One would also think that collecting this sort of data using a reliable GPS driven system like the StreetView cars would make Google's Geolocation Database respond with rough location estimates faster than their cell phone operating system's GPS can acquire and triangulate an accurate location.
When I'd first seen this article it seemed as if having the streetview cars collect the wifi data was to make Androids Geolocation services much faster and more accurate.
Hey now, just because the plans are dubious doesn't mean Geek Squad Agents are goons.
I strive daily to make that sometimes dubious service plan pay off.
Hell, one of the only reasons I stick with the company is that I can go completely overboard and make anything they want us to pitch worth it to the consumer. Management be damned. There's a whole community of us who always do the RIGHT thing.
Then why is it still called "concrete".
If we're changing that definition, I'm suddenly very off the hook as far as quoting turnarounds at work based around "concrete" numbers.
Geek Squad's reputation is already damaged by the horrible experiences. The problem with customer service companies is that only the BAD ever get posted or mentioned anywhere. It's the good and great that often go unnoticed because the customer's have no need to vent frustrations.
At least at my store, the technicians are capable. I've seen some other geek squad's do stupid, stupid things and thought to myself "So this is why we have such a bad name..." Then I realize that some things are unpreventable. Things DO happen, so I've worked with my fellow agents and strive personally to be better, and to increase the number of people who have a POSITIVE GS experience.
On our customer satisfaction surveys, I receive nearly constant 100% satisfaction ratings, or even if it's a 0% satisfaction in service because I wasn't able to solve the problem, I ALWAYS get good comments on my interaction and explanations. I won't stop working with a customer until I have done everything I can to SOLVE for the customer.
I'd just like to throw in my two cents as per the bestbuyscam blog linked in the previous post.
I work at the store mentioned in that post, and I'm appalled at what took place. Thankfully, since that incident, things have been done to rectify behavior like that.
I will admit that some things do happen, but I've also seen managers bend over backwards in a contortionist fashion, sometimes losing several thousand dollars worth of merchandise, just because a customer was respectful of the mistake. Attitude means everything, and with my store, we have PRIDE in that we SOLVE for the customer, regardless of the immediate hit. In our minds, the relationship is worth it. The associate's primary goal is to make money, yes, but the same can be said of any retail store. What's different about this store is that the management learns from the mistakes of customer loss and WILL strive to make it right.
I can attest that most of the time, and this is from my own personal experience, and how policy has been since I started there in October, that the ASSOCIATE can now solve for the customer, and the manager's only job is to ensure that the solution is right for both the customer AND the store.
I'm legally not permitted to speak for the company, since I am just an associate, so this isn't an official representation, this is just what I'm seeing, what I've experienced, and hopefully what I've influenced. I have pride in my store and the people I work with... most of them. There are a few people that are still so worried about the money that they won't solve for the customer every time, but that's why, as an associate, I contact the managers I know will do the RIGHT thing, not the PROFITABLE thing. I just want to throw it out there that the customer experience is almost entirely based upon how the customer reacts.
Instead of demanding to speak with another manager, ask if you can get a second opinion for your peace of mind. It works the other way, too, I know, which is why in many situations when dealing with a customer, I too try to be as courteous and polite as I can.
I hope my post can make an impact on the opinions of my store in particular.
I applaud your proper use of sentence structure and phrases outside the more common vernacular in constructing a sound and logical criticism of another's comment. It's very refreshing.
What did you say about loose bowels sonny?
Yeah, they're a pain, I've had to have my diaper changed six times in the last hour.
Oh, let me put my hearing aid in.
VOWELS! Oh, gotcha now.
I'm going to also throw my lot towards eeebuntu.
It runs great out of the box, netbook remix interface is fantastic, draws on the stock Ubuntu repos so you can use any software from Ubuntu.
It's really the only distro for the eee that "Just Works"
Thanks for taking the time to reply. The drive did spin up without reporting about fifteen times while I was troubleshooting (plugging it in to different spots, etc). After that point, the drive no longer spun up at all, and when powered the PCB gets extremely hot. With that information, do you think there's hope for the drive with a new PCB?
What I'd like to know is if there are instances of this in older drives, even as far back as the 7200.9's and if Seagate was possibly aware of a similar problem in the older drives.
I've got a 7200.9 sitting here on my desk collecting dust that I was quite bothered with. It did, in fact, one day stop spinning up. Stopped reporting to the bios and all.
Now, this happened to me after having already done an RMA on the first '.9'. This time the data WAS lost due to a problem as described (whereas the first seems to be unrelated).
Instead of RMA-ing the second one, I've been hanging on to it with the hope someone will be able to help me. Unfortunately, in my drive to get the data off the disk, I purchased a Seagate drive that claimed to be a.9 in the ad, but showed up as a.10 instead, meaning no platter swapping for me (I didn't notice until AFTER I'd cracked the case on the.9)
Any info you have would be a reassurance.
I would also like to point out that Konqueror was "replaced" by Dolphin, which in my opinion was a bad decision.
I enjoyed all the things in Konqueror's filemanagement profile like tabbed browsing, and the ability to open Konsole pointed to the current location in an easily accessible logical place.
The switch to Dolphin has utterly dumbfounded me. And it's likely I just have issues with it because I don't recognize it, as is expected with something new, but I still have yet to see the logic in the switch to Dolphin in it's current form.
KDE 4.0 seems all pretty, little function. Though I gripe, I do admit it does look very nice, and it has potential for greatness.
Wow, there is actually someone else in this world who's seen a roll of toilet paper that says that. I though that was something you'd find in a little western novelty shop somewhere.
I can personally attest to lower memory usage by Firefox 3.
I usually keep upwards of fifteen tabs open (I visit a lot of sites regularly, several times a day).
On FF2, I was getting upwards of five-hundred megabytes of memory usage. Now with FF3 it stays well below 250 meg. MUCH better than FF3. It's not fantastic, but it's better.
Not only that, but that kind of service would also remove the monopolies already in place, as is the case in Denver, where Qwest owns the telephone lines and Comcast owns the cable lines. Each of those companies has a monopoly because they can DENY any service from using those lines, as Comcast has. Since they don't allow other services on the network, Comcast is the only cable internet provider, cable TV provider, and Cable VOIP provider in the Denver Metro Area.
It's similar with Qwest. They charge any user for the ability to use the lines, so they essentially pull $15-20 from EVERY DSL and phone user every month. A lot of people take the silly route and say "well if I'm paying them anyway why not just go with their service?"
Need to get away from the monopoly... isn't that, you know, illegal?
Uh... I heard they WERE porting the desktop, as WELL as the applications, but that because of the complexity they wanted to start with the apps. It won't be long before the environment gets ported.
Hell, I've been waiting and hoping for KDE4 on Windows for the longest. There has yet to be a desktop shell replacement I've been excited about in Windows, and I've tried them all. Aston, LiteStep, the list goes ON and ON, and not a single one worthy of more than three days of use before I get tired of the crashes. Even Explorer does a better job than these shell replacements.
Ah, but with text and voice relationships you focus less on how the person looks and more on their personality.
On your second point, about being part of a global community (without that "tight-knit" part), that one depends on WHAT communities you are a part of. I know of several places where the community is so tight-knit, everyone comes together every year or so to catch up and have that all-important "in person" time you fleshy beasts deem so important.
Honestly though, I have found more people worth my time around the world than in my local community.
So I'm NOT the only one to remember it. Thank goodness, I was afraid I was getting old. I do seem to remember a more recent incarnation, maybe for the Playstation?
Why? Because the people who like to play video games don't want to watch other people play, and the people who don't like to play video games - surprise! - they don't want to watch other people play either.
With pro sports, the rules and playing field are simple and easy enough for most people to grok at a glance - with video games, either you're familiar with the in-game territory that's being played at that moment - in which case its BORING, in a "been there, done that" kind of way, or you haven't, in which case it's like a movie spoiler.
Okay, so you count the sales of movie-based games where?
You see the movie the game is usually spoiled, so why get the game?
The problem lies not in that it's a per listener charge, but that it's a per listener charge that's quite a bit more than the old charge, and retroactive.
Some of these stations are barely able to keep themselves afloat, let alone pay the ridiculous retroactive fees. The livelihoods of some people supporting broadcasters may very well be at stake.
The fact that big internet radio stations like Yahoo are going to go silent for the day only goes to show that this change isn't just bad for the little stations, but for the big stations as well.
Another piece of the puzzle comes from places that have advertisers that do pay per listener, but the problem there is that the stations are going to have to look for advertisers that pay MORE or increase the number of ads, and even some stations without advertisers that have kept afloat on donations or a larger corporate entity are going to have to find advertisers.
I don't think so... A more accurate description of the matter is that we're downloading the songs we can't get without paying an enormous overhead to the RIAA/label. We really could care less about the poor record company executive not being able to buy his fifteenth mansion.
So, here's an open letter to the RIAA and all the recording labels out there that aren't passing at least 75% of the profits on to the artist: Go away, we don't want you. We as consumers would rather pay the artist. It's either most of the money to the artist, all to the artist, or none at all.
You take a car and ram it into other cars. In the end, you either win the race, or blow up.
It's more of an adrenaline pumping experience than work related depression.
In first person shooters set in a futuristic earth you could perhaps have a laser gun made by Ruger or Beretta.
Or perhaps if your FPS got down to 2 or 3 and holds like that have a friendly graphic reminder that the game would work better with an upgraded video card/processor/memory depending on what your system specs are.
I feel that advertising in games could be benificial to gamers and developers alike and it's perfectly acceptable.
We get advertised at when we are driving down the road, when we walk through a mall, browse the web, watch TV, listen to the radio, eat fast food, and when we check our free e-mail.
Advertising will never leave us, and I feel it is acceptable in gaming. Advertising is an excellent way to get a product sold. Otherwise, we'd be stuck with word of mouth.
Slashdot Mirror
One would also think that collecting this sort of data using a reliable GPS driven system like the StreetView cars would make Google's Geolocation Database respond with rough location estimates faster than their cell phone operating system's GPS can acquire and triangulate an accurate location. When I'd first seen this article it seemed as if having the streetview cars collect the wifi data was to make Androids Geolocation services much faster and more accurate.
Hey now, just because the plans are dubious doesn't mean Geek Squad Agents are goons. I strive daily to make that sometimes dubious service plan pay off. Hell, one of the only reasons I stick with the company is that I can go completely overboard and make anything they want us to pitch worth it to the consumer. Management be damned. There's a whole community of us who always do the RIGHT thing.
Then why is it still called "concrete". If we're changing that definition, I'm suddenly very off the hook as far as quoting turnarounds at work based around "concrete" numbers.
Geek Squad's reputation is already damaged by the horrible experiences. The problem with customer service companies is that only the BAD ever get posted or mentioned anywhere. It's the good and great that often go unnoticed because the customer's have no need to vent frustrations.
At least at my store, the technicians are capable. I've seen some other geek squad's do stupid, stupid things and thought to myself "So this is why we have such a bad name..." Then I realize that some things are unpreventable. Things DO happen, so I've worked with my fellow agents and strive personally to be better, and to increase the number of people who have a POSITIVE GS experience.
On our customer satisfaction surveys, I receive nearly constant 100% satisfaction ratings, or even if it's a 0% satisfaction in service because I wasn't able to solve the problem, I ALWAYS get good comments on my interaction and explanations. I won't stop working with a customer until I have done everything I can to SOLVE for the customer.
I'd just like to throw in my two cents as per the bestbuyscam blog linked in the previous post.
I work at the store mentioned in that post, and I'm appalled at what took place. Thankfully, since that incident, things have been done to rectify behavior like that.
I will admit that some things do happen, but I've also seen managers bend over backwards in a contortionist fashion, sometimes losing several thousand dollars worth of merchandise, just because a customer was respectful of the mistake. Attitude means everything, and with my store, we have PRIDE in that we SOLVE for the customer, regardless of the immediate hit. In our minds, the relationship is worth it. The associate's primary goal is to make money, yes, but the same can be said of any retail store. What's different about this store is that the management learns from the mistakes of customer loss and WILL strive to make it right.
I can attest that most of the time, and this is from my own personal experience, and how policy has been since I started there in October, that the ASSOCIATE can now solve for the customer, and the manager's only job is to ensure that the solution is right for both the customer AND the store.
I'm legally not permitted to speak for the company, since I am just an associate, so this isn't an official representation, this is just what I'm seeing, what I've experienced, and hopefully what I've influenced. I have pride in my store and the people I work with... most of them. There are a few people that are still so worried about the money that they won't solve for the customer every time, but that's why, as an associate, I contact the managers I know will do the RIGHT thing, not the PROFITABLE thing. I just want to throw it out there that the customer experience is almost entirely based upon how the customer reacts.
Instead of demanding to speak with another manager, ask if you can get a second opinion for your peace of mind. It works the other way, too, I know, which is why in many situations when dealing with a customer, I too try to be as courteous and polite as I can.
I hope my post can make an impact on the opinions of my store in particular.
I applaud your proper use of sentence structure and phrases outside the more common vernacular in constructing a sound and logical criticism of another's comment. It's very refreshing.
What did you say about loose bowels sonny? Yeah, they're a pain, I've had to have my diaper changed six times in the last hour. Oh, let me put my hearing aid in. VOWELS! Oh, gotcha now.
I'm going to also throw my lot towards eeebuntu. It runs great out of the box, netbook remix interface is fantastic, draws on the stock Ubuntu repos so you can use any software from Ubuntu. It's really the only distro for the eee that "Just Works"
Uhm... You've got red on you.
Thanks for taking the time to reply. The drive did spin up without reporting about fifteen times while I was troubleshooting (plugging it in to different spots, etc). After that point, the drive no longer spun up at all, and when powered the PCB gets extremely hot. With that information, do you think there's hope for the drive with a new PCB?
What I'd like to know is if there are instances of this in older drives, even as far back as the 7200.9's and if Seagate was possibly aware of a similar problem in the older drives. I've got a 7200.9 sitting here on my desk collecting dust that I was quite bothered with. It did, in fact, one day stop spinning up. Stopped reporting to the bios and all. Now, this happened to me after having already done an RMA on the first '.9'. This time the data WAS lost due to a problem as described (whereas the first seems to be unrelated). Instead of RMA-ing the second one, I've been hanging on to it with the hope someone will be able to help me. Unfortunately, in my drive to get the data off the disk, I purchased a Seagate drive that claimed to be a .9 in the ad, but showed up as a .10 instead, meaning no platter swapping for me (I didn't notice until AFTER I'd cracked the case on the .9)
Any info you have would be a reassurance.
I would also like to point out that Konqueror was "replaced" by Dolphin, which in my opinion was a bad decision. I enjoyed all the things in Konqueror's filemanagement profile like tabbed browsing, and the ability to open Konsole pointed to the current location in an easily accessible logical place. The switch to Dolphin has utterly dumbfounded me. And it's likely I just have issues with it because I don't recognize it, as is expected with something new, but I still have yet to see the logic in the switch to Dolphin in it's current form. KDE 4.0 seems all pretty, little function. Though I gripe, I do admit it does look very nice, and it has potential for greatness.
Wow, there is actually someone else in this world who's seen a roll of toilet paper that says that. I though that was something you'd find in a little western novelty shop somewhere.
I can personally attest to lower memory usage by Firefox 3. I usually keep upwards of fifteen tabs open (I visit a lot of sites regularly, several times a day). On FF2, I was getting upwards of five-hundred megabytes of memory usage. Now with FF3 it stays well below 250 meg. MUCH better than FF3. It's not fantastic, but it's better.
Community Fiber Easy, and slogan-able. "So ComFibe in us, your community run Fiber Optic leader."
Not only that, but that kind of service would also remove the monopolies already in place, as is the case in Denver, where Qwest owns the telephone lines and Comcast owns the cable lines. Each of those companies has a monopoly because they can DENY any service from using those lines, as Comcast has. Since they don't allow other services on the network, Comcast is the only cable internet provider, cable TV provider, and Cable VOIP provider in the Denver Metro Area.
It's similar with Qwest. They charge any user for the ability to use the lines, so they essentially pull $15-20 from EVERY DSL and phone user every month. A lot of people take the silly route and say "well if I'm paying them anyway why not just go with their service?"
Need to get away from the monopoly... isn't that, you know, illegal?
Uh... I heard they WERE porting the desktop, as WELL as the applications, but that because of the complexity they wanted to start with the apps. It won't be long before the environment gets ported.
Hell, I've been waiting and hoping for KDE4 on Windows for the longest. There has yet to be a desktop shell replacement I've been excited about in Windows, and I've tried them all. Aston, LiteStep, the list goes ON and ON, and not a single one worthy of more than three days of use before I get tired of the crashes. Even Explorer does a better job than these shell replacements.
Ah, but with text and voice relationships you focus less on how the person looks and more on their personality.
On your second point, about being part of a global community (without that "tight-knit" part), that one depends on WHAT communities you are a part of. I know of several places where the community is so tight-knit, everyone comes together every year or so to catch up and have that all-important "in person" time you fleshy beasts deem so important.
Honestly though, I have found more people worth my time around the world than in my local community.
I still want a Police Box for my back yard...
So I'm NOT the only one to remember it. Thank goodness, I was afraid I was getting old. I do seem to remember a more recent incarnation, maybe for the Playstation?
Why? Because the people who like to play video games don't want to watch other people play, and the people who don't like to play video games - surprise! - they don't want to watch other people play either.
With pro sports, the rules and playing field are simple and easy enough for most people to grok at a glance - with video games, either you're familiar with the in-game territory that's being played at that moment - in which case its BORING, in a "been there, done that" kind of way, or you haven't, in which case it's like a movie spoiler.
Okay, so you count the sales of movie-based games where? You see the movie the game is usually spoiled, so why get the game?The problem lies not in that it's a per listener charge, but that it's a per listener charge that's quite a bit more than the old charge, and retroactive.
Some of these stations are barely able to keep themselves afloat, let alone pay the ridiculous retroactive fees. The livelihoods of some people supporting broadcasters may very well be at stake.
The fact that big internet radio stations like Yahoo are going to go silent for the day only goes to show that this change isn't just bad for the little stations, but for the big stations as well.
Another piece of the puzzle comes from places that have advertisers that do pay per listener, but the problem there is that the stations are going to have to look for advertisers that pay MORE or increase the number of ads, and even some stations without advertisers that have kept afloat on donations or a larger corporate entity are going to have to find advertisers.
I don't think so... A more accurate description of the matter is that we're downloading the songs we can't get without paying an enormous overhead to the RIAA/label. We really could care less about the poor record company executive not being able to buy his fifteenth mansion.
So, here's an open letter to the RIAA and all the recording labels out there that aren't passing at least 75% of the profits on to the artist: Go away, we don't want you. We as consumers would rather pay the artist. It's either most of the money to the artist, all to the artist, or none at all.
You take a car and ram it into other cars. In the end, you either win the race, or blow up. It's more of an adrenaline pumping experience than work related depression.
In first person shooters set in a futuristic earth you could perhaps have a laser gun made by Ruger or Beretta. Or perhaps if your FPS got down to 2 or 3 and holds like that have a friendly graphic reminder that the game would work better with an upgraded video card/processor/memory depending on what your system specs are. I feel that advertising in games could be benificial to gamers and developers alike and it's perfectly acceptable. We get advertised at when we are driving down the road, when we walk through a mall, browse the web, watch TV, listen to the radio, eat fast food, and when we check our free e-mail. Advertising will never leave us, and I feel it is acceptable in gaming. Advertising is an excellent way to get a product sold. Otherwise, we'd be stuck with word of mouth.