I have found when dealing with internet inquiries from a broad cross section of the population, ability to understand the Internet has nothing to do with age, sex or background.
The sad fact is, some people *get* it, some people don't, and never will. I have had 60 year old housewives who've never touched a computer before pick up the concepts and understanding required extremely quickly after just giving them a little nudge in the right direction. Conversely, I have had young, up and coming businessmen who will never understand what is required of them even if I repeat it over and over.
That said, Literacy plays a large part in getting around on a PC and using the Internet. I find a lot of people who won't read out what is on the screen because they don't know the long unfamiliar words...
I'm with another poster on the idea that people should have to pass a test first. Half the people who buy Internet from my company don't even know what the internet *is*
My Employer, a large national Cable ISP in Britain routinely suspends service to customers due to nasties on the unsuspecting users PC. Our infrastructure runs daily scripts that scan for open mail proxies and other suspicious ports that may be open. It's just part of the normal security process.
However it never used to be, this aggressive step of securing our network was prompted by the ISP being threatened with a Usenet Death Penalty, twice.
Whether this BigPond story is any different (Because it deals with Trojans rather than mail relays) is another matter...
Mplayerplug-in will play imbedded movies in Mozilla and Firefox, using Mplayer as the back end... So as long as you have the win32 codecs from the Mplayer site, you will be able to view everything with that.
Because, either you have to find a theme that has the colour and widget styles you want, *or* fire up a text editor and learn the gtkrc syntax to change the widget colours... Editing flat text files is all very well, but dialogues are just more accessible and convenient.
I personally use a lot of GTK apps (X-Chat, Pan, Firefox, Abiword, Inkscape etc...) under KDE as I find a lot of them are preferable to the KDE selections, but as to configuring the actual environment, I find the flexibility and accessibility of the configuration to be more to my taste. But of course, I like to tweak and twiddle my desktop on a monthly basis.
I do now solemnly decree that Microsoft patches shall no longer be described as 'fixes' but shall hereafter be known as 'breaks'
As a first line peon for a large ISP, I have to deal with legions of clueless newbies on a daily basis. Tonight, I happily helped a person re-install their modem drivers, only for the PC to get Sasser five seconds after he got online.
I have recently come to realise that one of the problems with Linux, and one of the reasons why most ISP's won't support it over the phone is because of a lack of standardised configuration tools.
I am hoping that this Open Sourcing of YaST will mean that other distros will begin including it as a configuration interface, making it a whole lot easier to support.
I am aware that almost every distro has it's own friendly GUI tools for config, but what we need is a standard tool across all distros, so that companies that offer support over the phone can easily train first-liners on how to support customers running Linux.
In any event, this may allow me to actually use some CSS 2, a standard that was published in May 1998 (almost 6 years ago!) and still isn't (fully) supported by the leading browser in the world...
I would prefer that you used the phrase 'most common' rather than leading. IE leads in no field of browser technology, unless you count the prolific distribution of malware and porn diallers as a 'feature'
'Swounds, 'tis the chance of mine life. Now I may face Sir Bill on the field of tourneyment! Long have I dream'd of his bespectacled visage at the end of mine lance!
Mine blood runneth hot! To battle! I shall not rest till he lieth broken upon the field, shriven of his armour.
I happen to do phone support for idiot users, and seem to have no trouble getting into luser mode anymore, you just have to start the call with the assumption that the user hasn't got a clue.
Also after a few months of fixing the same problems over and over, you know exactly the steps to take, and if you forget where you are, just ask the user to read out what he can see.
It can be frustrating at times, but I get a kick out of the relieved and happy voice on the end of the phone after I've solved the problem.
Admittedly, you can only do so much over the phone, and a lot of problems users call up with require redirection to another support service.
In our company (A large broadband ISP) we have a rigid support scope that means we only deal with things that are our responsibility. No firewall issues, no virus removal and no reghacks.
The job gets quite easy after a few weeks, but the main drag is that you are solving the same problems over and over again, like a stuck record.
After a few more months in my current role, I'm going to see if there are any openings in Internal support.
Slashdot Mirror
One of my customers got this tonight.I wonder what it is...
It is the customer's prime motivator to get something for nothing, It is our duty, as representatives of a *business* to make sure they don't.
I have found when dealing with internet inquiries from a broad cross section of the population, ability to understand the Internet has nothing to do with age, sex or background.
The sad fact is, some people *get* it, some people don't, and never will. I have had 60 year old housewives who've never touched a computer before pick up the concepts and understanding required extremely quickly after just giving them a little nudge in the right direction. Conversely, I have had young, up and coming businessmen who will never understand what is required of them even if I repeat it over and over.
That said, Literacy plays a large part in getting around on a PC and using the Internet. I find a lot of people who won't read out what is on the screen because they don't know the long unfamiliar words...
I'm with another poster on the idea that people should have to pass a test first. Half the people who buy Internet from my company don't even know what the internet *is*
Panasonic Toughbook, built like a tank, weighs like a tank...
up up down down left right left right B A select (I have a brother) start!
It's the cheat code for Sonic the Hedgehog, If I recall.
I for one welcome our invisible pink elephant overlords!
That's why my series of tubes are blocked, and it takes up to four days to get my internets down onto my windows!
I sure hope that my truck full of internets arrives soon...
My Employer, a large national Cable ISP in Britain routinely suspends service to customers due to nasties on the unsuspecting users PC. Our infrastructure runs daily scripts that scan for open mail proxies and other suspicious ports that may be open. It's just part of the normal security process.
However it never used to be, this aggressive step of securing our network was prompted by the ISP being threatened with a Usenet Death Penalty, twice.
Whether this BigPond story is any different (Because it deals with Trojans rather than mail relays) is another matter...
Nothing gets my hackles up more than the intentional mis-spelling of Pack.
But of course, I am a spelling nazi
And we all know how that one ends...
Give me kcontrol any day.
"My lord, the clicky buttons!" *click* *click*
Mplayerplug-in will play imbedded movies in Mozilla and Firefox, using Mplayer as the back end... So as long as you have the win32 codecs from the Mplayer site, you will be able to view everything with that.
Because, either you have to find a theme that has the colour and widget styles you want, *or* fire up a text editor and learn the gtkrc syntax to change the widget colours... Editing flat text files is all very well, but dialogues are just more accessible and convenient.
I personally use a lot of GTK apps (X-Chat, Pan, Firefox, Abiword, Inkscape etc...) under KDE as I find a lot of them are preferable to the KDE selections, but as to configuring the actual environment, I find the flexibility and accessibility of the configuration to be more to my taste. But of course, I like to tweak and twiddle my desktop on a monthly basis.
Please, take your cat to the vet. That is not normal behaviour
Personally, I was expecting a yellowing parchment look for RoTK, similar to the Indiana Jones boxed set.
If I can't connect it through Cat-5 UTP, It's not worth the trouble.
USB is the evil.
I do now solemnly decree that Microsoft patches shall no longer be described as 'fixes' but shall hereafter be known as 'breaks'
As a first line peon for a large ISP, I have to deal with legions of clueless newbies on a daily basis. Tonight, I happily helped a person re-install their modem drivers, only for the PC to get Sasser five seconds after he got online.
I love my job, can't you tell...
I have recently come to realise that one of the problems with Linux, and one of the reasons why most ISP's won't support it over the phone is because of a lack of standardised configuration tools.
I am hoping that this Open Sourcing of YaST will mean that other distros will begin including it as a configuration interface, making it a whole lot easier to support.
I am aware that almost every distro has it's own friendly GUI tools for config, but what we need is a standard tool across all distros, so that companies that offer support over the phone can easily train first-liners on how to support customers running Linux.
I would prefer that you used the phrase 'most common' rather than leading. IE leads in no field of browser technology, unless you count the prolific distribution of malware and porn diallers as a 'feature'
'Swounds, 'tis the chance of mine life. Now I may face Sir Bill on the field of tourneyment! Long have I dream'd of his bespectacled visage at the end of mine lance!
Mine blood runneth hot! To battle! I shall not rest till he lieth broken upon the field, shriven of his armour.
Come squire, my lance.
IIRC... The 'Spirit' rover runs VxWorks.
Why is it that you do not know this? mmm?
The No McBride's club you mean...
Which excludes Darl's 'I *am* a Lawyer, Honest!' brother as well.
Thankfully, one of my eagerly awaited games from Amazon came pre-scratched. I didn't have to lift a finger to make my CD unusable...
Hail to the digital age!
I happen to do phone support for idiot users, and seem to have no trouble getting into luser mode anymore, you just have to start the call with the assumption that the user hasn't got a clue.
Also after a few months of fixing the same problems over and over, you know exactly the steps to take, and if you forget where you are, just ask the user to read out what he can see.
It can be frustrating at times, but I get a kick out of the relieved and happy voice on the end of the phone after I've solved the problem.
Admittedly, you can only do so much over the phone, and a lot of problems users call up with require redirection to another support service.
In our company (A large broadband ISP) we have a rigid support scope that means we only deal with things that are our responsibility. No firewall issues, no virus removal and no reghacks.
The job gets quite easy after a few weeks, but the main drag is that you are solving the same problems over and over again, like a stuck record.
After a few more months in my current role, I'm going to see if there are any openings in Internal support.
Hell, I wouldn't even put IIS on a webserver...
I did however hear a rumour that IIS is bundled with every installation of Win 2003 Server and is an activated service by default.