If you've ever sent an artist cash after downloading their work off allofmp3/p2p, I'll eat a top hat.
In any case, even sending the artist cash doesn't change the fact that you are operating outside the legal framework. Whether you like it or not, the label, not the artist, holds the rights -- and the artist consented to that.
You are rationalizing your dislike of paying for what you buy. Pure and simple. If you'd just say "I don't think I should pay" you'd have much more integrity than you do when you insult our intelligence with implausible ethical arguments.
ironically enough it runs far cooler when in Windows via BootCamp than in OSX (even though the battery life is almost halved).
Interesting. My 2.16 MBP runs very hot in OS X: between 55 C idle and 83 C at full load according to CoreDuoTemp. I can't imagine that it's running much hotter than this in Windows or the processor would either throttle itself or shut down. (I haven't taken the machine apart to look at thermal paste application.)
Yet the machine *feels* hotter in Windows, even though I have no way to actually measure the CPU temp. In OS X the strip above the keyboard is warm to the touch. In Windows (XP or Vista beta) it's quite hot and I can feel significant heat coming through the keyboard.
My fan is often on at very low speed in OS X if the machine is doing anything but idling. In Windows (Boot Camp) it is usually off but ramps up to a considerably higher speed frequently.
(I'll second the observation about battery life. No more than 2 hours tops in Windows. About 3:15 in OS X with no efforts to be frugal.)
much more powerful commodity Intel box (which is all Macs are now) and load up FreeBSD for around $300.
Bored again, so feeding the trolls...
You can't get a "much more powerful" commodity Intel (or other x86) box. The only "much more powerful" Intel boxes use very expensive high-end CPUs. No one here seems to realize that the cute cuddly little iMac has a 1.83GHz dual-core CPU; you're all comparing it with 2004 products.
For $300 your box will be significantly less powerful than the iMac *and* have no monitor. If you think otherwise, list the specific parts you're going to use, and the specific sources where you found your prices.
Not to say you couldn't get significanty more power (esp. graphics) than the iMac for *$900*, albeit in much uglier form, but come on.
Then there are the bad jokes like see-through windows, which we all get stuck with because somebody thought it was l33t.
I love translucent windows. I wish I could set the opacity of any window arbitrarily. It's incredibly useful when you're either copying text or using one window as a reference while writing in another.
I've also never had any noise or problems from the Radeon 9600 in my desktop machine, which has issues playing the latest games but which can do transparency and OS-level 3d effects without breaking a sweat. (If I wanted to play the latest games, I wouldn't be running OS X, now would I...) There are better cards than the Rage 128 even if you want quiet and reliability.
You don't have to wear a helmet while skiing, but it's probably just as dangerous, if not more. I've fallen way more while skiing than while riding my bike. I've seen more people fall while walking on icy sidewalks than falling while on a bicycle. Maybe we should ban walking on icy sidewalks.
Now you're just being disingenuous by ignoring obvious distinctions. I say this as a longtime skier and biker who has never been seriously injured by a skiing accident but has had his life saved by a bike helmet during a 35mph crash into a curb (caused by trying to avoid an inattentive driver).
Distinction #1: when you're skiing, you crash into snow, and there are no cars anywhere. When you're biking, you crash into concrete, and there are cars everywhere around you just waiting to run you over.
Distinction #2: If your bike has a motor, you are likely going faster than any skier but a professional racer... and they wear helmets. Also, when you fall on an icy sidewalk, you are not moving fast, and so you are unlikely to suffer serious trauma unless you fall exactly the wrong way. A severe bike fall is *going* to hurt you when you hit concrete at 30 mph or faster.
As for the under 18 factor: society has made 1) a normative judgment that kids' lives are worth more and 2) an empirical observation that kids, left alone, are likely to have poorer judgment than adults. I don't know about #1, but agree with #2... the bike helmet law I support would be one that requires kids to wear them everywhere and adults to wear them when riding on public streets.
In other words, you're not harming society at large, you're harming everyone in your risk pool.
If your logic were really carried out, no insurer would be willing to insure people riding without helmets. Thus, when they get in the inevitable gory crashes, we have two choices: pay their expenses from government funds, or let them die on the streets.
If you were really sticking to your point above, I suppose you'd let them die on the streets.
I think a helmet law is a much more sensible outcome, at least for motorcycles.
However, there are a lot of laws out there that are only on the books to stop you from hurting yourself. Such as bike helmet laws.
Failing to wear bike or motorcycle helmets affects the rights of others: those who have to pay for your long and expensive hospital stay because you crashed without a helmet.
In a world where catastrophic care is too expensive for individuals to pay without public or insurance assistance, any behavior that can lead to catastrophic injury is a legitimate candidate for regulation, no matter who the injured party is.
I don't know whether your fresh install was of a naked OS or a restore from Dell's original image. Most Dells ship with an image so full of junk that it makes them nearly unusable.
I have a Dell 3.2GHz P4 with 1GB RAM at work, with their special (and actually quite well-put-together) Windows XP image, and it flies. It's as much of a pleasure to use as a Windows box can be, if you ignore the gawdawful Dell keyboard with its tumescent space bar.
Well, they did drop the 12" PB, forcing those who want/need a smaller form factor to sacrifice for the cheaper MacBook.
...which is superior in every way to the 12" PB (except for not being as small). People are upset because they can't buy a small silver machine anymore. If Apple took a MacBook, made the case silver, put in a crappy X300 (not for performance, but so people could feel that they had a separate graphics card) and called it "MacBook Pro" people would stop complaining.
Are there really enough people going from Boston to DC to support a 4 hour train over a 7 hour one?
Add stops in Philly and New York, and, absolutely. Boston to Washington is under 450 miles. A good train should be able to cover that distance in 3 hours, or 3.5 with stops at the outer edge. Shuttle flights run either hourly or half-hourly between *all* the city pairs in that group and are usually full. "Chinatown" buses leave almost as frequently and are also full; a faster, cleaner and safer train with reasonably priced tickets would probably peel off some of those travelers. And I expect if people could travel around the Northeast without the hassles of the other methods, or the insanity that is parking in New York or Boston, they might travel more often. I know I would -- as a Boston-area resident (for the moment) I'd go to New York every month just for the hell of it.
In my world the trains would not only be faster but cleaner, more pleasant, and much more frequent and reliable. My vision is modeled on the intercity line between Geneva and Zurich, Switzerland. Those trains run hourly and are a wonderful way to get places, unlike anything we have here.
Slower trains could cover the regional lines between each city. With the rebuilding that would be necessary for the high-speed trains, the regionals would speed up too.
Amtrak isn't doing too hot. They handled 0.1% of all intercity traffic passenger miles in 2003 (most recent data point I could dig up).
Amtrak isn't a real train system. It's dirty, the equipment is old, it's horribly unreliable, it's slower than driving (which no passenger train has a right to be), trains don't run on any kind of reasonable schedule, and customer service is inconsistent. When I'm in Europe, I'm a train fanboy, but I don't consider riding Amtrak.
I think a better indicator of the demand for *real* trains is in the ridership on short-range airline shuttles. Those planes are packed, causing enormous airport congestion and worsening the already significant hassles inherent in modern air travel.
That's why I want to build a new system, not modeled on Amtrak but on the best of the Japanese and European high-speed systems. I think, unlike Amtrak, it would provide a comfortable, environmentally superior and relatively fast alternative to the short-range air travel we're increasingly putting up with.
I'll elaborate a bit... imagine going Boston to Washington in 3.5 hours, with no security checkpoint, room to stretch your legs, no seat belt sign, quiet (and the ability to change cars to get away from screaming babies), enjoyable scenery out the window, the train station a short cab ride from where you want to go on both ends, no mad scramble for seat assignments, and no need to pay outrageous change/cancel fees. I expect there would be demand to run a train once an hour from 5 am to 9 pm, which you could just catch, buying a ticket at the station, as necessary. Similar service would work throughout the Northeast and the Rust Belt, between Atlanta and Miami, and between San Diego and Vancouver. With the right equipment it might even work somewhere like Texas where the cities are far apart but there would be little to stop the trains from reaching near-airplane speeds.
Sheesh, he wasn't a troll... it's a valid point, if simplistically put./rolls eyes
We need both highways and mass transport, and the failing of 1950s planning was that it prioritized highways above all else. A better use of resources would have been to build the rural and interstate parts of the system the same way they were built, but to substitute trains for some of the capacity in the urban network.
In Europe, they've got it all. Their intercity highways are better than ours. And for commuting, they have train networks that actually work and are pleasant enough that people want to use them. Saves gas, saves time (the high-speed trains are faster and you don't have to park them), and you can still drive your car just fine when you are going somewhere the trains don't go or don't reach effectively.
At this point I'd like to see the next big infrastructure investment be in a European-style intercity, high-speed train network to give people an alternative to highways. It wouldn't work across the great expanses of the West, but it would work just fine from Chicago eastward and along the West Coast. Imagine getting from Boston to Washington in 3 1/2 hours without the hassle of airport transportation, TSA bullshit, etc., etc. and simultaneously reducing airport congestion. Sounds worthwhile to me.
Sure, there are that many bridges. Don't just think of the big ones crossing lakes, etc... think about every dinky little over- and underpass. In the urban parts of the system, you might have 10 or more of those in a mile.
Sounds like you need new local leadership. Someone needs to campaign and run against your officers on a clean-up platform. If for some reason that's not possible, then you may need to go to the national union (if there is one), because any union local should have democratic procedures for selecting its officers.
Why does the union own condos? (I'm ignoring the "BMW" comment because union leaders get paid too, and like anyone else they can spend their own money however they want. If it were a priority for them most senior union employees could probably afford some sort of BMW.) It's not a union's job to provide free vacations for the leadership.
Also, how can you lose your job for asking too many questions? The union can't just summarily kick you out. If they can, see the first paragraph -- you need new leadership.
To answer your larger question, the fact that it's possible to corrupt a union doesn't negate unions' purpose any more than the fact that it's possible to corrupt a corporation negates the idea of going into business.
This is the same fallacy I pointed out in the other post -- the idea of "well, since I can't get it with my inadequate bargaining power, then no one, even those who organize so as to be on an equal footing with the company, should get it."
The toll takers negotiated their contract. Management approved it. It seems to me if you are an engineer making $12 an hour then your workplace is crying out for unionization, or possibly you need to exercise your individual market rights and get a better job. (How is that even possible? I made $12.50 an hour as a desk supervisor at a nonunion hotel 6 years ago. I made between $18 and $24 an hour, plus overtime, as a union bus driver. I have friends who are ordinary IT guys in academia whose salary, if measured by the hour, would add up to about $20-$22/hour.)
I feel for you -- I didn't enjoy making $12 an hour either. But the toll takers won what they have through a fair market process, and they aren't to blame for whatever forces are causing you to be underpaid.
Relatively few Americans' hard work has created the productivity growth we've seen (I attribute most of that growth to the baby boomers). Some American's also don't deserve to share in those benefits.
I'd like to see some support for this. The data I've seen suggests the productivity gains have been extraordinarily broad-based. Managers deserve some of the credit, as IT and implementation of continually more efficient logistical procedures have helped workers get more done. But workers deserve credit as well. From the bottom to the top, we're working more hours, taking less vacation, and using more effective time-management techniques.
I don't know who you are referring to when you say "some Americans don't deserve to share," but I believe if a worker is more productive that worker should be rewarded accordingly. A perfectly working market would ensure that by offering the worker another job if he were not paid in accordance with his productivity. But when there are the sort of large-scale, systemic differences in bargaining power that you see between individuals and large corporations, the market doesn't work perfectly. Unions are the perfect tool to right that balance, since they allow the market to function with equal bargaining power and without regulation.
The laws are in place, they're not going anywhere, the workers have won...
Not so fast. We've seen steady erosion in the real minimum wage, repeated attempts to exclude more and more workers from overtime protections, weakening of ergonomic protections, shrinkage of worker's comp benefits, lackadaisical enforcement of basic things like lunch breaks and safety rules, and administration-sponsored attempts to replace entire classes of well-protected jobs with insecure, low-paying bottom-rung ones. It's not like the same forces that led to 72-hour workweeks in the bad old days have magically gone away. Preserving workplace sanity, like preserving freedom, requires constant vigilance.
1. Cough. The automobile industry. 'nuff said.
The union's job is not to respond to long-term trends in a product market. That's management's job. While perhaps a more perceptive group of unions would have structured the big health care and retirement programs differently, to allow for more flexibility, the real blame can be squarely laid on the lazy management that failed to see the Japanese carmakers right under its nose in the '60s and '70s.
2. Longshore union.
Say what? These guys are still killed at the rate of several a year. They are killed in the most gruesome imaginable ways: crushed by containers, sent flying a quarter mile by snapping cables, falling 100 feet from cranes, etc. It's probably the most dangerous union job there is, and one of the most dangerous in the country. Yes, machines are doing some work they used to do, but they put themselves in physical danger for the sake of a critical step in our economic process. They deserve every cent they get.
3... Why'd they strike? Cause "The Man" wanted them to pay a co-pay like the rest of us.
I can never quite get my head around this argument. What you are saying is "With my artificially low bargaining power I can't get a proper medical plan. Therefore no one else should get it either, even if they were smart enough to band together to negotiate as an equal with the company."
If the workers at the non-union stores were to organize, they could get that health plan as well. So could you. Protect your interests. Don't enable someone who's trying to ensure that you get a below-market outcome for their own benefit.
4... Thanks to this bullshit (read: pension plans) the City of San Diego is for all practical purposes bankrupt. Mmm. Fiscal 2007 budget: $2.6 billion. Pension fund deficit: $1.43 billion.
And this is the union's fault how? Again, it was bad fiscal management by the city that got it into this mess. The pension plan was
There has not been a comparable increase in output compared with the increase in wages and benefits
You're right, although not in the way you want to be. Productivity growth in America has vastly outpaced wage growth since the '70s. This applies across unionized and non-unionized industry alike. It doesn't see a rocket scientist to see that the extra money has wound up in the hands of either shareholders or management (depending on how honest management is). Irrespective of the wage question, the productivity growth is what has kept our economy so healthy over most of the last 30 years.
While economists can debate the question until they're blue in the face, there is a credible argument, which I believe, that wider distribution of productivity gains is better for the economy, because money distributed to poorer people is likely to get spent immediately. Beyond a minimum wage/tax subsidy floor, we clearly don't want to achieve that policy goal through regulation of salaries. The best way to distribute money from productivity gains fairly is by equalizing bargaining power and information between labor and investors. How do you accomplish that? Unions and collective bargaining.
Unions are more necessary than ever if we want all Americans to share in the prosperity that their hard work has created through productivity growth. Just because we're not fighting against a 72-hour workweek anymore doesn't mean the basic reason for the existence of unions, to create equal bargaining power for workers, is any less desirable.
With the theory out of the way, I'll address some of your bogus (and oft-repeated by people who have never belonged to a union) examples. I was a government-employed union transit bus driver from 2000 to 2005 (which was a job I loved, incidentally), so perhaps I can clear up some of the misconceptions.
For example, some government workers get paid 40 hours when they only do 37 hours of work.
It's true that some *salaried* government workers work only 35 or 37.5 hours. Their salaries reflect that; they are paid for 35 or 37.5 hours, not 40. As far as hourly workers go, there are some provisions in some contracts that allow a worker to pick up hours without working -- but those are there to guarantee the full-time worker an 8-hour day when it's administratively simpler (for instance, when a bus run happens to return to the garage after 7 hours and 45 minutes thanks to the schedule) for the government not to set up an eight-hour workday. The unions fought hard for that to prevent management from simply shrinking workers' days down to four hours or less. I don't know of any examples of employers otherwise regularly paying employees for more hours than they work -- why not just raise the hourly rate instead?
Toll-booth workers get upwards of $25 an hour to stand there and hand out tickets.
I can't find any toll-collector wage over $21 in the country. Most of them are closer to $16. It's dirty, repetitive, unrewarding, dangerous (people like to rob tollbooths) and potentially injurious (to hearing, especially) work. Most toll collectors don't hand out tickets (there are machines for that) but count money. Would you consider it progress if we paid them minimum wage, they couldn't afford decent housing anymore, and turnover in these high-accountability positions (lots of cash handled) were suddenly 200%?
Government construction workers get paid somewheres around that same rate to stand around all day (honestly - do you EVER see these guys working?)
Everyone whines about this. So why aren't you on a state road crew? The jobs aren't that hard to get. People complain, but when the chips are down they realize these guys have tough jobs.
If you see a worker standing, it's probably because he's acting as a safety spotter for someone else you can't see. When you're dealing with heavy machinery and dangerous chemicals all day, it's worth
In a truly free market, though, another company will gladly spring up doing the exact same thing, but NOT pay the CEOs a bunch of money, until the other company goes out of business (or changes).
...
Recognize that to economists, everything is a market unless it's coersion.
Unlike Marxist Hacker 42, who I don't think will be comfortable until there's blood in the streets, I'm not going to tell you I have no use for a free market. In fact, my goal would be for as many people as possible to make any rational trades they want, which is probably the outcome you're thinking of when you say "free market."
But you don't get there by removing all the rules. That Econ class should have taught you that all that happens when you remove all the rules is that people take advantage of disparities in bargaining power and information to coerce or fool other parties into non-rational transactions.
The CEO case is a perfect example. The CEOs hornswoggle or pay off the directors, who in turn do the same to the shareholders. Shareholders and employees are left holding the bag. Since there is no incentive for CEOs not to do this, as they profit much more handsomely than they could from simply doing good business, there is no incentive for a CEO to lead your "another company" into the picture.
Thus active public intervention is required to ensure a market where all parties who bargain and inform themselves to the best of their ability realize positive outcomes. The great failing of many people inclined toward a viewpoint informed by classical economics is that they fail to realize this -- effectively embracing a course which inevitably leads to feudalism, not free markets. In this specific situation, the public intervention needed is simply enforced regulation: if Americans won't take your job because you're offering a low salary at which they turn up their noses, that's fine, but actively excluding Americans in order to take advantage of the H-1Bs should be (and is) outlawed.
This is a case where the existing law makes sense and should be enforced, for the sake of a fair and free market.
The only downside is that I can't get in your face physically to make the point.
That's really too bad. It means I can't have you hauled out of my building in handcuffs for investigation of assault. Unlike "say[ing] something inappropriate" or "wast[ing] my time," assault and battery is actionable under civil law and punishable under criminal law, and you should face consequences for your dumb-ass threats.
If you ask me to cancel your account (or, let's say, reservation, since I never worked for a place where accounts were sold) like a normal person, I'll do it with a smile, although I'll probably ask once if there's anything we can do to keep your business. If you get in my face or any of my employees' faces, I'll trespass you from the property, under the arm of a 300-lb. security guard if necessary, and press charges (and sue if you caused injury). Threats are not appropriate even in high-stress situations, and people need to be more ready to draw that line in the sand. I'm fucking sick of people so pathetic they get their jollies out of bullying others.
You legislate that expensive portable devices should take six years of abuse.
Wow, it feels odd to take the OMGZ0RZ REGOOL4SHUN SUX!1 position, but in this case I have to. Cheap consumer devices are one of the few areas where a mostly unregulated market (only regulated to prevent fire, lethal electric shock, etc.) has proven time and again that it achieves the best results for consumers.
Not everyone wants to pay big extra dough for a device (or, in this case, perhaps not obtain the device at all, due to the lack of 1.8" HDs and batteries that can take 6 years of abuse) just because some {bureaucrat,legislative_body} arbitrarily decided that device ought to last six years.
I think most people know that a US$300 consumer device that gets bumped, dropped, joggled, and scratched every day isn't going to last for six years. For those who don't know that, Apple's well-documented one-year warranty should provide a clue. And most of those consumers will want a new device long before the six-year period is up, regardless of whether their original device still works, so they can have the cool new thing. I know I've never kept an iPod for more than two years. Hell, I only kept a *Mac* for six years once, although they've all worked just fine when I sold them/gave them away.
As for the batteries, how do you propose that Apple solves the problem? There isn't some magic battery technology out there that lasts forever. NiCad and NiMH batteries suffer memory effects. LiIon and its descendants only function over a limited number of cycles. Making the battery removable would have the side effect of making the iPod bigger and more fragile. Now maybe Apple should document the issue better, but I'm not sure what engineering changes you would have it make.
And then there's the aspect of comparing AOL to a _luxury_ hotel. Heh. Let's not go there.
Judging by this and several other comments, I should have been a little more clear through my anger. I was not intentionally comparing the TFA situation and my hotel experience directly. (I probably would have gone home and cried like a baby if anyone had ever compared us to AOL in any way.) And, certainly, it's much more reasonable for the customer to get spitting mad at the AOL situation than at anything that would have happened in my hotel.
The reason I made the comparison was to show that bullshit threats like the OP (and one other poster) was making are damaging and counterproductive in whatever situation. No matter how angry the situation makes you, and how justified that anger is, frivolously threatening legal action will get you nowhere. It won't solve your problem, and it will piss off the people at the other end enough that resolution just got farther away.
From an economic perspective, whatever time you've already wasted is a sunk cost. No matter how much anger it's generated, you need to think "What's the best way, from the point where I am now, to resolve this?" If you haven't gotten anywhere at a low level it's time to escalate and/or write letters. Chargebacks are fine too. But, regardless of his moral culpability for the script you're hearing (which reasonable people can disagree on) threatening some powerless schmuck is NOT the way to solve your problem.
I think most rational people know that. The ones who threaten, like the posters above, are not doing it to resolve an issue. They're doing it to bully, plain and simple. That's a bullshit way to interact with people.
Except for the OP they all seem to be anonymous cowards. But if any of the bullies have enough courage to return here, I want to see a concise and plausible explanation of the legal theory you would use to successfully sue a recalcitrant CSR personally. Hint: there isn't one.
The customer is angry with the way your script treats him, with your company, not with you personally. When he starts ranting, he is ranting against your company, and he has every, absolutely every right to do so, because you are representing it.
I don't disagree with you in principle. When the customer makes clear why he's upset, and what we can do to resolve it, then there's a point where fruitful discussion can start. And if we can't take common-sense action, then, like AOL, we're providing bad service.
By no means am I trying to say that customers don't have the right to be upset with problems or bad service, and to tell me about it. Many of our most steadfast customers first spoke with me because they had a problem, and became loyal because they felt we resolved it well.
But using your logic to defend the OP is absurd. The whole point of his post was to emptily threaten line employees with personal legal action because of the company's policy. That crosses the line, and in that situation, as a manager, I think that protecting my CSRs will be better for the company in the long run than enabling the customer.
You then give a different example (the luxury hotel) where politeness and class are appropriate. Presumably the staff at your hotel didn't try to pressure guests not to leave, then refuse to check them out and badger them until they gave up trying to stop paying for a room and just left with the meter running. Naturally, a bullying guest would not be welcome back, but this is an entirely different context. It's late, and I forget the debating term for this practice is -- some kind of fallacy.
True enough. But my experience is that guys like the OP don't need to get badgered before they start making threats. The slightest little piece of bad news will do it; they're looking for opportunities to bully. In the hotel context, I heard that kind or crap after I refused to give an upgrade because the hotel was full... after the bar closed 15 minutes early... and, on the most memorable occasion, when someone's room had a different color of drapes than were depicted in our brochure, and we had no rooms with the "right" drapes vacant.
From his post it appeared to me that he was starting after the CSR with his transparently empty legal threats before the CSR even had time to badger him or refuse to cancel. But, even if not, the proper response is still to escalate. Threatening even the worst CSR doesn't solve anything; if you escalate, at least you might have a chance to help get the CSR in trouble, while if you threaten, you've just lost any chance to be taken seriously by the next level, no matter how bad your grievance. Is that appropriate? I don't know. But it's the truth.
I get any resistance, and I will imply very strongly that the rep is placing himself at very strong risk of personal legal expense.
Bullshit attitudes like this, not (usually) any fault of CSRs, are why customer service sucks so much for both parties involved. People like you are solely responsible for the low quality of customer service personnel, as everyone who can find his ass with two hands goes to do something -- anything -- else because of these unnecessarily unpleasant interactions. I dealt with your type for two years before getting out, and, even though it's been a long time, I can't just sit back and listen to you spout this sort of drivel.
Regardless of what you think of the policy, the guy on the other end is just a peon, not a "goon." He's doing this so he can pay rent, not because he enjoys harassing you -- got it? He has no control over the script. If you are upset by the script, ask to talk to a supervisor, or write the company a complaint letter. Ridiculous threats of personal legal action against someone with no control, that would get laughed out of any court on the face of the planet, just make you look like the irrationally angry, whiny moron you are.
Spouting empty threats not only doesn't help you, it actively hurts you. When I was a manager at an independent luxury hotel, no guest who threatened me or any of my employees like this would ever get a discount rate, an upgrade, a freebie, or hard-to-get reservations or tickets. Ever again. For life. Yes, we had records. And, if a guest was bad enough, the hotel would just somehow be full every time he called for a reservation, no matter who he talked to. People like you cost more in hassle and time we could spend serving the other customers than they generate in revenue. Good riddance.
On the other hand, we happily did all sorts of wonderful favors for people who somehow found it within themselves to display a tiny bit of class when interacting with us. Remember, the peon may have the ability to help you out or hook you up, if you do the same for him by letting him do his job and treating him like a fellow human being.
Jeez, the longer I sit here and stare at your post, the madder I get. But instead of threatening to sic a make-believe lawyer on you, I think I'll just go have a beer. Have a nice night, idiot.
Good flames, but for the win you need to insult Windows, Linux and Mac all in one sentence. You only managed two out of three.
Easy. Add: "... or Macs are Ultra Cheap!!!" (or "Ultra Powerful")
To return perfunctorily to the topic... these things are for the same brainiacs who think bigger is better everywhere else and buy Ford Excursions to drive Super-Size combos home to their empty 6000-square-foot McMansions in wherever the newest, biggest suburb is. Somehow in America we're afflicted with a disproportionate number of them. If 17" laptops are good, then 20"... uh... uh... well, I guess for these types, they'll probably fit on a lap... are better.
I'll stick with my 15" MacBook Pro, thanks. And I can't resist telling the OMG MAX SUX troll a few posts up that "most of the world" doesn't need to run SQL Server, but DVD Player, iTunes, and Microsoft Office. Unless I'm hallucinating, my MBP runs that stuff just fine (and Logic Pro better than fine, to boot).
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If you've ever sent an artist cash after downloading their work off allofmp3/p2p, I'll eat a top hat.
In any case, even sending the artist cash doesn't change the fact that you are operating outside the legal framework. Whether you like it or not, the label, not the artist, holds the rights -- and the artist consented to that.
You are rationalizing your dislike of paying for what you buy. Pure and simple. If you'd just say "I don't think I should pay" you'd have much more integrity than you do when you insult our intelligence with implausible ethical arguments.
ironically enough it runs far cooler when in Windows via BootCamp than in OSX (even though the battery life is almost halved).
Interesting. My 2.16 MBP runs very hot in OS X: between 55 C idle and 83 C at full load according to CoreDuoTemp. I can't imagine that it's running much hotter than this in Windows or the processor would either throttle itself or shut down. (I haven't taken the machine apart to look at thermal paste application.)
Yet the machine *feels* hotter in Windows, even though I have no way to actually measure the CPU temp. In OS X the strip above the keyboard is warm to the touch. In Windows (XP or Vista beta) it's quite hot and I can feel significant heat coming through the keyboard.
My fan is often on at very low speed in OS X if the machine is doing anything but idling. In Windows (Boot Camp) it is usually off but ramps up to a considerably higher speed frequently.
(I'll second the observation about battery life. No more than 2 hours tops in Windows. About 3:15 in OS X with no efforts to be frugal.)
much more powerful commodity Intel box (which is all Macs are now) and load up FreeBSD for around $300.
Bored again, so feeding the trolls...
You can't get a "much more powerful" commodity Intel (or other x86) box. The only "much more powerful" Intel boxes use very expensive high-end CPUs. No one here seems to realize that the cute cuddly little iMac has a 1.83GHz dual-core CPU; you're all comparing it with 2004 products.
For $300 your box will be significantly less powerful than the iMac *and* have no monitor. If you think otherwise, list the specific parts you're going to use, and the specific sources where you found your prices.
Not to say you couldn't get significanty more power (esp. graphics) than the iMac for *$900*, albeit in much uglier form, but come on.
Then there are the bad jokes like see-through windows, which we all get stuck with because somebody thought it was l33t.
I love translucent windows. I wish I could set the opacity of any window arbitrarily. It's incredibly useful when you're either copying text or using one window as a reference while writing in another.
I've also never had any noise or problems from the Radeon 9600 in my desktop machine, which has issues playing the latest games but which can do transparency and OS-level 3d effects without breaking a sweat. (If I wanted to play the latest games, I wouldn't be running OS X, now would I...) There are better cards than the Rage 128 even if you want quiet and reliability.
You don't have to wear a helmet while skiing, but it's probably just as dangerous, if not more. I've fallen way more while skiing than while riding my bike. I've seen more people fall while walking on icy sidewalks than falling while on a bicycle. Maybe we should ban walking on icy sidewalks.
Now you're just being disingenuous by ignoring obvious distinctions. I say this as a longtime skier and biker who has never been seriously injured by a skiing accident but has had his life saved by a bike helmet during a 35mph crash into a curb (caused by trying to avoid an inattentive driver).
Distinction #1: when you're skiing, you crash into snow, and there are no cars anywhere. When you're biking, you crash into concrete, and there are cars everywhere around you just waiting to run you over.
Distinction #2: If your bike has a motor, you are likely going faster than any skier but a professional racer... and they wear helmets. Also, when you fall on an icy sidewalk, you are not moving fast, and so you are unlikely to suffer serious trauma unless you fall exactly the wrong way. A severe bike fall is *going* to hurt you when you hit concrete at 30 mph or faster.
As for the under 18 factor: society has made 1) a normative judgment that kids' lives are worth more and 2) an empirical observation that kids, left alone, are likely to have poorer judgment than adults. I don't know about #1, but agree with #2... the bike helmet law I support would be one that requires kids to wear them everywhere and adults to wear them when riding on public streets.
In other words, you're not harming society at large, you're harming everyone in your risk pool.
If your logic were really carried out, no insurer would be willing to insure people riding without helmets. Thus, when they get in the inevitable gory crashes, we have two choices: pay their expenses from government funds, or let them die on the streets.
If you were really sticking to your point above, I suppose you'd let them die on the streets.
I think a helmet law is a much more sensible outcome, at least for motorcycles.
However, there are a lot of laws out there that are only on the books to stop you from hurting yourself. Such as bike helmet laws.
Failing to wear bike or motorcycle helmets affects the rights of others: those who have to pay for your long and expensive hospital stay because you crashed without a helmet.
In a world where catastrophic care is too expensive for individuals to pay without public or insurance assistance, any behavior that can lead to catastrophic injury is a legitimate candidate for regulation, no matter who the injured party is.
I don't know whether your fresh install was of a naked OS or a restore from Dell's original image. Most Dells ship with an image so full of junk that it makes them nearly unusable.
I have a Dell 3.2GHz P4 with 1GB RAM at work, with their special (and actually quite well-put-together) Windows XP image, and it flies. It's as much of a pleasure to use as a Windows box can be, if you ignore the gawdawful Dell keyboard with its tumescent space bar.
Well, they did drop the 12" PB, forcing those who want/need a smaller form factor to sacrifice for the cheaper MacBook.
...which is superior in every way to the 12" PB (except for not being as small). People are upset because they can't buy a small silver machine anymore. If Apple took a MacBook, made the case silver, put in a crappy X300 (not for performance, but so people could feel that they had a separate graphics card) and called it "MacBook Pro" people would stop complaining.
Are there really enough people going from Boston to DC to support a 4 hour train over a 7 hour one?
Add stops in Philly and New York, and, absolutely. Boston to Washington is under 450 miles. A good train should be able to cover that distance in 3 hours, or 3.5 with stops at the outer edge. Shuttle flights run either hourly or half-hourly between *all* the city pairs in that group and are usually full. "Chinatown" buses leave almost as frequently and are also full; a faster, cleaner and safer train with reasonably priced tickets would probably peel off some of those travelers. And I expect if people could travel around the Northeast without the hassles of the other methods, or the insanity that is parking in New York or Boston, they might travel more often. I know I would -- as a Boston-area resident (for the moment) I'd go to New York every month just for the hell of it.
In my world the trains would not only be faster but cleaner, more pleasant, and much more frequent and reliable. My vision is modeled on the intercity line between Geneva and Zurich, Switzerland. Those trains run hourly and are a wonderful way to get places, unlike anything we have here.
Slower trains could cover the regional lines between each city. With the rebuilding that would be necessary for the high-speed trains, the regionals would speed up too.
Amtrak isn't doing too hot. They handled 0.1% of all intercity traffic passenger miles in 2003 (most recent data point I could dig up).
Amtrak isn't a real train system. It's dirty, the equipment is old, it's horribly unreliable, it's slower than driving (which no passenger train has a right to be), trains don't run on any kind of reasonable schedule, and customer service is inconsistent. When I'm in Europe, I'm a train fanboy, but I don't consider riding Amtrak.
I think a better indicator of the demand for *real* trains is in the ridership on short-range airline shuttles. Those planes are packed, causing enormous airport congestion and worsening the already significant hassles inherent in modern air travel.
That's why I want to build a new system, not modeled on Amtrak but on the best of the Japanese and European high-speed systems. I think, unlike Amtrak, it would provide a comfortable, environmentally superior and relatively fast alternative to the short-range air travel we're increasingly putting up with.
I'll elaborate a bit... imagine going Boston to Washington in 3.5 hours, with no security checkpoint, room to stretch your legs, no seat belt sign, quiet (and the ability to change cars to get away from screaming babies), enjoyable scenery out the window, the train station a short cab ride from where you want to go on both ends, no mad scramble for seat assignments, and no need to pay outrageous change/cancel fees. I expect there would be demand to run a train once an hour from 5 am to 9 pm, which you could just catch, buying a ticket at the station, as necessary. Similar service would work throughout the Northeast and the Rust Belt, between Atlanta and Miami, and between San Diego and Vancouver. With the right equipment it might even work somewhere like Texas where the cities are far apart but there would be little to stop the trains from reaching near-airplane speeds.
Sheesh, he wasn't a troll... it's a valid point, if simplistically put. /rolls eyes
We need both highways and mass transport, and the failing of 1950s planning was that it prioritized highways above all else. A better use of resources would have been to build the rural and interstate parts of the system the same way they were built, but to substitute trains for some of the capacity in the urban network.
In Europe, they've got it all. Their intercity highways are better than ours. And for commuting, they have train networks that actually work and are pleasant enough that people want to use them. Saves gas, saves time (the high-speed trains are faster and you don't have to park them), and you can still drive your car just fine when you are going somewhere the trains don't go or don't reach effectively.
At this point I'd like to see the next big infrastructure investment be in a European-style intercity, high-speed train network to give people an alternative to highways. It wouldn't work across the great expanses of the West, but it would work just fine from Chicago eastward and along the West Coast. Imagine getting from Boston to Washington in 3 1/2 hours without the hassle of airport transportation, TSA bullshit, etc., etc. and simultaneously reducing airport congestion. Sounds worthwhile to me.
Sure, there are that many bridges. Don't just think of the big ones crossing lakes, etc... think about every dinky little over- and underpass. In the urban parts of the system, you might have 10 or more of those in a mile.
Sounds like you need new local leadership. Someone needs to campaign and run against your officers on a clean-up platform. If for some reason that's not possible, then you may need to go to the national union (if there is one), because any union local should have democratic procedures for selecting its officers.
Why does the union own condos? (I'm ignoring the "BMW" comment because union leaders get paid too, and like anyone else they can spend their own money however they want. If it were a priority for them most senior union employees could probably afford some sort of BMW.) It's not a union's job to provide free vacations for the leadership.
Also, how can you lose your job for asking too many questions? The union can't just summarily kick you out. If they can, see the first paragraph -- you need new leadership.
To answer your larger question, the fact that it's possible to corrupt a union doesn't negate unions' purpose any more than the fact that it's possible to corrupt a corporation negates the idea of going into business.
This is the same fallacy I pointed out in the other post -- the idea of "well, since I can't get it with my inadequate bargaining power, then no one, even those who organize so as to be on an equal footing with the company, should get it."
The toll takers negotiated their contract. Management approved it. It seems to me if you are an engineer making $12 an hour then your workplace is crying out for unionization, or possibly you need to exercise your individual market rights and get a better job. (How is that even possible? I made $12.50 an hour as a desk supervisor at a nonunion hotel 6 years ago. I made between $18 and $24 an hour, plus overtime, as a union bus driver. I have friends who are ordinary IT guys in academia whose salary, if measured by the hour, would add up to about $20-$22/hour.)
I feel for you -- I didn't enjoy making $12 an hour either. But the toll takers won what they have through a fair market process, and they aren't to blame for whatever forces are causing you to be underpaid.
Relatively few Americans' hard work has created the productivity growth we've seen (I attribute most of that growth to the baby boomers). Some American's also don't deserve to share in those benefits.
I'd like to see some support for this. The data I've seen suggests the productivity gains have been extraordinarily broad-based. Managers deserve some of the credit, as IT and implementation of continually more efficient logistical procedures have helped workers get more done. But workers deserve credit as well. From the bottom to the top, we're working more hours, taking less vacation, and using more effective time-management techniques.
I don't know who you are referring to when you say "some Americans don't deserve to share," but I believe if a worker is more productive that worker should be rewarded accordingly. A perfectly working market would ensure that by offering the worker another job if he were not paid in accordance with his productivity. But when there are the sort of large-scale, systemic differences in bargaining power that you see between individuals and large corporations, the market doesn't work perfectly. Unions are the perfect tool to right that balance, since they allow the market to function with equal bargaining power and without regulation.
The laws are in place, they're not going anywhere, the workers have won...
Not so fast. We've seen steady erosion in the real minimum wage, repeated attempts to exclude more and more workers from overtime protections, weakening of ergonomic protections, shrinkage of worker's comp benefits, lackadaisical enforcement of basic things like lunch breaks and safety rules, and administration-sponsored attempts to replace entire classes of well-protected jobs with insecure, low-paying bottom-rung ones. It's not like the same forces that led to 72-hour workweeks in the bad old days have magically gone away. Preserving workplace sanity, like preserving freedom, requires constant vigilance.
1. Cough. The automobile industry. 'nuff said.
The union's job is not to respond to long-term trends in a product market. That's management's job. While perhaps a more perceptive group of unions would have structured the big health care and retirement programs differently, to allow for more flexibility, the real blame can be squarely laid on the lazy management that failed to see the Japanese carmakers right under its nose in the '60s and '70s.
2. Longshore union.
Say what? These guys are still killed at the rate of several a year. They are killed in the most gruesome imaginable ways: crushed by containers, sent flying a quarter mile by snapping cables, falling 100 feet from cranes, etc. It's probably the most dangerous union job there is, and one of the most dangerous in the country. Yes, machines are doing some work they used to do, but they put themselves in physical danger for the sake of a critical step in our economic process. They deserve every cent they get.
3 ... Why'd they strike? Cause "The Man" wanted them to pay a co-pay like the rest of us.
I can never quite get my head around this argument. What you are saying is "With my artificially low bargaining power I can't get a proper medical plan. Therefore no one else should get it either, even if they were smart enough to band together to negotiate as an equal with the company."
If the workers at the non-union stores were to organize, they could get that health plan as well. So could you. Protect your interests. Don't enable someone who's trying to ensure that you get a below-market outcome for their own benefit.
4 ... Thanks to this bullshit (read: pension plans) the City of San Diego is for all practical purposes bankrupt. Mmm. Fiscal 2007 budget: $2.6 billion. Pension fund deficit: $1.43 billion.
And this is the union's fault how? Again, it was bad fiscal management by the city that got it into this mess. The pension plan was
There has not been a comparable increase in output compared with the increase in wages and benefits
You're right, although not in the way you want to be. Productivity growth in America has vastly outpaced wage growth since the '70s. This applies across unionized and non-unionized industry alike. It doesn't see a rocket scientist to see that the extra money has wound up in the hands of either shareholders or management (depending on how honest management is). Irrespective of the wage question, the productivity growth is what has kept our economy so healthy over most of the last 30 years.
While economists can debate the question until they're blue in the face, there is a credible argument, which I believe, that wider distribution of productivity gains is better for the economy, because money distributed to poorer people is likely to get spent immediately. Beyond a minimum wage/tax subsidy floor, we clearly don't want to achieve that policy goal through regulation of salaries. The best way to distribute money from productivity gains fairly is by equalizing bargaining power and information between labor and investors. How do you accomplish that? Unions and collective bargaining.
Unions are more necessary than ever if we want all Americans to share in the prosperity that their hard work has created through productivity growth. Just because we're not fighting against a 72-hour workweek anymore doesn't mean the basic reason for the existence of unions, to create equal bargaining power for workers, is any less desirable.
With the theory out of the way, I'll address some of your bogus (and oft-repeated by people who have never belonged to a union) examples. I was a government-employed union transit bus driver from 2000 to 2005 (which was a job I loved, incidentally), so perhaps I can clear up some of the misconceptions.
For example, some government workers get paid 40 hours when they only do 37 hours of work.
It's true that some *salaried* government workers work only 35 or 37.5 hours. Their salaries reflect that; they are paid for 35 or 37.5 hours, not 40. As far as hourly workers go, there are some provisions in some contracts that allow a worker to pick up hours without working -- but those are there to guarantee the full-time worker an 8-hour day when it's administratively simpler (for instance, when a bus run happens to return to the garage after 7 hours and 45 minutes thanks to the schedule) for the government not to set up an eight-hour workday. The unions fought hard for that to prevent management from simply shrinking workers' days down to four hours or less. I don't know of any examples of employers otherwise regularly paying employees for more hours than they work -- why not just raise the hourly rate instead?
Toll-booth workers get upwards of $25 an hour to stand there and hand out tickets.
I can't find any toll-collector wage over $21 in the country. Most of them are closer to $16. It's dirty, repetitive, unrewarding, dangerous (people like to rob tollbooths) and potentially injurious (to hearing, especially) work. Most toll collectors don't hand out tickets (there are machines for that) but count money. Would you consider it progress if we paid them minimum wage, they couldn't afford decent housing anymore, and turnover in these high-accountability positions (lots of cash handled) were suddenly 200%?
Government construction workers get paid somewheres around that same rate to stand around all day (honestly - do you EVER see these guys working?)
Everyone whines about this. So why aren't you on a state road crew? The jobs aren't that hard to get. People complain, but when the chips are down they realize these guys have tough jobs.
If you see a worker standing, it's probably because he's acting as a safety spotter for someone else you can't see. When you're dealing with heavy machinery and dangerous chemicals all day, it's worth
In a truly free market, though, another company will gladly spring up doing the exact same thing, but NOT pay the CEOs a bunch of money, until the other company goes out of business (or changes).
...
Recognize that to economists, everything is a market unless it's coersion.
Unlike Marxist Hacker 42, who I don't think will be comfortable until there's blood in the streets, I'm not going to tell you I have no use for a free market. In fact, my goal would be for as many people as possible to make any rational trades they want, which is probably the outcome you're thinking of when you say "free market."
But you don't get there by removing all the rules. That Econ class should have taught you that all that happens when you remove all the rules is that people take advantage of disparities in bargaining power and information to coerce or fool other parties into non-rational transactions.
The CEO case is a perfect example. The CEOs hornswoggle or pay off the directors, who in turn do the same to the shareholders. Shareholders and employees are left holding the bag. Since there is no incentive for CEOs not to do this, as they profit much more handsomely than they could from simply doing good business, there is no incentive for a CEO to lead your "another company" into the picture.
Thus active public intervention is required to ensure a market where all parties who bargain and inform themselves to the best of their ability realize positive outcomes. The great failing of many people inclined toward a viewpoint informed by classical economics is that they fail to realize this -- effectively embracing a course which inevitably leads to feudalism, not free markets. In this specific situation, the public intervention needed is simply enforced regulation: if Americans won't take your job because you're offering a low salary at which they turn up their noses, that's fine, but actively excluding Americans in order to take advantage of the H-1Bs should be (and is) outlawed.
This is a case where the existing law makes sense and should be enforced, for the sake of a fair and free market.
The only downside is that I can't get in your face physically to make the point.
That's really too bad. It means I can't have you hauled out of my building in handcuffs for investigation of assault. Unlike "say[ing] something inappropriate" or "wast[ing] my time," assault and battery is actionable under civil law and punishable under criminal law, and you should face consequences for your dumb-ass threats.
If you ask me to cancel your account (or, let's say, reservation, since I never worked for a place where accounts were sold) like a normal person, I'll do it with a smile, although I'll probably ask once if there's anything we can do to keep your business. If you get in my face or any of my employees' faces, I'll trespass you from the property, under the arm of a 300-lb. security guard if necessary, and press charges (and sue if you caused injury). Threats are not appropriate even in high-stress situations, and people need to be more ready to draw that line in the sand. I'm fucking sick of people so pathetic they get their jollies out of bullying others.
You legislate that expensive portable devices should take six years of abuse.
Wow, it feels odd to take the OMGZ0RZ REGOOL4SHUN SUX!1 position, but in this case I have to. Cheap consumer devices are one of the few areas where a mostly unregulated market (only regulated to prevent fire, lethal electric shock, etc.) has proven time and again that it achieves the best results for consumers.
Not everyone wants to pay big extra dough for a device (or, in this case, perhaps not obtain the device at all, due to the lack of 1.8" HDs and batteries that can take 6 years of abuse) just because some {bureaucrat,legislative_body} arbitrarily decided that device ought to last six years.
I think most people know that a US$300 consumer device that gets bumped, dropped, joggled, and scratched every day isn't going to last for six years. For those who don't know that, Apple's well-documented one-year warranty should provide a clue. And most of those consumers will want a new device long before the six-year period is up, regardless of whether their original device still works, so they can have the cool new thing. I know I've never kept an iPod for more than two years. Hell, I only kept a *Mac* for six years once, although they've all worked just fine when I sold them/gave them away.
As for the batteries, how do you propose that Apple solves the problem? There isn't some magic battery technology out there that lasts forever. NiCad and NiMH batteries suffer memory effects. LiIon and its descendants only function over a limited number of cycles. Making the battery removable would have the side effect of making the iPod bigger and more fragile. Now maybe Apple should document the issue better, but I'm not sure what engineering changes you would have it make.
And then there's the aspect of comparing AOL to a _luxury_ hotel. Heh. Let's not go there.
Judging by this and several other comments, I should have been a little more clear through my anger. I was not intentionally comparing the TFA situation and my hotel experience directly. (I probably would have gone home and cried like a baby if anyone had ever compared us to AOL in any way.) And, certainly, it's much more reasonable for the customer to get spitting mad at the AOL situation than at anything that would have happened in my hotel.
The reason I made the comparison was to show that bullshit threats like the OP (and one other poster) was making are damaging and counterproductive in whatever situation. No matter how angry the situation makes you, and how justified that anger is, frivolously threatening legal action will get you nowhere. It won't solve your problem, and it will piss off the people at the other end enough that resolution just got farther away.
From an economic perspective, whatever time you've already wasted is a sunk cost. No matter how much anger it's generated, you need to think "What's the best way, from the point where I am now, to resolve this?" If you haven't gotten anywhere at a low level it's time to escalate and/or write letters. Chargebacks are fine too. But, regardless of his moral culpability for the script you're hearing (which reasonable people can disagree on) threatening some powerless schmuck is NOT the way to solve your problem.
I think most rational people know that. The ones who threaten, like the posters above, are not doing it to resolve an issue. They're doing it to bully, plain and simple. That's a bullshit way to interact with people.
Except for the OP they all seem to be anonymous cowards. But if any of the bullies have enough courage to return here, I want to see a concise and plausible explanation of the legal theory you would use to successfully sue a recalcitrant CSR personally. Hint: there isn't one.
The customer is angry with the way your script treats him, with your company, not with you personally. When he starts ranting, he is ranting against your company, and he has every, absolutely every right to do so, because you are representing it.
I don't disagree with you in principle. When the customer makes clear why he's upset, and what we can do to resolve it, then there's a point where fruitful discussion can start. And if we can't take common-sense action, then, like AOL, we're providing bad service.
By no means am I trying to say that customers don't have the right to be upset with problems or bad service, and to tell me about it. Many of our most steadfast customers first spoke with me because they had a problem, and became loyal because they felt we resolved it well.
But using your logic to defend the OP is absurd. The whole point of his post was to emptily threaten line employees with personal legal action because of the company's policy. That crosses the line, and in that situation, as a manager, I think that protecting my CSRs will be better for the company in the long run than enabling the customer.
You then give a different example (the luxury hotel) where politeness and class are appropriate. Presumably the staff at your hotel didn't try to pressure guests not to leave, then refuse to check them out and badger them until they gave up trying to stop paying for a room and just left with the meter running. Naturally, a bullying guest would not be welcome back, but this is an entirely different context. It's late, and I forget the debating term for this practice is -- some kind of fallacy.
True enough. But my experience is that guys like the OP don't need to get badgered before they start making threats. The slightest little piece of bad news will do it; they're looking for opportunities to bully. In the hotel context, I heard that kind or crap after I refused to give an upgrade because the hotel was full... after the bar closed 15 minutes early... and, on the most memorable occasion, when someone's room had a different color of drapes than were depicted in our brochure, and we had no rooms with the "right" drapes vacant.
From his post it appeared to me that he was starting after the CSR with his transparently empty legal threats before the CSR even had time to badger him or refuse to cancel. But, even if not, the proper response is still to escalate. Threatening even the worst CSR doesn't solve anything; if you escalate, at least you might have a chance to help get the CSR in trouble, while if you threaten, you've just lost any chance to be taken seriously by the next level, no matter how bad your grievance. Is that appropriate? I don't know. But it's the truth.
I get any resistance, and I will imply very strongly that the rep is placing himself at very strong risk of personal legal expense.
Bullshit attitudes like this, not (usually) any fault of CSRs, are why customer service sucks so much for both parties involved. People like you are solely responsible for the low quality of customer service personnel, as everyone who can find his ass with two hands goes to do something -- anything -- else because of these unnecessarily unpleasant interactions. I dealt with your type for two years before getting out, and, even though it's been a long time, I can't just sit back and listen to you spout this sort of drivel.
Regardless of what you think of the policy, the guy on the other end is just a peon, not a "goon." He's doing this so he can pay rent, not because he enjoys harassing you -- got it? He has no control over the script. If you are upset by the script, ask to talk to a supervisor, or write the company a complaint letter. Ridiculous threats of personal legal action against someone with no control, that would get laughed out of any court on the face of the planet, just make you look like the irrationally angry, whiny moron you are.
Spouting empty threats not only doesn't help you, it actively hurts you. When I was a manager at an independent luxury hotel, no guest who threatened me or any of my employees like this would ever get a discount rate, an upgrade, a freebie, or hard-to-get reservations or tickets. Ever again. For life. Yes, we had records. And, if a guest was bad enough, the hotel would just somehow be full every time he called for a reservation, no matter who he talked to. People like you cost more in hassle and time we could spend serving the other customers than they generate in revenue. Good riddance.
On the other hand, we happily did all sorts of wonderful favors for people who somehow found it within themselves to display a tiny bit of class when interacting with us. Remember, the peon may have the ability to help you out or hook you up, if you do the same for him by letting him do his job and treating him like a fellow human being.
Jeez, the longer I sit here and stare at your post, the madder I get. But instead of threatening to sic a make-believe lawyer on you, I think I'll just go have a beer. Have a nice night, idiot.
Good flames, but for the win you need to insult Windows, Linux and Mac all in one sentence. You only managed two out of three.
Easy. Add: "... or Macs are Ultra Cheap!!!" (or "Ultra Powerful")
To return perfunctorily to the topic... these things are for the same brainiacs who think bigger is better everywhere else and buy Ford Excursions to drive Super-Size combos home to their empty 6000-square-foot McMansions in wherever the newest, biggest suburb is. Somehow in America we're afflicted with a disproportionate number of them. If 17" laptops are good, then 20"... uh... uh... well, I guess for these types, they'll probably fit on a lap... are better.
I'll stick with my 15" MacBook Pro, thanks. And I can't resist telling the OMG MAX SUX troll a few posts up that "most of the world" doesn't need to run SQL Server, but DVD Player, iTunes, and Microsoft Office. Unless I'm hallucinating, my MBP runs that stuff just fine (and Logic Pro better than fine, to boot).