I never followed a script. I kicked back in my office with my feet up on my desk and went down a list of some 60 calls a day. For about 30% of those I recommend alternative solutions from competing businesses to help them solve their problem. I answered any questions they asked as best I could and dealt with any customers, no matter how annoying....they gave me the third degree making it sound like I was too stupid to use their product.
When someone treats me badly I don't get upset. I treat them with the same respect and rhetorically insult their intelligence every chance I get. They deserve it. We all do. We're too egotistical, too self-important, to be worth someone else's time.
Thanks for clearing that up, that makes me feel SO much better. For a second there I thought they exploiting a loophole in the system. Good thing its only just 1/3rd of a loophole. Wake me when they got 3 of them, then I'll consider caring again.
I agree totally. Poverty causes violence, at least as much as video games. End poverty and I might start listening to uneducated arguements about violent video games hurting society.
If you don't end poverty I'll assume any middle class suicide school shooters are taking their agression out on the rest of you for failing in your responsibility as a parent.
If we weren't hypocritical we might not have anything to fear from our violent children. But, unfortunately, we do. We treat them like prisoners and they act like felons. WTF did we expect would happen?
It would probably cost us $40 trillion to mine it with nukes and try to catch all the falling pieces in our giant nets. The giant nets might cost us that much if Haliburton has to make them. I think Iraq will be cheaper in the longer run, if we're talking about the USofA mining asteroids in space. Besides, who's going to prevent the space war over so much valuable material? If ANYONE attempts to mine it national security alerts will sound in every competitive (and greedy) nation.
I once worked in tech support and got a call from a Doctor with networking issues on his laptop. He was completely illiterate and extremely rude, not respecting my time at all, as if he were the only and most important customer. Well, I fixed his problem, but I'm always reminded of that experience when I read about important people calling tech support. Its possible you're not telling us the whole story.. but on the other hand I would never recommend vonage or comcast. Use at your own risk. Deal with the consequences.
Oh, and find alternatives to VoIP or tunnel it to mask it from bandwidth filters.
I like watching cute little animals get slaughtered. Its a nice change from the daily reports of suicide bombers in Iraq. If only they would show cute little children getting slaughtered, maybe then I wouldn't need to see the animals.
I think people are animals. And I think all life on this planet will die, eventually, unless it becomes intelligent. I doubt we'll escape nature. Survival of the fittest, baby. Yer gunna die./grinz/
I just wish we'd stop being hypocritical and let me go carmageddon on your asses. Cowards. Why be affraid of anarchy? Its perfectly natural.
It doesn't matter. There's so much bad publicity for Skype from this I doubt they'll get market dominance or become the standard.
I know I will never use it. I was considering it, but not after reading this. I'll look for an open source alternative, or write one myself. I won't put up with this sort of childish behavior from a software vendor.
You might consider Windows in a virtual machine using either VMWare's free vm and one full VMWare license to create the images or Xen. All Windows services can be put in a few GB of disk space and moved to any machine(s) with the bandwidth to handle the load.
But most current Windows apps should be able to run under WINE. Vista won't be a problem until it gets mass adoption which may take a while..
I disagree. I think anyone who learns how to use Linux can easily use Windows and OSX.
Perhaps Windows could be installed on the older computers, or run in a virtual machine.
Do you want kids to learn something about computers or learn how to play games on Windows? Linux will teach them about computers. Windows will teach them all about Microsoft.
BSD would be even better, or a combination of several different OSS and proprietary systems. There's Solaris and Plan9 and the Hurd too. With free virtualization software like Xen there's no financial reason to keep this out of public (non-commercial/non-religious) schools.
I think computer classes should also offer a choice of many different programming languages.
I would demand more from my child's school if I were a parent. And if my demands weren't met I would voice my disagreements loud and clear for every parent to hear, I would post signs, an article in the paper, websites, etc. I would use the system, they love to hide behind, against them until my demands were addressed.
Because fact-based education is important. Probably the most important thing for a child.
If I, being a 28 year old pothead, could teach classes covering all the topics I mentioned, I think some professional teachers could figure it out too.
Either that or just concede that Marijuana turns people into geniuses. Then all we need to do is find 'em and smoke 'em out.
But don't tell me we need to spend my tax money to teach kids Microsoft and spend more of my money to prevent them from playing games because you're NOT teaching them ANYTHING! I know Windows, its not comp sci 101. Don't pretend it is.
I like how you used Dell in your example. One can only hope some Dell board member or investor reads comments like this and thinks how their actions, and the actions of any business that behaves like them, raises expectations in our community that they will attempt to exploit our intellectual property. Not only do we believe they can't be trusted, we expect them to be unethical. I think that's the perfect message to give them.
But let's not forget those manuals of style and usage are based on general usage of the language. If the way the language is widely used changes these manuals may need to be updated. Language and style are dynamic and change over time as the generations wear them down, toss out the tired old traditional forms and replace them with more modern and efficient constructs, B. Usually we see strict style and usage rules dissolve or get replaced by more free form and free thinking ideas. This is essentially the kids telling their parents to sit down and STFU, because they have learned the empiror wears no clothes. Sometimes this takes decades, but I think the rate at which this great awakening is happening is increasing. *G*
...as one commentator notes, could be the beginning of the end of the globally interoperable Internet.
You must be smoking crack, if you really believe this. WTF does DNS have to do with the global interoperable Internet?
If DNS is the Internet, then ICANN owns and controls the Internet. That seems rather stupid for the world to give one organization that much power. But since you don't disagree..
I think its good to split up ICANN's control. They're too power hungry and greedy, and can't be trusted.
If Americans are too stupid to learn Mandarin and Hindi they're not going to have much fun browsing the 'net in 10 years. There are 10 of them for every one of us. Each of their voices will be as loud as ours. And they aren't hung up on some fundamentalist religious nut's Holy War. Capitalism and Christianity seem to be our government's religion. They don't seem to have any, from what I can tell, besides power and control, even if it means oppression. That's an expression of strength, that they are willing to kill their own people to maintain control. Something us Americans have to consider. If we're not willing to go that far how are we going to compete? They don't have the hypocritical "freedom and justice" system we have here. They're brutal, if you try to voice an opinion contradicting the government you will be silenced. I like that. Because Americans have destroyed my dream of freedom and justice. There's no such thing. Now I believe in survival of the fittest.
Better keep pouring your money into that military America because nothing else will protect you from their media and money. Even then you have to fear businesses like Fox News that might happily endorse a pro-China bias for profit. We've sold out our children's dreams. That's what is means to be an American.
Programming is a lot easier than brain surgery. For example, I program. I can write Perl, C, Java, whatever. I can do it after I've smoked two joints. But I'd probably kill any patient if I attempted brain surgery.
I programmed when I was a kid. I see no reason why kids can't program. They don't need to go to school to do it, all they need is access to the code.
But being an American I can see how you think the average Joe can't program. They can barely read and write. I'd be surprised if they could type or use a mouse.
But why do we let them drive cars? Why do we let them outside? Shouldn't they be locked up in a padded room for their own protection? They are a danger to themselves, let alone the rest of us.
We should force them to go back to school and learn something while they're there, then encourage programming once they're capable of comprehension. And once they can program we can give them back their driver's license and diploma.
Because I believe in Linux. I think it can not only protect users from spyware, worms, adware, etc. It can also protect their data.
I would put a 16 year old in the cockpit of an F-22 as soon as we outfit it with a steering wheel. It doesn't matter if they crash this F-22, it won't get damaged. They can fly it as fast as they want without fear of losing control.
But they must accept that they're not computer literate and be willing to LEARN how to safely use their system, such as "don't take candy from strangers", "don't drink and compute", etc. Sometimes they need hand holding whether they want it or not because they're stupid, and they must eventually become aware of this fact or be at risk from their own ignorance. Nothing we can do will change this reality. The only option we have is to educate.
One way of educating might be to occationally popup a message prompting the user to install something that might be malicious. If they allow it to be installed, take over full control of their desktop and slap them on the wrist by highlighting their mistake and explaining it to them on the spot so they don't have time to forget about it. If they keep falling for these popups maybe prevent file downloads or take some other form of administrative protection, disable root, etc.
They can be made to conform like the sheep they are. But if their money is going to Microsoft it will take that much longer to demand education, because that has never been in the best interests of capitalists. I bet ignorant consumers spend more on commercial software and all the adware/spyware removal, antivirus stuff they think they need. Businesses don't want to discourage this multibillion a year industry for a littler extra security, not unless they can get royalties for each Linux purchase or some deal similar to the music industry's monopoly on media and content.
I would beat up anyone who recommends business as usual, but they're probably all too cowardly to take it outside and settle it man to man. Well, the gloves are off over here. Come compromise my security, bitch.
I know OSX is safed by default than Windows. Its even safer than some Linux distros. That's not too shabby. I recommend an OS preconfigured with sane defaults like OSX or OpenBSD for computer illiterate users who want to access the internet. One could argue OSX is far more userfriendly than OpenBSD, atm, but some Linux distros are almost within their reach..
If we recommend sane defaults maybe we can get some sleep at night, huh?
Before they shut it down I was considering running it on one of my systems, possibly even replacing Windows if they could get Cedega to work on it. But they had to go and be evil.
So now I won't have anything to do with Apple, even if they offer me a boxed suite with all the drivers for my hardware for free.
Actually, I probably would have just stuck to Linux anyway. Novell's XGL shows how little effort Apple puts into their 3D work. They say "Think Different" and expect you to conform. I hate freakin' fascists!
I just wish these fence sitters would quit opening their source code.
They have enough to worry about their competitors suing them over patents, no need to expand that liability with copyright.
Besides, I'd personally be much happier if they didn't try to compete with Free Software, which will win no matter how long they drag this out. Instead of admitting that Free Software and Open Source were right, they're trying to pretend proprietary software practices were right while leveraging the advantages of open source. Only they keep losing ground. Why is that? Because they're prime candidates for AA. Or Capitalists Anonymous, anyway.
All I know is I will not be giving Sun, Apple or Microsoft any more money... but I would never expect the average slashdot reader to hold corporations accountable for their actions, they're too spineless to think different.
I was 19 years old when I first read the GPL and understood it.
Is copyright law and a written license agreement too complex for law enforcement to comprehend? If law enforcement can't understand the law what business do they have enforcing it?
I'm a computer scientist, and a pothead, and I know more about copyright than these morons.
I suggest, if they don't understand copyright, we bust out the bong and get them hella baked, cuz they ain't good for much else.
Yeah, but what's more valuable? Broadband or money?
If it would cost me money to give broadband to Americans I'd keep my money. Besides they're mostly computer illiterate and would only help propogate worms.
And if I have the choice between keeping my money and getting broadband for myself, why would I want to get broadband? No one in my family uses it. They barely do the occational google search and check email. I showed them how to play an mp3 last year, but I doubt they could do it again without my help. Winamp is too complicated for my folks.
I think we should discourage Americans from getting on the internet. We should tell them its too hard, its too slow, its too dangerous. We can get them to go back in their cave, I know we can, all we got to do is try.
You don't want AOL, you don't want the internet. Terrorsts and serial killers snoop the lines looking for addresses of homes to rob and people to torture and kill and turn into bombs. Don't get on the ineternet, you might get blown up, or worse. The only safe computer is no computer.
Let's discourage Americans from using the 'net. They only need a little more FEAR, its the only thing they have left, to fear. Let's make them affraid! Let's terrify them of the possibilities. Let's spread the FUD until they RTFM!
Slashdot Mirror
I never followed a script. I kicked back in my office with my feet up on my desk and went down a list of some 60 calls a day. For about 30% of those I recommend alternative solutions from competing businesses to help them solve their problem. I answered any questions they asked as best I could and dealt with any customers, no matter how annoying. ...they gave me the third degree making it sound like I was too stupid to use their product.
When someone treats me badly I don't get upset. I treat them with the same respect and rhetorically insult their intelligence every chance I get. They deserve it. We all do. We're too egotistical, too self-important, to be worth someone else's time.
Thanks for clearing that up, that makes me feel SO much better. For a second there I thought they exploiting a loophole in the system. Good thing its only just 1/3rd of a loophole. Wake me when they got 3 of them, then I'll consider caring again.
I agree totally. Poverty causes violence, at least as much as video games. End poverty and I might start listening to uneducated arguements about violent video games hurting society.
If you don't end poverty I'll assume any middle class suicide school shooters are taking their agression out on the rest of you for failing in your responsibility as a parent.
If we weren't hypocritical we might not have anything to fear from our violent children. But, unfortunately, we do. We treat them like prisoners and they act like felons. WTF did we expect would happen?
It would probably cost us $40 trillion to mine it with nukes and try to catch all the falling pieces in our giant nets. The giant nets might cost us that much if Haliburton has to make them. I think Iraq will be cheaper in the longer run, if we're talking about the USofA mining asteroids in space. Besides, who's going to prevent the space war over so much valuable material? If ANYONE attempts to mine it national security alerts will sound in every competitive (and greedy) nation.
Those guys are complete bastards.
I once worked in tech support and got a call from a Doctor with networking issues on his laptop. He was completely illiterate and extremely rude, not respecting my time at all, as if he were the only and most important customer. Well, I fixed his problem, but I'm always reminded of that experience when I read about important people calling tech support. Its possible you're not telling us the whole story.. but on the other hand I would never recommend vonage or comcast. Use at your own risk. Deal with the consequences.
Oh, and find alternatives to VoIP or tunnel it to mask it from bandwidth filters.
I like watching cute little animals get slaughtered. Its a nice change from the daily reports of suicide bombers in Iraq. If only they would show cute little children getting slaughtered, maybe then I wouldn't need to see the animals.
/grinz/
I think people are animals. And I think all life on this planet will die, eventually, unless it becomes intelligent. I doubt we'll escape nature. Survival of the fittest, baby. Yer gunna die.
I just wish we'd stop being hypocritical and let me go carmageddon on your asses. Cowards. Why be affraid of anarchy? Its perfectly natural.
It doesn't matter. There's so much bad publicity for Skype from this I doubt they'll get market dominance or become the standard.
I know I will never use it. I was considering it, but not after reading this. I'll look for an open source alternative, or write one myself. I won't put up with this sort of childish behavior from a software vendor.
This looks like a good start:
http://www.topology.org/soft/avnet.html
You're probably right, I just like bashing us stupid people over the head with blunt rhetoric.
LiveCDs would also be an excellent way to show kids a variety of technologies and let them take it home to use for homework, etc.
You might consider Windows in a virtual machine using either VMWare's free vm and one full VMWare license to create the images or Xen. All Windows services can be put in a few GB of disk space and moved to any machine(s) with the bandwidth to handle the load.
But most current Windows apps should be able to run under WINE. Vista won't be a problem until it gets mass adoption which may take a while..
I disagree. I think anyone who learns how to use Linux can easily use Windows and OSX.
Perhaps Windows could be installed on the older computers, or run in a virtual machine.
Do you want kids to learn something about computers or learn how to play games on Windows? Linux will teach them about computers. Windows will teach them all about Microsoft.
BSD would be even better, or a combination of several different OSS and proprietary systems. There's Solaris and Plan9 and the Hurd too. With free virtualization software like Xen there's no financial reason to keep this out of public (non-commercial/non-religious) schools.
I think computer classes should also offer a choice of many different programming languages.
I would demand more from my child's school if I were a parent. And if my demands weren't met I would voice my disagreements loud and clear for every parent to hear, I would post signs, an article in the paper, websites, etc. I would use the system, they love to hide behind, against them until my demands were addressed.
Because fact-based education is important. Probably the most important thing for a child.
If I, being a 28 year old pothead, could teach classes covering all the topics I mentioned, I think some professional teachers could figure it out too.
Either that or just concede that Marijuana turns people into geniuses. Then all we need to do is find 'em and smoke 'em out.
But don't tell me we need to spend my tax money to teach kids Microsoft and spend more of my money to prevent them from playing games because you're NOT teaching them ANYTHING! I know Windows, its not comp sci 101. Don't pretend it is.
Nobody forced you to buy a Dell. I boycott when I don't get what I want. It doesn't frustrate me to boycott. It saves me money.
I like how you used Dell in your example. One can only hope some Dell board member or investor reads comments like this and thinks how their actions, and the actions of any business that behaves like them, raises expectations in our community that they will attempt to exploit our intellectual property. Not only do we believe they can't be trusted, we expect them to be unethical. I think that's the perfect message to give them.
And I agree, GPLv3 for me too.
But let's not forget those manuals of style and usage are based on general usage of the language. If the way the language is widely used changes these manuals may need to be updated. Language and style are dynamic and change over time as the generations wear them down, toss out the tired old traditional forms and replace them with more modern and efficient constructs, B. Usually we see strict style and usage rules dissolve or get replaced by more free form and free thinking ideas. This is essentially the kids telling their parents to sit down and STFU, because they have learned the empiror wears no clothes. Sometimes this takes decades, but I think the rate at which this great awakening is happening is increasing. *G*
^_^
International DNS resolver? That's stupid. Learn Chinese. Lazy Americans. Its only a few characters. Are we really that illiterate?
Why is it so hard to expect an American to be educated, or God forbid, to educate themselves?
...as one commentator notes, could be the beginning of the end of the globally interoperable Internet.
You must be smoking crack, if you really believe this. WTF does DNS have to do with the global interoperable Internet?
If DNS is the Internet, then ICANN owns and controls the Internet. That seems rather stupid for the world to give one organization that much power. But since you don't disagree..
I think its good to split up ICANN's control. They're too power hungry and greedy, and can't be trusted.
If Americans are too stupid to learn Mandarin and Hindi they're not going to have much fun browsing the 'net in 10 years. There are 10 of them for every one of us. Each of their voices will be as loud as ours. And they aren't hung up on some fundamentalist religious nut's Holy War. Capitalism and Christianity seem to be our government's religion. They don't seem to have any, from what I can tell, besides power and control, even if it means oppression. That's an expression of strength, that they are willing to kill their own people to maintain control. Something us Americans have to consider. If we're not willing to go that far how are we going to compete? They don't have the hypocritical "freedom and justice" system we have here. They're brutal, if you try to voice an opinion contradicting the government you will be silenced. I like that. Because Americans have destroyed my dream of freedom and justice. There's no such thing. Now I believe in survival of the fittest.
Better keep pouring your money into that military America because nothing else will protect you from their media and money. Even then you have to fear businesses like Fox News that might happily endorse a pro-China bias for profit. We've sold out our children's dreams. That's what is means to be an American.
Programming is a lot easier than brain surgery. For example, I program. I can write Perl, C, Java, whatever. I can do it after I've smoked two joints. But I'd probably kill any patient if I attempted brain surgery.
I programmed when I was a kid. I see no reason why kids can't program. They don't need to go to school to do it, all they need is access to the code.
But being an American I can see how you think the average Joe can't program. They can barely read and write. I'd be surprised if they could type or use a mouse.
But why do we let them drive cars? Why do we let them outside? Shouldn't they be locked up in a padded room for their own protection? They are a danger to themselves, let alone the rest of us.
We should force them to go back to school and learn something while they're there, then encourage programming once they're capable of comprehension. And once they can program we can give them back their driver's license and diploma.
Because I believe in Linux. I think it can not only protect users from spyware, worms, adware, etc. It can also protect their data.
I would put a 16 year old in the cockpit of an F-22 as soon as we outfit it with a steering wheel. It doesn't matter if they crash this F-22, it won't get damaged. They can fly it as fast as they want without fear of losing control.
But they must accept that they're not computer literate and be willing to LEARN how to safely use their system, such as "don't take candy from strangers", "don't drink and compute", etc. Sometimes they need hand holding whether they want it or not because they're stupid, and they must eventually become aware of this fact or be at risk from their own ignorance. Nothing we can do will change this reality. The only option we have is to educate.
One way of educating might be to occationally popup a message prompting the user to install something that might be malicious. If they allow it to be installed, take over full control of their desktop and slap them on the wrist by highlighting their mistake and explaining it to them on the spot so they don't have time to forget about it. If they keep falling for these popups maybe prevent file downloads or take some other form of administrative protection, disable root, etc.
They can be made to conform like the sheep they are. But if their money is going to Microsoft it will take that much longer to demand education, because that has never been in the best interests of capitalists. I bet ignorant consumers spend more on commercial software and all the adware/spyware removal, antivirus stuff they think they need. Businesses don't want to discourage this multibillion a year industry for a littler extra security, not unless they can get royalties for each Linux purchase or some deal similar to the music industry's monopoly on media and content.
I would beat up anyone who recommends business as usual, but they're probably all too cowardly to take it outside and settle it man to man. Well, the gloves are off over here. Come compromise my security, bitch.
Alright then, what OS makes us safe?
I know OSX is safed by default than Windows. Its even safer than some Linux distros. That's not too shabby. I recommend an OS preconfigured with sane defaults like OSX or OpenBSD for computer illiterate users who want to access the internet. One could argue OSX is far more userfriendly than OpenBSD, atm, but some Linux distros are almost within their reach..
If we recommend sane defaults maybe we can get some sleep at night, huh?
No, they'd make her eat a beatle.
Before they shut it down I was considering running it on one of my systems, possibly even replacing Windows if they could get Cedega to work on it. But they had to go and be evil.
So now I won't have anything to do with Apple, even if they offer me a boxed suite with all the drivers for my hardware for free.
Actually, I probably would have just stuck to Linux anyway. Novell's XGL shows how little effort Apple puts into their 3D work. They say "Think Different" and expect you to conform. I hate freakin' fascists!
I see no reason at all for Apple to get out of open sourcing Darwin.
I see a reason. Why pretend to be open source when you're not?
Why does Sun, Microsoft and Apple pretend they're open source organization? Is it so they can trick ignorant users to give them more money?
Do you honestly believe they care about open source? Why?
I just wish these fence sitters would quit opening their source code.
They have enough to worry about their competitors suing them over patents, no need to expand that liability with copyright.
Besides, I'd personally be much happier if they didn't try to compete with Free Software, which will win no matter how long they drag this out. Instead of admitting that Free Software and Open Source were right, they're trying to pretend proprietary software practices were right while leveraging the advantages of open source. Only they keep losing ground. Why is that? Because they're prime candidates for AA. Or Capitalists Anonymous, anyway.
All I know is I will not be giving Sun, Apple or Microsoft any more money... but I would never expect the average slashdot reader to hold corporations accountable for their actions, they're too spineless to think different.
I was 19 years old when I first read the GPL and understood it.
Is copyright law and a written license agreement too complex for law enforcement to comprehend? If law enforcement can't understand the law what business do they have enforcing it?
I'm a computer scientist, and a pothead, and I know more about copyright than these morons.
I suggest, if they don't understand copyright, we bust out the bong and get them hella baked, cuz they ain't good for much else.
Yeah, but what's more valuable? Broadband or money?
If it would cost me money to give broadband to Americans I'd keep my money. Besides they're mostly computer illiterate and would only help propogate worms.
And if I have the choice between keeping my money and getting broadband for myself, why would I want to get broadband? No one in my family uses it. They barely do the occational google search and check email. I showed them how to play an mp3 last year, but I doubt they could do it again without my help. Winamp is too complicated for my folks.
I think we should discourage Americans from getting on the internet. We should tell them its too hard, its too slow, its too dangerous. We can get them to go back in their cave, I know we can, all we got to do is try.
You don't want AOL, you don't want the internet. Terrorsts and serial killers snoop the lines looking for addresses of homes to rob and people to torture and kill and turn into bombs. Don't get on the ineternet, you might get blown up, or worse. The only safe computer is no computer.
Let's discourage Americans from using the 'net. They only need a little more FEAR, its the only thing they have left, to fear. Let's make them affraid! Let's terrify them of the possibilities. Let's spread the FUD until they RTFM!