it tends to be the other way around, with bigger concerts being -more- expensive than small one
I definitely won't argue with you on that point. Seems that the entertainment business is immune to the idea of economies of scale - at least when it comes to the price of the product they're offering.
How you know that a person's death is God's will? Since you can never come to a conclusive answer for this it's probably best to allow mortals to make a decision and then if they are struck by lightning assume that the decision was a bad one.
Wow - that is a really selfish viewpoint in my opinion. What about your family and friends that have to watch, wait and fund these couple of years? Do you realize what kind of a toll having someone in the hospital like that takes on the people around them? I would never want to put my loved ones through that. I would much rather give them closure and allow them to get on with their lives.
Well put.
This raises the key question. Who is benefiting from a 'dead' person being kept alive indefinitely? I suspect it's the friends/relatives who just can't let go of that person rather than the poor sod on the breathing machine. It's like having a dead relative stuffed and placed in your living room so you can still feel close to them.
So did Steven Seagal in one of his films (the name escapes me). If I remember correctly he was in a coma for a good few years. Of course the only sign of this was a slightly long beard. Within a short while he was up and busting faces again.
How blind.. just because you dont use a gun doesnt mean you arent responsible for atrocities. The Aluminium Company of America sold aluminium to the Nazis during WW2 to build tanks and other weapons.
True, well done so far.
Many companies produce deadly waste that gets released into the environment.
Vague as hell - what on earth is 'Deadly Waste'? Water could be considered deadly waste since it's possible to drown in it. You ever thrown a battery in to the regular bin before or brought an old television or computer for disposal? Most companies are responsible regards their waste output. Some behave like arseholes but that's a minority like with people. Some people consider Farenheit 911 to be a ground-breaking documentary that exposes the truth that the people have the right to know. This doesn't mean that all people are gullible. Not all companies are Union Carbide.
How many people are injured or killed in factories making Nike footwear, or clothing for corporations each year, while being treated worse than animals, being paid as little as 20 cents per hour.
If Nike are eating their employees or using them for medical experiments that you are correct when you say that Nike treat their workers (or equal to) worse than animals.You're right though that Nike have a pretty bad track record when it comes to their overseas factories. Regards injuries in factories over the past year - no idea but probably a higher rate than you'd see in Western factories. Deaths - none as far as I can see.
Haliburton & other companies started a war for profit.
Corportations are bad because they like make money and they have these big buildings and they're all corporationy and they sell stuff etc.... Nah, just kidding. You got a source and who are these other companies? If you'd been born 20 years earlier you'd be blaming the CIA for running the world. If you were born 60 years ago you'd be blaming a secret society of Jewish bankers. Haliburton haven't started any wars as far as I'm aware, they just tend to profit from them.
Ambrosia are definitely one of the best small software houses. Freeverse are another good one. Burning Monkey Solitaire is an amazing time sink and Comic Life is pretty innovative.
Domain ID:D13225976-LRMS Domain Name:IRREPRESSIBLE.INFO Registrant Name:Mel Herdon Registrant Organization:Amnesty International UK Registrant Street1:17-25 New Inn Yard
Also, the IP address is owned by Soda Creative - the company mentioned on the site so I think it's safe enough to remove the foil hat and sign the pledge.
Also there's the governmental meddling to worry about when prices shoot up. Some governments get great ideas like "Hey, let's jack up the tax on oil from 30% to 80%" or they just nationalise the fields. Increasing revenues can lead to instability like we've seen in africa (local rebel groups demanding for a greater share of the proceeds) and the companies certainly don't benefit from trying to work in an unstable region.
No doubt small gigs are more fun. I saw The Breeders a few years back in a tiny venue in Dublin and it was one of the best gigs I've ever seen. The problem though is not all bands are able to do this.
regards the economics..
A bus costs more to run than a single car but economically it makes more sense than everyone driving their own cars on the same route each day. Same for bands. It's cheaper for Nine Inch Nails to run a single gig for 80,000 people than 100 gigs for 800. Granted some of the bigger gigs are a pain if they're organised as badly as Slane was a couple of years back. I think the organisers worked on the assumption that no-one would need to go to toilet that day.
I think mid-range gigs are the happy medium. Fleetwood Mac did a decent show a couple of years back up in Dublin where the numbers were pretty well worked out and you could move around, get a beer and use a toilet when you wanted to. Suppose they were probably having to bear in mind the ages of their fans though.
You mess with their illegal profits - they'll mess you up. It's as plain and simple as that. They're not even hiding it anymore.
Very true, I had a long running battle with a Russian spammer who was spamvertising umaxppc search sites on my site as well as thousands others. Thankfully they gave up in the end but it was frustrating that so little could be done to stop them. Everyone's Internet seemed happy to be hosting Russian spammer web sites that contained code that would spam blogs everytime a user running Internet Explorer visited them. I hope Vardan Kushnir won't be the last spammer to die in mysterious circumstances.
But Im all for Creative getting a little justice out of this. Apple is a computer company then they come along and act like they invented portable media.
I second that. I'm also pissed off that General Electric (a damn light bulb company) claims it makes decent jet engines. Wells Fargo piss me off as well. This upstart stage coach company thinks it can run banks. They'd be better off making sure that the stage arrives in Dodge on time this week. I 'aint going to be standing around waiting for hours again with all these gold nuggets in my bag.
Seriously though. If a company spreads itself too thin then that is a problem. The Chaebol of Korea are a good example. Surely a company can actually be good at something that they've not done before?
Back TO barter then IF we ABOLISH the concept OF a monetary SYSTEM?
DEBT is necessary AND you make IT sound LIKE a government is GOING to simply come along and take your posessions and land away for no good reason. In theory the Queen of England can negotiate foreign treaties without consulting the elected government. In practice though the Queen is unlikely to jump on a plane and sign a mutual defence agreement with Myanmar.
Regards certificates, I don't know if what you say is true about cars but I suspect it isn't. A car is property and surely subject to the same ownership laws as things like a television or a bag of skittles. Land is handled differently though and you have a point there. The government often retains ultimate ownership of the land with a title being given to the person who 'buys' the land
You sir are paranoid. Have you seen substantial evidence of what you describe happening and how do some many people survive and prosper with these odds stacked so heavily against them"
I got bored writing words periodically in capital letters so I stopped.
Not to mention the fact that you have less wiggle-room regards the cooling system in a laptop so you really should have children before you place that thing on your lap.
That's actually a clever idea. Would be cool if it checked as many components as it could. It would need to be disabled though id running from battery since it's likely to be keeping components more active than they should be.
Pretty much a case of saying that it's not the fall that kills you - it's the landing. The heat is a direct consequence of the increased voltage (taking in to account the current) which together determine the power (measured in Watts) and so the amount of heat generated.
At least that's what my rusty memory of studying electronics tells me, could be very very wrong though.
Yeah, it's a big move really to switch from one OS to another. If someone was asking me if they should buy a Mac, I'd have to know what they use their PC for and how much software they have. For some people I'd suspect it's almost as daunting as moving to a new area or country.
Yep, the people selling support are definitely the winners like you said. Whatever it is, someone's going to get paid for supporting it.
If people buy mac [sic] because they encounter issues in Windows they don't know how to resolve then surely the Mac user-base should be amazingly higher than it is now.
It's the nature of the beast. Level 1 support is entry level and so skill is going to vary depending on the product you're calling about. I've worked frontline consumer and frontline for professional server products and the training and pay varied greatly.
It really depends on the product being supported and the customers. I've worked in tech support for a long time and you have to work on the following principles when dealing with a customer-base with a varying level of expertise.
1) Start simple. Explain concepts using non-technical words and provide detailed instructions. If the customer demonstrates some technical skill then adjust to their level. It's fairly simple to quickly determine someone's skill with a few questions. If it's done well, the caller doesn't realise they're being tested.
2) Don't assume the obvious. No-matter how experienced someone is, they are prone to making silly mistakes. The trick is to disguise the questions so they don't seem patronising. If you just ask someone if they've plugged it in, some people will take offence or become embarassed if they did indeed forget to plug it in. Ask them to disconnect the cable and reconnect it. Assumption is the mother of all fuck-ups and I've seen too many cases at level 2 and higher where the obvious was missed because the caller claimed they had already carried out a step. of course, in cases like that the caller will blame the tech support guy, not themselves for missing the obvious.
The front-line guy in most cases isn't a moron and does speak English. What you're describing is an incredible generalisation or you've been dealing with companies that just don't take support seriously.
$50 dollars an hour for support is either incredibly excessive or very cheap depending on the type of product. It's the difference between buying an iPod clone or a Magnox nuclear reactor.
My name is William Hepburn Russell. I have just written up a pony express tracing program that traces everyone to whom this message is forwarded to. I am experimenting with this and I need your help. Forward this to everyone you know and if it reaches 1000 people everyone on the list will receive $10 at my expense. Enjoy.
Slashdot Mirror
Not really. The technologies are the zombies and we're necromancers (since we toy with the dead). Finally I have something interesting to put on my resume.
Granted the software could be designed better but some people are going to be buying this product to protect the computer from their own silly actions - like when they decide to download that fun little app that puts a dancing monkey on the desktop but turns the system in to a spambot.
"So you want this car? Well it's only $20 000, but we need $10 000 per year to install locks, alarm systems and a device that will automatically lock the doors if you stop on a dark and lonely desert road and offer a lift to a hitcher carrying a mysterious chopped-up-human-shaped soggy bag."
In practice it tends to be the other way around, with bigger concerts being -more- expensive than small one
I definitely won't argue with you on that point. Seems that the entertainment business is immune to the idea of economies of scale - at least when it comes to the price of the product they're offering.
How you know that a person's death is God's will? Since you can never come to a conclusive answer for this it's probably best to allow mortals to make a decision and then if they are struck by lightning assume that the decision was a bad one.
Wow - that is a really selfish viewpoint in my opinion. What about your family and friends that have to watch, wait and fund these couple of years? Do you realize what kind of a toll having someone in the hospital like that takes on the people around them? I would never want to put my loved ones through that. I would much rather give them closure and allow them to get on with their lives.
Well put.
This raises the key question. Who is benefiting from a 'dead' person being kept alive indefinitely? I suspect it's the friends/relatives who just can't let go of that person rather than the poor sod on the breathing machine. It's like having a dead relative stuffed and placed in your living room so you can still feel close to them.
It could be worse, they could be a sociology student.
So did Steven Seagal in one of his films (the name escapes me). If I remember correctly he was in a coma for a good few years. Of course the only sign of this was a slightly long beard. Within a short while he was up and busting faces again.
How blind.. just because you dont use a gun doesnt mean you arent responsible for atrocities.
The Aluminium Company of America sold aluminium to the Nazis during WW2 to build tanks and other weapons.
True, well done so far.
Many companies produce deadly waste that gets released into the environment.
Vague as hell - what on earth is 'Deadly Waste'? Water could be considered deadly waste since it's possible to drown in it. You ever thrown a battery in to the regular bin before or brought an old television or computer for disposal? Most companies are responsible regards their waste output. Some behave like arseholes but that's a minority like with people. Some people consider Farenheit 911 to be a ground-breaking documentary that exposes the truth that the people have the right to know. This doesn't mean that all people are gullible. Not all companies are Union Carbide.
How many people are injured or killed in factories making Nike footwear, or clothing for corporations each year, while being treated worse than animals, being paid as little as 20 cents per hour.
If Nike are eating their employees or using them for medical experiments that you are correct when you say that Nike treat their workers (or equal to) worse than animals.You're right though that Nike have a pretty bad track record when it comes to their overseas factories. Regards injuries in factories over the past year - no idea but probably a higher rate than you'd see in Western factories. Deaths - none as far as I can see.
Haliburton & other companies started a war for profit.
Corportations are bad because they like make money and they have these big buildings and they're all corporationy and they sell stuff etc.... Nah, just kidding. You got a source and who are these other companies? If you'd been born 20 years earlier you'd be blaming the CIA for running the world. If you were born 60 years ago you'd be blaming a secret society of Jewish bankers. Haliburton haven't started any wars as far as I'm aware, they just tend to profit from them.
Give us Europeans the credit we deserve. We're just as capable of being jerks. We just have smaller cars, fewer missles and better beer.
Ambrosia are definitely one of the best small software houses. Freeverse are another good one. Burning Monkey Solitaire is an amazing time sink and Comic Life is pretty innovative.
The whois record for the site seems legit.
Domain ID:D13225976-LRMS
Domain Name:IRREPRESSIBLE.INFO
Registrant Name:Mel Herdon
Registrant Organization:Amnesty International UK
Registrant Street1:17-25 New Inn Yard
Also, the IP address is owned by Soda Creative - the company mentioned on the site so I think it's safe enough to remove the foil hat and sign the pledge.
Also there's the governmental meddling to worry about when prices shoot up. Some governments get great ideas like "Hey, let's jack up the tax on oil from 30% to 80%" or they just nationalise the fields. Increasing revenues can lead to instability like we've seen in africa (local rebel groups demanding for a greater share of the proceeds) and the companies certainly don't benefit from trying to work in an unstable region.
No doubt small gigs are more fun. I saw The Breeders a few years back in a tiny venue in Dublin and it was one of the best gigs I've ever seen. The problem though is not all bands are able to do this.
regards the economics..
A bus costs more to run than a single car but economically it makes more sense than everyone driving their own cars on the same route each day. Same for bands. It's cheaper for Nine Inch Nails to run a single gig for 80,000 people than 100 gigs for 800. Granted some of the bigger gigs are a pain if they're organised as badly as Slane was a couple of years back. I think the organisers worked on the assumption that no-one would need to go to toilet that day.
I think mid-range gigs are the happy medium. Fleetwood Mac did a decent show a couple of years back up in Dublin where the numbers were pretty well worked out and you could move around, get a beer and use a toilet when you wanted to. Suppose they were probably having to bear in mind the ages of their fans though.
You mess with their illegal profits - they'll mess you up. It's as plain and simple as that. They're not even hiding it anymore.
Very true, I had a long running battle with a Russian spammer who was spamvertising umaxppc search sites on my site as well as thousands others. Thankfully they gave up in the end but it was frustrating that so little could be done to stop them. Everyone's Internet seemed happy to be hosting Russian spammer web sites that contained code that would spam blogs everytime a user running Internet Explorer visited them. I hope Vardan Kushnir won't be the last spammer to die in mysterious circumstances.
But Im all for Creative getting a little justice out of this. Apple is a computer company then they come along and act like they invented portable media.
I second that. I'm also pissed off that General Electric (a damn light bulb company) claims it makes decent jet engines. Wells Fargo piss me off as well. This upstart stage coach company thinks it can run banks. They'd be better off making sure that the stage arrives in Dodge on time this week. I 'aint going to be standing around waiting for hours again with all these gold nuggets in my bag.
Seriously though. If a company spreads itself too thin then that is a problem. The Chaebol of Korea are a good example. Surely a company can actually be good at something that they've not done before?
Back TO barter then IF we ABOLISH the concept OF a monetary SYSTEM?
DEBT is necessary AND you make IT sound LIKE a government is GOING to simply come along and take your posessions and land away for no good reason. In theory the Queen of England can negotiate foreign treaties without consulting the elected government. In practice though the Queen is unlikely to jump on a plane and sign a mutual defence agreement with Myanmar.
Regards certificates, I don't know if what you say is true about cars but I suspect it isn't. A car is property and surely subject to the same ownership laws as things like a television or a bag of skittles. Land is handled differently though and you have a point there. The government often retains ultimate ownership of the land with a title being given to the person who 'buys' the land
You sir are paranoid. Have you seen substantial evidence of what you describe happening and how do some many people survive and prosper with these odds stacked so heavily against them"
I got bored writing words periodically in capital letters so I stopped.
Not to mention the fact that you have less wiggle-room regards the cooling system in a laptop so you really should have children before you place that thing on your lap.
That's actually a clever idea. Would be cool if it checked as many components as it could. It would need to be disabled though id running from battery since it's likely to be keeping components more active than they should be.
Pretty much a case of saying that it's not the fall that kills you - it's the landing. The heat is a direct consequence of the increased voltage (taking in to account the current) which together determine the power (measured in Watts) and so the amount of heat generated.
At least that's what my rusty memory of studying electronics tells me, could be very very wrong though.
Yeah, it's a big move really to switch from one OS to another. If someone was asking me if they should buy a Mac, I'd have to know what they use their PC for and how much software they have. For some people I'd suspect it's almost as daunting as moving to a new area or country.
Yep, the people selling support are definitely the winners like you said. Whatever it is, someone's going to get paid for supporting it.
Thirded. I'm not a big fan of vi but I still have it on my PowerBook and I'm proud to run it oocasionally. Death to the anti-vi'ers.
If people buy mac [sic] because they encounter issues in Windows they don't know how to resolve then surely the Mac user-base should be amazingly higher than it is now.
It's the nature of the beast. Level 1 support is entry level and so skill is going to vary depending on the product you're calling about. I've worked frontline consumer and frontline for professional server products and the training and pay varied greatly.
It really depends on the product being supported and the customers. I've worked in tech support for a long time and you have to work on the following principles when dealing with a customer-base with a varying level of expertise.
1) Start simple. Explain concepts using non-technical words and provide detailed instructions. If the customer demonstrates some technical skill then adjust to their level. It's fairly simple to quickly determine someone's skill with a few questions. If it's done well, the caller doesn't realise they're being tested.
2) Don't assume the obvious. No-matter how experienced someone is, they are prone to making silly mistakes. The trick is to disguise the questions so they don't seem patronising. If you just ask someone if they've plugged it in, some people will take offence or become embarassed if they did indeed forget to plug it in. Ask them to disconnect the cable and reconnect it. Assumption is the mother of all fuck-ups and I've seen too many cases at level 2 and higher where the obvious was missed because the caller claimed they had already carried out a step. of course, in cases like that the caller will blame the tech support guy, not themselves for missing the obvious.
The front-line guy in most cases isn't a moron and does speak English. What you're describing is an incredible generalisation or you've been dealing with companies that just don't take support seriously.
$50 dollars an hour for support is either incredibly excessive or very cheap depending on the type of product. It's the difference between buying an iPod clone or a Magnox nuclear reactor.
I thought I'd seen that somewhere before..
Hello everybody,
My name is William Hepburn Russell. I have just written up a pony express tracing program that traces everyone to whom this message is forwarded to. I am experimenting with this and I need your help. Forward this to everyone you know and if it reaches 1000 people everyone on the list will receive $10 at my expense. Enjoy.
Your friend,
William Hepburn Russell
Sir, you have earned the right to be called 'The Voice of Reason(tm)'.