Unfortunately real office life isn't nearly as exciting as the books:
Page 50: You deny your manhood. In return you get a foot on the fast track ladder for promotion but you never make it to the top without the right connections or nobby background. On your deathbed you regret that you lived your life as a worm and not a lion.
Page 69: You drop kick your boss and set his desk alight! Reliving the two minute thrill of it gets you through the first week of your seven year jail sentence. Eventually you sink into a downward spiral of self-destructive behaviour.
That's one way of looking at it - for me being really young and being able to determine the course of the adventure I was reading was great and definitely a gateway drug for RPGs. I'll bet a lot of people got into gaming along the same route. I can't imagine they'd hold up particularly well as an adult (I wouldn't have the patience to re-read the story a dozen times to see the different endings, I'd rather read one story done well) and I'm not sure the young 'uns today would have the patience for them at all, which is a shame.
The books are better. You could read backwards to figure out the page numbers you'd need to take to "win", then read the adventure forwards. I can't see how that would work on the iPhone.
The place I did tech support, some guy left and took with him a USB stick with all the company's intranet - support documents, common issues and fixes from manufacturers etc. and set up his own website. Eventually the company got him shut down and when they did support calls went through the roof (which might have been their aim had it not been in-house support for the retailers, i.e. every call cost rather than made them money, with the exception of one or two premium rate software support lines that nobody called).
I know this is a running gag with all tech support, but when it solves at least 20% of all problems it's still a valuable support tool. And yes, for the record I've had calls from self-proclaimed experts who still fall foul of this one. I had one guy argue with me for five minutes that he absolutely was not going to check the plug on his PC as he was a PC engineer and knew what he was doing and it was definitely a blown PSU and he wanted an engineer ASAP, I reluctantly explained that until he'd done this routine check for me I couldn't approve an engineer, eventually he bellowed at his daughter to "check the bloody thing's plugged in so I can actually get an engineer out" - 30 seconds later he explained it must have been loose and hung up without an apology (or a thank you that I'd just saved him a £70 false call-out fee). If you've checked that turning it off and on didn't help then explain that up front, otherwise always be expected to go through this basic step.
Yeah GP obviously hasn't worked in the real world at all - we have half a dozen account managers each with half a dozen projects and EVERY issue is top priority to them, never mind that it's changing the background colour of the "about us" page while someone else's entire site is down. Setting priorities doesn't mean we don't care about the issues or that we don't want to do our jobs but we have to have some system to determine the order in which they're handled.
The original suggestion was that this helps them diagnose software as opposed to hardware issues though. My guess is that you're right, this is almost always an indicator to some hardware fault and that it's just easier to get the customer to hold up the phone while you count the beeps yourself, rather than relying on their numerical skills and ordering an engineer with a new motor when actually they just need to empty the fluff filter.
Huh? I can't work out if you're serious or not. I wouldn't know how to shoe a horse, I'd take him to someone specially trained, and I completely disagree that the workings of software and hardware are becoming less clouded - if anything we're piling on layers of abstraction that remove the user from the underlying workings (a Facebook user doesn't need to know how the internet works, an internet user doesn't need to know how a browser works, a browser user doesn't care about the desktop, etc). Previously if you wanted to do anything reasonably complicated with a computer you either hired someone who knew their stuff or you got your hands dirty and figured it out yourself. Now we have users who believe they know what they're doing because they've been told they're the net generation getting confused because a site shows a picture of the Google search and they want to know why they can't use it to log in to Facebook. Does that sound like users are becoming more technically aware?
I would have killed for a 90 second wrap time - we got less than ten (I think it was in the region of 5 to 7 seconds before the next call came through, and you were then meant to pick up within four or five rings). The crazy thing was, there was some industry inposed regulation saying customers should wait on the line no more than 20 minutes - now you'd think that meant we'd answer all calls within 20 minutes, but it was interpreted by my employer to mean if the call wasn't answered in that time, the caller just got cut off. They then had to dial in and join the end of the queue again! At busy periods we'd often get callers who had been on the phone for an hour and a half and disconnected four times, we were then meant to somehow deal with their query in the target time (I think this was around five minutes) even though the first three minutes was spent trying to calm them down (while refusing to let them speak to a manager - we weren't allowed to do that or even to give out the customer service number, we just had to let them vent their anger on us at our expense). We also often had no notes from previous calls (you can't make many notes in 7 seconds AND enter a call wrap up code in the logging system) so just as we'd calmed them down we'd have to piss them off again by asking them to repeat what they'd already probably told three other people.
65% of people paying for 20Mbps in the UK are getting less than 8Mbps or less. That's not like saying this pack of Doritos is approximately 9oz, it's more like saying this pack of Doritos is anything between 0 and 9oz when in fact the average is less than 4.5oz. If ISPs really cared about selling an average, they could monitor the speeds customers were getting at various intervals and award them a discount based on how much lower than advertised their speed is. Of course, they don't care because the status quo means they can advertise far more than they're actually providing - although even they are starting to see that people aren't going to swallow this much longer (here for instance, a few ISPs will now give you a speed reading for the area you live in before you sign up so you can see what you will likely get - still not ideal but a step in the right direction).
How about a sliding scale of payment - if I'm using half the theoretical bandwidth of someone living next to the exchange and paying the same amount that's patently not a fair system. Alternatively if I only get 10mbps on broadband, when I decide to pay for a 10mbps connection instead why does my speed then drop to 5mbps - my distance to the exchange hasn't changed so that must be a technical issue on their side (even if it's oversubscribing each tier of service). It's not like people are even getting slightly less than they're paying for, we're talking about more than half of all customers getting less than half of the advertised speed - that's a massive disparity.
The issue of course is that if you pay for 6mbps and only get 3 and so decide to downgrade to their 3mbps plan, you'll then likely only get 1.5. This is where the massive unfairness comes in, since they've already proved they can deliver 3mbps to my home but they refuse to do so unless I pay for the next tier of service. The law for offering these variable services should be based on the minimum service you can expect. That way the people getting 3mbps are happy because that's what was advertised (and it makes it much easier to do comparison shopping for a guaranteed minimum speed), the people getting 6 are over the moon as they're getting double what was advertised, but of course that doesn't allow them to fudge their marketing to sound bigger and better than the competition.
It's more like saying "this truck can do up to 100 MPH" and then omitting to mention that the actual maximum road speed is 60, the 100 is only when it's going over a cliff. It's not "technically" lying, but it's going to be effectively untrue to the vast majority of people who buy the truck and the truck company is fully aware of that fact when they pay for the advertising campaign. It's nice to see that finally, here in the UK, ISPs are now starting to offer a pre-installation speed check so you at least have some indication of what speed you will get. Of course if they do the check off peak it's still going to be misleading, and they're only doing it because they're scared of the growing public backlash forcing legislation on them but even so it's better than nothing. Now if only we could get them to stop lying about their "unlimited" download plans.
That is true, but "guilty mind" is misleading - it doesn't necessarily mean that you had to intend a crime, just that you intended the action. For instance, if you were completely unaware that murder was a crime and you purposely shoot someone with the intent to kill, even though you didn't intend a crime you are still guilty of both the act and the intent.
Furthermore, while the court has to find you guilty beyond reasonable doubt for criminal convictions, it can use the "reasonable man" (i.e. on the balance of probabilities what would the reasonable man have thought or done) in establishing mens rea - therefore even if these officials didn't intend to break the law, breaking the law was an obvious outcome of their actions and the reasonable man would have recognised that before acting. I don't see any issue with proving guilt on both parts here, I guess "think of the children" only applies when it's being used to force through unpopular security theatre, not when it's being used as a defence against it.
Cue lots of "Congratulations, you are the 5 billionth device to connect to the internet, click here [and submit your personal data] to win a prize!!" flash banners...
I don't know if you're somehow suggesting that HP controls the press, because if not and there is something to the harassment claim, this would be the first time the press had ever willingly exercised self restraint in the event of a sex scandal instead of poring over every lurid detail (hell, they're even pretty fuzzy on the "something to the claim" part usually).
Yes, the real difference between driving tired and driving drunk is that the former doesn't boost your confidence or lull you into believing you are fine to drive. On the contrary, if you're driving tired you likely realise you are tired and compensate - leave more time to make decisions, drive a little slower, etc. The same is not true when drunk behind the wheel.
Are you any less likely to kill someone just because you've been to sleep in the interim? If the answer is no, then yes, you should get a cab. In fact, from the link:
- Drinking coffee, sleeping, slapping yourself round the face or taking a cold shower in the morning won't make you sober up any more quickly.
Well what's wrong with it counting down from five minutes to give the driver time to find a safe place to pull over, and if he doesn't do so, it turns on the hazards and brings the car to a gradual stop (and then he gets arrested for all kinds of things such as obstructing the highway, dangerous driving, etc). Five minutes ought to be plenty of advance warning, it's more than you get when you blow a tyre and have to find somewhere safe to pull over. Bonus points if it uses an ED-209 "You have 30 seconds to comply" voice. In reality that's all likely to be prohibitively expensive so it's more likely it'll let you drive but log any incidents.
It would be interesting to see some statistics on how intoxicated the majority of drunk drivers who kill others are. Are the ones still causing deaths always way over the limit (in which case the limit is fine but we need stronger methods of enforcement) or are they at or even below the limit (in which case we should try lower limits by themselves initially). My instinct says it's likely the former that are the real threat to life, but I'd like to see the numbers to see if that view is vindicated (I, like you don't drive and drive so my interest is purely academic).
The only way to ever eliminate drink driving is to either eliminate drunkenness or to eliminate driving. Since the former is next to impossible (even in the days of prohibition alcohol was widely available, it just created a lucrative criminal black market) then the only way this will ever happen is to eliminate the latter (it's much easier to see if someone is driving than it is to see if they're drunk). Since that's the logical endpoint, MADD should just outright lobby for a ban on all forms of vehicular transport, or else admit that the goal of reducing drink driving to zero is unobtainable and set a realistic goal.
Which is a system that works perfectly... assuming you can afford to defend yourself against a huge corporation dragging out a costly court case over several years.
That's an interesting point - all of the biggest corporations now own swathes of patents and their reasoning is always along the lines of defence by mutually assured destruction, or we're just holding them so others don't use them for evil, or we don't like them but we have to play the game. Are we seriously meant to believe that if the Googles, Microsoft's and Apple's of the world shouted loud enough the government would refuse to listen? The truth is more likely that every company hates IP that can be used against them, but loves IP they can use against others, and the big companies love the status quo of being able to throw up effective barriers to entry against the little guys.
Slashdot Mirror
Unfortunately real office life isn't nearly as exciting as the books:
Page 50: You deny your manhood. In return you get a foot on the fast track ladder for promotion but you never make it to the top without the right connections or nobby background. On your deathbed you regret that you lived your life as a worm and not a lion.
Page 69: You drop kick your boss and set his desk alight! Reliving the two minute thrill of it gets you through the first week of your seven year jail sentence. Eventually you sink into a downward spiral of self-destructive behaviour.
That's one way of looking at it - for me being really young and being able to determine the course of the adventure I was reading was great and definitely a gateway drug for RPGs. I'll bet a lot of people got into gaming along the same route. I can't imagine they'd hold up particularly well as an adult (I wouldn't have the patience to re-read the story a dozen times to see the different endings, I'd rather read one story done well) and I'm not sure the young 'uns today would have the patience for them at all, which is a shame.
The books are better. You could read backwards to figure out the page numbers you'd need to take to "win", then read the adventure forwards. I can't see how that would work on the iPhone.
The place I did tech support, some guy left and took with him a USB stick with all the company's intranet - support documents, common issues and fixes from manufacturers etc. and set up his own website. Eventually the company got him shut down and when they did support calls went through the roof (which might have been their aim had it not been in-house support for the retailers, i.e. every call cost rather than made them money, with the exception of one or two premium rate software support lines that nobody called).
I know this is a running gag with all tech support, but when it solves at least 20% of all problems it's still a valuable support tool. And yes, for the record I've had calls from self-proclaimed experts who still fall foul of this one. I had one guy argue with me for five minutes that he absolutely was not going to check the plug on his PC as he was a PC engineer and knew what he was doing and it was definitely a blown PSU and he wanted an engineer ASAP, I reluctantly explained that until he'd done this routine check for me I couldn't approve an engineer, eventually he bellowed at his daughter to "check the bloody thing's plugged in so I can actually get an engineer out" - 30 seconds later he explained it must have been loose and hung up without an apology (or a thank you that I'd just saved him a £70 false call-out fee). If you've checked that turning it off and on didn't help then explain that up front, otherwise always be expected to go through this basic step.
Yeah GP obviously hasn't worked in the real world at all - we have half a dozen account managers each with half a dozen projects and EVERY issue is top priority to them, never mind that it's changing the background colour of the "about us" page while someone else's entire site is down. Setting priorities doesn't mean we don't care about the issues or that we don't want to do our jobs but we have to have some system to determine the order in which they're handled.
The original suggestion was that this helps them diagnose software as opposed to hardware issues though. My guess is that you're right, this is almost always an indicator to some hardware fault and that it's just easier to get the customer to hold up the phone while you count the beeps yourself, rather than relying on their numerical skills and ordering an engineer with a new motor when actually they just need to empty the fluff filter.
Huh? I can't work out if you're serious or not. I wouldn't know how to shoe a horse, I'd take him to someone specially trained, and I completely disagree that the workings of software and hardware are becoming less clouded - if anything we're piling on layers of abstraction that remove the user from the underlying workings (a Facebook user doesn't need to know how the internet works, an internet user doesn't need to know how a browser works, a browser user doesn't care about the desktop, etc). Previously if you wanted to do anything reasonably complicated with a computer you either hired someone who knew their stuff or you got your hands dirty and figured it out yourself. Now we have users who believe they know what they're doing because they've been told they're the net generation getting confused because a site shows a picture of the Google search and they want to know why they can't use it to log in to Facebook. Does that sound like users are becoming more technically aware?
I would have killed for a 90 second wrap time - we got less than ten (I think it was in the region of 5 to 7 seconds before the next call came through, and you were then meant to pick up within four or five rings). The crazy thing was, there was some industry inposed regulation saying customers should wait on the line no more than 20 minutes - now you'd think that meant we'd answer all calls within 20 minutes, but it was interpreted by my employer to mean if the call wasn't answered in that time, the caller just got cut off. They then had to dial in and join the end of the queue again! At busy periods we'd often get callers who had been on the phone for an hour and a half and disconnected four times, we were then meant to somehow deal with their query in the target time (I think this was around five minutes) even though the first three minutes was spent trying to calm them down (while refusing to let them speak to a manager - we weren't allowed to do that or even to give out the customer service number, we just had to let them vent their anger on us at our expense). We also often had no notes from previous calls (you can't make many notes in 7 seconds AND enter a call wrap up code in the logging system) so just as we'd calmed them down we'd have to piss them off again by asking them to repeat what they'd already probably told three other people.
65% of people paying for 20Mbps in the UK are getting less than 8Mbps or less. That's not like saying this pack of Doritos is approximately 9oz, it's more like saying this pack of Doritos is anything between 0 and 9oz when in fact the average is less than 4.5oz. If ISPs really cared about selling an average, they could monitor the speeds customers were getting at various intervals and award them a discount based on how much lower than advertised their speed is. Of course, they don't care because the status quo means they can advertise far more than they're actually providing - although even they are starting to see that people aren't going to swallow this much longer (here for instance, a few ISPs will now give you a speed reading for the area you live in before you sign up so you can see what you will likely get - still not ideal but a step in the right direction).
How about a sliding scale of payment - if I'm using half the theoretical bandwidth of someone living next to the exchange and paying the same amount that's patently not a fair system. Alternatively if I only get 10mbps on broadband, when I decide to pay for a 10mbps connection instead why does my speed then drop to 5mbps - my distance to the exchange hasn't changed so that must be a technical issue on their side (even if it's oversubscribing each tier of service). It's not like people are even getting slightly less than they're paying for, we're talking about more than half of all customers getting less than half of the advertised speed - that's a massive disparity.
The issue of course is that if you pay for 6mbps and only get 3 and so decide to downgrade to their 3mbps plan, you'll then likely only get 1.5. This is where the massive unfairness comes in, since they've already proved they can deliver 3mbps to my home but they refuse to do so unless I pay for the next tier of service. The law for offering these variable services should be based on the minimum service you can expect. That way the people getting 3mbps are happy because that's what was advertised (and it makes it much easier to do comparison shopping for a guaranteed minimum speed), the people getting 6 are over the moon as they're getting double what was advertised, but of course that doesn't allow them to fudge their marketing to sound bigger and better than the competition.
It's more like saying "this truck can do up to 100 MPH" and then omitting to mention that the actual maximum road speed is 60, the 100 is only when it's going over a cliff. It's not "technically" lying, but it's going to be effectively untrue to the vast majority of people who buy the truck and the truck company is fully aware of that fact when they pay for the advertising campaign. It's nice to see that finally, here in the UK, ISPs are now starting to offer a pre-installation speed check so you at least have some indication of what speed you will get. Of course if they do the check off peak it's still going to be misleading, and they're only doing it because they're scared of the growing public backlash forcing legislation on them but even so it's better than nothing. Now if only we could get them to stop lying about their "unlimited" download plans.
That is true, but "guilty mind" is misleading - it doesn't necessarily mean that you had to intend a crime, just that you intended the action. For instance, if you were completely unaware that murder was a crime and you purposely shoot someone with the intent to kill, even though you didn't intend a crime you are still guilty of both the act and the intent.
Furthermore, while the court has to find you guilty beyond reasonable doubt for criminal convictions, it can use the "reasonable man" (i.e. on the balance of probabilities what would the reasonable man have thought or done) in establishing mens rea - therefore even if these officials didn't intend to break the law, breaking the law was an obvious outcome of their actions and the reasonable man would have recognised that before acting. I don't see any issue with proving guilt on both parts here, I guess "think of the children" only applies when it's being used to force through unpopular security theatre, not when it's being used as a defence against it.
Cue lots of "Congratulations, you are the 5 billionth device to connect to the internet, click here [and submit your personal data] to win a prize!!" flash banners...
Yes, this is almost certainly a guestimate based on average number of net gadgets per gender, per age group, per socio-economic group, per country.
Can != must.
I don't know if you're somehow suggesting that HP controls the press, because if not and there is something to the harassment claim, this would be the first time the press had ever willingly exercised self restraint in the event of a sex scandal instead of poring over every lurid detail (hell, they're even pretty fuzzy on the "something to the claim" part usually).
Yes, the real difference between driving tired and driving drunk is that the former doesn't boost your confidence or lull you into believing you are fine to drive. On the contrary, if you're driving tired you likely realise you are tired and compensate - leave more time to make decisions, drive a little slower, etc. The same is not true when drunk behind the wheel.
Are you any less likely to kill someone just because you've been to sleep in the interim? If the answer is no, then yes, you should get a cab. In fact, from the link:
- Drinking coffee, sleeping, slapping yourself round the face or taking a cold shower in the morning won't make you sober up any more quickly.
Well what's wrong with it counting down from five minutes to give the driver time to find a safe place to pull over, and if he doesn't do so, it turns on the hazards and brings the car to a gradual stop (and then he gets arrested for all kinds of things such as obstructing the highway, dangerous driving, etc). Five minutes ought to be plenty of advance warning, it's more than you get when you blow a tyre and have to find somewhere safe to pull over. Bonus points if it uses an ED-209 "You have 30 seconds to comply" voice. In reality that's all likely to be prohibitively expensive so it's more likely it'll let you drive but log any incidents.
It would be interesting to see some statistics on how intoxicated the majority of drunk drivers who kill others are. Are the ones still causing deaths always way over the limit (in which case the limit is fine but we need stronger methods of enforcement) or are they at or even below the limit (in which case we should try lower limits by themselves initially). My instinct says it's likely the former that are the real threat to life, but I'd like to see the numbers to see if that view is vindicated (I, like you don't drive and drive so my interest is purely academic).
The only way to ever eliminate drink driving is to either eliminate drunkenness or to eliminate driving. Since the former is next to impossible (even in the days of prohibition alcohol was widely available, it just created a lucrative criminal black market) then the only way this will ever happen is to eliminate the latter (it's much easier to see if someone is driving than it is to see if they're drunk). Since that's the logical endpoint, MADD should just outright lobby for a ban on all forms of vehicular transport, or else admit that the goal of reducing drink driving to zero is unobtainable and set a realistic goal.
Which is a system that works perfectly... assuming you can afford to defend yourself against a huge corporation dragging out a costly court case over several years.
That's an interesting point - all of the biggest corporations now own swathes of patents and their reasoning is always along the lines of defence by mutually assured destruction, or we're just holding them so others don't use them for evil, or we don't like them but we have to play the game. Are we seriously meant to believe that if the Googles, Microsoft's and Apple's of the world shouted loud enough the government would refuse to listen? The truth is more likely that every company hates IP that can be used against them, but loves IP they can use against others, and the big companies love the status quo of being able to throw up effective barriers to entry against the little guys.