You had mediocre parents and have had the good fortune (thus far) to be in complete control of your stuff. Not everyone (e.g. Greensboro KS, Louisiana, and various random people who've been burgled or robbed) is so lucky.
Having/maintaning good backups is part of "taking care of your stuff." Please provide a method on how to backup my TV, my couch, my oven, etc, so when I'm robbed I'm good to go. Oh wait, that's right, it's called home owner's insurance, which applies to everything you own (as long as you chose to cover it). When my wife's apartment burned down I had my PS2 games back within a week. Backups are for irreplaceable information, not material goods.
So have the companies include two copies of the game. When the 'original' is inserted, it registers somewhere in the system that the disk was inserted, and indeed is authentic. When you lose/break/scratch the 'original', insert the backup. The system sees it's the backup disk, and verifies that the original was at one time played on the system. There's probably some online component to that verification as well.
But which is cheaper: including a second disk with every unit shipped, or just mailing out replacement disks for people who send in their broken disks? I would guess the latter, and from what I remember reading here some/most companies already do this.
nameofthehelpdesk@universitydomain.edu. Everyone at the help desk had access to it. When you pulled up a specific email to answer, you'd flag it so others knew you were answering it. The only times emails went unanswered was when we were closed (midnight to 7:30am).
Keep in mind this was level 1 tech support. Customers rarely emailed specific help desk employees for help. Any major issues that required the server admin, network admin, building tech, etc were usually called in and assigned a ticket. If they were out sick this was posted, and immediate issues were forwarded to the secondary contact for that group.
I can't imagine _any_ tech support job going through e-mail It's not as bad as one would think. It actually works pretty well, assuming the person isn't having connection issues.
I did tech support at the university I went to, and users had the option of emailing, calling, or stopping at a walk up help desk. A lot of the emails were something like "How do I do some function in Word / PowerPoint / IE / etc", or "How do I set up my Wifi". We had most of those procedures written up already, so we'd just copy/paste and modify as necessary. Instead of sitting on the phone for 15 to 30 minutes walking the person through it, we spent 2 minutes on the email, another minute on the ticket, and it was done. A lot of times we could answer emails while we were on the phone waiting for the users computer to reboot, so it was even more of a time saver.
Emails that we received where we couldn't help the person without seeing their computer had the problem written up into a ticket which the person referenced when they did call/stop up. The help desk person knew what the problem was, and whoever wrote the ticket up could add in their opinion for what probably needed to be done.
I can't imagine not having an email option for tech support. For many things it's just so much easier.
it's very hard to get the PS2 online at all I don't know about the new PS2s, but the old PS2 just required you buy the ethernet card (~$30), plug it in, and run the setup disk. It took maybe 5 minutes to set up and get online.
Slashdot looks just fine on my 8525, IE Mobile seems to do a good job with it anyway. See here. The crappy trial screenshot program blew it up so it looks nice and jaggy, but on the device the page looks fine to me. That's under "One Column" format btw.
I obviously don't know your data usage, but 200MB isn't really a whole lot if you really plan on using your phone as more than a phone. I consistently hit 400MB+ a month with just email, web browsing, live search/google maps, the occasional small download, etc. If I had 3G coverage where I lived I'm sure that number would at least double. That said, I'd still pay the extra $ for the N95 with unlimited data.
Ok, let me restate that then. The purpose of the really nice electronics store is to get customers in so they'll spend more money, fulfilling the corporations purpose of making money. The purpose of the really nice church is to get more people in, therefore fulfilling their purpose by spreading whatever gospel that church is preaching to more and more people. In both cases both entities spent more $ up front to bring more people in. That cost will be made up by increased sales/membership. One of them is there to make a profit in the end, and the other isn't (in theory).
This could go on and on, so I'll make just one more analogy. It's like a freakin' bake sale. You have all your baked goods sitting out, but if no one knows about it, you won't ever sell a single cookie. So you have to spend money on some banners, advertisements, and a nice sign to go over your cookie stand. Is this stuff needed to actually sell your cookies? No, but it's needed to draw people in. So is holding a bake sale to buy some microscopes for your classroom suddenly eevvviiiilll corporate tactics just because you spent a few bucks getting people to stop by?
I've always wondered how corporations like that can rationalize spending money on a 20ft water fountain when that money could be applied to more useful pursuits such as improving R&D. Every time I drive past a corporation that is building a new multi-million dollar extension with fine architecture on expensive land I wonder the same thing. Why not use that money to keep their best engineers onboard or increase employee benefits or have a pizza party?
If you sit back and think of the dollars tied up in corporate infrastructure, it is absolutely astounding. Ask yourself, if you combine the equity of all property within a 2 mile radius of your house, how much do you get? I know for me, I would estimate it at around 2 million...
I guess my first mistake was wondering how corporations can _rationalize_ anything... Give that a read, maybe that'll clear some stuff up. I'm not trying to equate religious institutes to corporations, but look at it like a potential customer would for a business.
Imagine you're standing outside two electronics stores. One store has an extremely nice, well designed exterior. Inside you know they've got free water, good music playing, an easy layout to navigate, etc. The other store has cardboard patches on the windows, has inventory just laying around, has a window fan with no A/C running, etc. Both stores have the same product at the same price. Which store do you enter? Same thing for a church. Give a few niceties to potential members, and they'll stick around to make their weekly donations.
I guess I don't see the big deal about this...growing up in the late 80s/early 90s, every Wednesday night we brought in our Nintendos/Segas to church to play video games with other kids. They supplied pizza, soda, a couple TVs, and a good time was had by all.
Granted stomping on turtles and shooting ducks might have been a little tamer than Halo, but it's still the same concept.
I suppose I shouldn't be making suggestions towards a good Scotch, having only tried a handful of them myself. Thanks for the correction (and suggestions!)
You've obviously never been to any sort of alcoholic beverage tasting before. Amazingly, some people actually enjoy the taste of good whiskies, wines, etc. I'd recommend a bottle of Oban for starters.
A while back the Everquest EULA was modified to read that SOE was able to dig through your processes to see if you're running any programs that were hooking into the client (back then it was mainly for ShowEQ). It was not well received (a whole lot of complaining on the forums, subscriptions canceled, etc), and that part of the license, as well as their process identifying program, got removed.
People can and have stood up to overly infringing EULAs, but it doesn't happen too often.
I should have said "grew up in EC", but I'll have to remember to check it out next time I'm home. My neighbor worked there for quite a while before getting laid off, which is probably why I thought it closed.
Hit the Leinie's brewery tour while you're there. That's about the only good reason to visit Chippewa Falls, isn't it?;)
Slashdot Mirror
Wine + Cinemax on-demand. You might want to watch a few episodes of MST3K as a precursor, it helps with the riffing.
Having/maintaning good backups is part of "taking care of your stuff." Please provide a method on how to backup my TV, my couch, my oven, etc, so when I'm robbed I'm good to go. Oh wait, that's right, it's called home owner's insurance, which applies to everything you own (as long as you chose to cover it). When my wife's apartment burned down I had my PS2 games back within a week. Backups are for irreplaceable information, not material goods.
So have the companies include two copies of the game. When the 'original' is inserted, it registers somewhere in the system that the disk was inserted, and indeed is authentic. When you lose/break/scratch the 'original', insert the backup. The system sees it's the backup disk, and verifies that the original was at one time played on the system. There's probably some online component to that verification as well.
But which is cheaper: including a second disk with every unit shipped, or just mailing out replacement disks for people who send in their broken disks? I would guess the latter, and from what I remember reading here some/most companies already do this.
nameofthehelpdesk@universitydomain.edu. Everyone at the help desk had access to it. When you pulled up a specific email to answer, you'd flag it so others knew you were answering it. The only times emails went unanswered was when we were closed (midnight to 7:30am).
Keep in mind this was level 1 tech support. Customers rarely emailed specific help desk employees for help. Any major issues that required the server admin, network admin, building tech, etc were usually called in and assigned a ticket. If they were out sick this was posted, and immediate issues were forwarded to the secondary contact for that group.
I did tech support at the university I went to, and users had the option of emailing, calling, or stopping at a walk up help desk. A lot of the emails were something like "How do I do some function in Word / PowerPoint / IE / etc", or "How do I set up my Wifi". We had most of those procedures written up already, so we'd just copy/paste and modify as necessary. Instead of sitting on the phone for 15 to 30 minutes walking the person through it, we spent 2 minutes on the email, another minute on the ticket, and it was done. A lot of times we could answer emails while we were on the phone waiting for the users computer to reboot, so it was even more of a time saver.
Emails that we received where we couldn't help the person without seeing their computer had the problem written up into a ticket which the person referenced when they did call/stop up. The help desk person knew what the problem was, and whoever wrote the ticket up could add in their opinion for what probably needed to be done.
I can't imagine not having an email option for tech support. For many things it's just so much easier.
Slashdot looks just fine on my 8525, IE Mobile seems to do a good job with it anyway. See here. The crappy trial screenshot program blew it up so it looks nice and jaggy, but on the device the page looks fine to me. That's under "One Column" format btw.
Replace Gecko with the Linux kernel and Firefox/Seamonkey/Mozilla with Redhat/Ubuntu/Slackware.
Back end --> Front end. Where's the confusion here?
You guys realize this was posted to idle, right?
I obviously don't know your data usage, but 200MB isn't really a whole lot if you really plan on using your phone as more than a phone. I consistently hit 400MB+ a month with just email, web browsing, live search/google maps, the occasional small download, etc. If I had 3G coverage where I lived I'm sure that number would at least double. That said, I'd still pay the extra $ for the N95 with unlimited data.
Those be private networks
Ok, let me restate that then. The purpose of the really nice electronics store is to get customers in so they'll spend more money, fulfilling the corporations purpose of making money. The purpose of the really nice church is to get more people in, therefore fulfilling their purpose by spreading whatever gospel that church is preaching to more and more people. In both cases both entities spent more $ up front to bring more people in. That cost will be made up by increased sales/membership. One of them is there to make a profit in the end, and the other isn't (in theory).
This could go on and on, so I'll make just one more analogy. It's like a freakin' bake sale. You have all your baked goods sitting out, but if no one knows about it, you won't ever sell a single cookie. So you have to spend money on some banners, advertisements, and a nice sign to go over your cookie stand. Is this stuff needed to actually sell your cookies? No, but it's needed to draw people in. So is holding a bake sale to buy some microscopes for your classroom suddenly eevvviiiilll corporate tactics just because you spent a few bucks getting people to stop by?
If you sit back and think of the dollars tied up in corporate infrastructure, it is absolutely astounding. Ask yourself, if you combine the equity of all property within a 2 mile radius of your house, how much do you get? I know for me, I would estimate it at around 2 million...
I guess my first mistake was wondering how corporations can _rationalize_ anything... Give that a read, maybe that'll clear some stuff up. I'm not trying to equate religious institutes to corporations, but look at it like a potential customer would for a business.
Imagine you're standing outside two electronics stores. One store has an extremely nice, well designed exterior. Inside you know they've got free water, good music playing, an easy layout to navigate, etc. The other store has cardboard patches on the windows, has inventory just laying around, has a window fan with no A/C running, etc. Both stores have the same product at the same price. Which store do you enter? Same thing for a church. Give a few niceties to potential members, and they'll stick around to make their weekly donations.
I guess I don't see the big deal about this...growing up in the late 80s/early 90s, every Wednesday night we brought in our Nintendos/Segas to church to play video games with other kids. They supplied pizza, soda, a couple TVs, and a good time was had by all.
Granted stomping on turtles and shooting ducks might have been a little tamer than Halo, but it's still the same concept.
I suppose I shouldn't be making suggestions towards a good Scotch, having only tried a handful of them myself. Thanks for the correction (and suggestions!)
You've obviously never been to any sort of alcoholic beverage tasting before. Amazingly, some people actually enjoy the taste of good whiskies, wines, etc. I'd recommend a bottle of Oban for starters.
Notice the "next-gen" preceding "DVD", thus implying HDDVD & Bluray movies.
Hopefully they'll just settle on a brand new Vii
A while back the Everquest EULA was modified to read that SOE was able to dig through your processes to see if you're running any programs that were hooking into the client (back then it was mainly for ShowEQ). It was not well received (a whole lot of complaining on the forums, subscriptions canceled, etc), and that part of the license, as well as their process identifying program, got removed.
People can and have stood up to overly infringing EULAs, but it doesn't happen too often.
Every month I give AT&T $39.99 + taxes, and every month they give me access to the Internet.
Time to play the waiting game.
Indeed, if only the FDA had some sort of accelerated approval method...
Hit the Leinie's brewery tour while you're there. That's about the only good reason to visit Chippewa Falls, isn't it?