I could see if a company wanted to identify consumers whose interactions actually resulted in a net loss to the company, but if Joe Blow, at the end of the day, makes me a dollar after all my time, effort and costs, that's one more dollar than I had before. Sure, he might not get the red-carpet treatment if it's a choice between him and the customer who makes me $10,000, but I'm not necessarily going to want to dump him either.
I'd start by asking what the business model was. The Security and Uptime priorities, for instance, are going to be different for a DoD firewall and a MySpace page. User Experience is going to be imposed by HR practices more than anything else. What proportion of the Documentation is legally required and/or business-critical? Does the Customer Service aspect have real-time PR repercussions? Etc etc...
It's an innovative way to kill SEO while letting the industry still think it's relevant and keep promoting Google.
Anyone who cares can now tweak their settings to eliminate crap. Anything which is crap-tagged a lot will probably get downgraded in the normal Google search. Google searches will become better for both tweakers and the great unwashed masses, with little effort on Google's part. They've just leveraged crowd-wisdom to improve their service.
As a side effect, Google-positive SEO will be boosted and unrepresentative SEO will be degraded, resulting in wins all around except for sites who hire SEO cowboys (and, hopefully, the cowboys themselves once word gets out).
While my overall view is that real-time public broadcasting of the (on-the-clock) activities of public servants and politicians is in general desirable, there are things I wouldn't want released.
For instance, I wouldn't want to be able to see any data (paper or electronic) being looked up. I don't want to see my neighbour's police or Social Security record.
Additionally, what about people in witness protection, or in shelters from domestic abuse, or victims of stalking, or people in political rallies? Do we really want their faces and locations broadcast to the world every time a cop car rolls by?
However, constantly-on 360-degree cop car cameras are in general a good idea. I just feel that the decision about whether to keep or discard footage should be made at a higher level, and that footage discard requests should (a) be kept on hold for three to six months before being actioned, and (b) be permanently archived themselves along with the details of the officer(s) making the recommendation.
Short answer: speed.
Yes, you can look up something in a book. Or on microfiche. Or on Google. But this takes seconds to minutes. If you already know it, you're on to the next part of the question or equation immediately without having to stop and go research at each step.
It's OK. The robots will have systems designed by Diebold after Haliburton assigns 99.99% of their budget to 'adminstrative costs'. The robots will then be reprogrammed by a thirteen-year old to seek out beer and porn, camp out on old people's lawns, and act as a botnot. They will then be progressively infected by warring spammers who will use them to anonymously hunt each other down across the face of the globe.
CNN will report that the War on Terror is being won. TSA agents equipped with nuclear flamethrowers and tequila will invasively stripsearch any noncelebrities at any time, anywhere, in case they have a malfunctioning hundred-kilo warbot hidden in their lower intestine. US politicians will blame the other party. New New Orleans will be overrun and destroyed by rampaging warbots, but the news will be suppressed in the interests of national security and the War On Insert Something Here.
It's not just enough to block the call. I want to actively waste the time and resources of the telemarketer - or, to be precise, have them to waste their own resources.
"Blocked" calls should instead be switched to a service which uses voice generation software and genetic algorithms to continually refine itself with the goal of making each incoming call last as long as possible before the caller hangs up. Tarpitting, basically.
As a bonus, use the centralised service to generate something like a Breidbart Index, so that a number which is multiply reported as the source of unwanted calls gets indexed into a global block list which every participating device can download.
Any number which annoys more than a handful of subscribers, then, for any reason at all, would suddenly find a percentage of its attempted cold calls being tarpitted - perhaps to the point where it significantly affects their outgoing call capacity.
As ever, non-CID numbers would get an answerphone. Globally blocked numbers would stay on the list for a week or so by default - long enough to inconvenience cold-callers, but no so long as to permanently inconvenience someone who was given a reassigned number.
If you're an entertainer with a career, and Wikipedia means that much to you, create a suitable source. An official website. A blog. A fanclub newsletter. An article in some local birdcage liner or industry rag. Then cite that.
Better, do that and then instead of changing the article yourself, and assuming you don't have an agent or someone to do it for you, bring the issue up in the discussion page for the article. Presumably, the DP is going to attract people interested in your career who would be willing to make the change.
One problem I can see with that is that the coral will continue to grow past the desired shape and volume unless it's continually 'pruned'. Maintenance costs could be significant.
They also agreed that electronic voting, televangelism, Enron, the housing crisis, the collapsing dollar, telemarketing, marketing the US republic as a democracy, military invasions of other countries, government bailouts, ongoing government handouts to billion-dollar industries, and the current US administration were also problems with the US business model...
I'd say that it should at least extend to one level in all directions, even if not perfectly.
In one large place I worked for, I could do the job of those working under me, and better than they could. I could also do every aspect of the job of the guy above me, although it had too much touchy-feely stuff for me to want a promotion. At times, I was spending as much as 25% of my work hours filling in for one position or the other.
I could also do maybe 40-50% of my boss's boss's job in a pinch, but that wasn't the issue - there were people in between us who could cover for him at 100% for at least a couple of weeks, and I could in turn cover for _them_.
In real terms, it meant we operated like a Redundant Array of Integrated Deskswappers. As an added advantage, our salaries were higher than industry average because of our additional functionality and knowledge, but not ridiculously high because any one of us could be replaced without business interruption.
Don't forget write-ins. And "none of the above". And make that last option have some teeth if it actually wins - rerun the election, with anyone previously standing not allowed to stand again. Including any incumbents.
Because if I leave a job, it has a much greater chance of becoming more expensive, slower, and running headfirst into problems I'd solved years ago.:)
I remember with some satisfaction taking some vacation time, starting Friday evening, after having expressed mild dissatisfaction with my L2 techsupport role at the company. I got a call on Sunday morning from the boss's boss's boss, offering me a pay boost and a L3 position.
Of course, that may have been partly due to the recent audit showing it would have taken five people to replace me... and that the boss^3 was very sneaky and very sharp when he needed to be.
We don't like these guys, right? So encouraging them to repeatedly waste all their money on inherently unworkable schemes will ultimately work in our favor... hmm.
"Ray, when the MPAA asks you if DRM works, you say YES!"
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I could see if a company wanted to identify consumers whose interactions actually resulted in a net loss to the company, but if Joe Blow, at the end of the day, makes me a dollar after all my time, effort and costs, that's one more dollar than I had before. Sure, he might not get the red-carpet treatment if it's a choice between him and the customer who makes me $10,000, but I'm not necessarily going to want to dump him either.
I'd start by asking what the business model was. The Security and Uptime priorities, for instance, are going to be different for a DoD firewall and a MySpace page. User Experience is going to be imposed by HR practices more than anything else. What proportion of the Documentation is legally required and/or business-critical? Does the Customer Service aspect have real-time PR repercussions? Etc etc...
Anyone who cares can now tweak their settings to eliminate crap. Anything which is crap-tagged a lot will probably get downgraded in the normal Google search. Google searches will become better for both tweakers and the great unwashed masses, with little effort on Google's part. They've just leveraged crowd-wisdom to improve their service.
As a side effect, Google-positive SEO will be boosted and unrepresentative SEO will be degraded, resulting in wins all around except for sites who hire SEO cowboys (and, hopefully, the cowboys themselves once word gets out).
For instance, I wouldn't want to be able to see any data (paper or electronic) being looked up. I don't want to see my neighbour's police or Social Security record.
Additionally, what about people in witness protection, or in shelters from domestic abuse, or victims of stalking, or people in political rallies? Do we really want their faces and locations broadcast to the world every time a cop car rolls by?
However, constantly-on 360-degree cop car cameras are in general a good idea. I just feel that the decision about whether to keep or discard footage should be made at a higher level, and that footage discard requests should (a) be kept on hold for three to six months before being actioned, and (b) be permanently archived themselves along with the details of the officer(s) making the recommendation.
OMG Pizza Hut is denying me free delivery if I only order their cheapest product!
I would, but I installed a firmware upgrade and now I can't remember how to.
You'll still be finding rooks in the fridge, though.
Short answer: speed. Yes, you can look up something in a book. Or on microfiche. Or on Google. But this takes seconds to minutes. If you already know it, you're on to the next part of the question or equation immediately without having to stop and go research at each step.
CNN will report that the War on Terror is being won. TSA agents equipped with nuclear flamethrowers and tequila will invasively stripsearch any noncelebrities at any time, anywhere, in case they have a malfunctioning hundred-kilo warbot hidden in their lower intestine. US politicians will blame the other party. New New Orleans will be overrun and destroyed by rampaging warbots, but the news will be suppressed in the interests of national security and the War On Insert Something Here.
"Blocked" calls should instead be switched to a service which uses voice generation software and genetic algorithms to continually refine itself with the goal of making each incoming call last as long as possible before the caller hangs up. Tarpitting, basically.
As a bonus, use the centralised service to generate something like a Breidbart Index, so that a number which is multiply reported as the source of unwanted calls gets indexed into a global block list which every participating device can download.
Any number which annoys more than a handful of subscribers, then, for any reason at all, would suddenly find a percentage of its attempted cold calls being tarpitted - perhaps to the point where it significantly affects their outgoing call capacity.
As ever, non-CID numbers would get an answerphone. Globally blocked numbers would stay on the list for a week or so by default - long enough to inconvenience cold-callers, but no so long as to permanently inconvenience someone who was given a reassigned number.
Better, do that and then instead of changing the article yourself, and assuming you don't have an agent or someone to do it for you, bring the issue up in the discussion page for the article. Presumably, the DP is going to attract people interested in your career who would be willing to make the change.
Ooo! Waspinator have planzz for hooker-bot!
One problem I can see with that is that the coral will continue to grow past the desired shape and volume unless it's continually 'pruned'. Maintenance costs could be significant.
They also agreed that electronic voting, televangelism, Enron, the housing crisis, the collapsing dollar, telemarketing, marketing the US republic as a democracy, military invasions of other countries, government bailouts, ongoing government handouts to billion-dollar industries, and the current US administration were also problems with the US business model...
In one large place I worked for, I could do the job of those working under me, and better than they could. I could also do every aspect of the job of the guy above me, although it had too much touchy-feely stuff for me to want a promotion. At times, I was spending as much as 25% of my work hours filling in for one position or the other.
I could also do maybe 40-50% of my boss's boss's job in a pinch, but that wasn't the issue - there were people in between us who could cover for him at 100% for at least a couple of weeks, and I could in turn cover for _them_.
In real terms, it meant we operated like a Redundant Array of Integrated Deskswappers. As an added advantage, our salaries were higher than industry average because of our additional functionality and knowledge, but not ridiculously high because any one of us could be replaced without business interruption.
Because that worked so well the last two times!
Don't forget write-ins. And "none of the above". And make that last option have some teeth if it actually wins - rerun the election, with anyone previously standing not allowed to stand again. Including any incumbents.
Not to mention the amazing power-saving software. I bought mine last year and I've never had to charge or replace the battery even once!
You need to make sure that the photo is of you drinking beer - with the college president and his golfing buddies. :)
I remember with some satisfaction taking some vacation time, starting Friday evening, after having expressed mild dissatisfaction with my L2 techsupport role at the company. I got a call on Sunday morning from the boss's boss's boss, offering me a pay boost and a L3 position.
Of course, that may have been partly due to the recent audit showing it would have taken five people to replace me... and that the boss^3 was very sneaky and very sharp when he needed to be.
So the ISP industry is basically a whole bunch of guys lying about the size of their package...
...right up until the suspect starts line dancing.
(antifilter antifilter antifilter antifilter antifilter antifilter antifilter antifilter)
"But ten thousand? It is a _civilised_ amount."
"Ray, when the MPAA asks you if DRM works, you say YES!"