Geekdom
Geek service
A friend of mine said something comical on IRC today.
<@rasp> the other day I have a friend of mine – an mba in finance – ask me if I’d come over to her house and try and figure out what’s up with her external usb drive
<@rasp> I asked her if she’d come over to my house and help me balance my check book
<@rasp> she laughed and got the point
There is a tiny nugget of wisdom here. Pretty much all of my geek friends act as tech support for their family and friends, and almost always do so begrudgingly. How many other trained experts get asked for this sort of help on a regular basis? Would you ask your CPA sister to do your taxes? Or your auto mechanic cousin to fix your car for free? Or hit up your lawyer neighbor to draw up divorce papers pro-bono? Probably not.
I’m not quite sure what to make of this. When it comes down to it, I don’t really mind helping out. For me it is a service I can provide periodically that makes my friends and family happier, that’s simply being a good member of a community. I do have to wonder if there is something a little special about that plain looking silver box on their home desk, which they’ve been repeatedly told is Easy To Use™, but turns out to be infuriatingly incomprehensible when things start to go wrong. Most of the people I know can use a computer to do wonderful, interesting, neccessary, or creative things. But as soon as the first error message crops up they freeze up like a unpatched copy of Windows ME and elect to call an expert. Usually, this is a good judgement: the worst fixes I’ve had to do for people involve first undoing their attempted fixes.
I know that recovering a broken system is a long-tail problem unlikely to get much attention. Who wants to work on making it easy to repair something that, theoretically, isn’t supposed to break? Is it even possible to make things easier when the second click into troubleshooting a sound card displays information about IRQ conflicts and rows of hex digits?
Rhapsody Redux
Support is frustrating. On-line chat support goes beyond that into the realm of “infuriating” by using even less equipped employees who are given little or no training and a click driven interface for providing robotic responses that are at their best ingenuous or, at their worst, simply insulting. Rhapsody, which I love but am frequently frustrated with, uses this means of support for their web service (the only way I can use their service on my work Mac). I was feeling punchy after their player plugin, which seems to suffer frequent problems, was keeping me from repeatedly playing the songs I need to learn in order to further my Rock Band career.
After my first session was interrupted by the instructions of the support person (clearing cookies, of course, destroys the cookie the chat application depends on), I was in a poor mood. As is my tendency, I drifted toward sarcastic and cynical. So, I present to you the following complete chat log with only three minor modifications. First, I removed the email account information I use to log in. Second, I changed the named of the support engineer to “Eliza” to protect the innocent. And third, I reordered two lines so that it reads more easily (Eliza was very quick with the automated platitudes).
Eliza: Hello. Welcome to Real’s Live Chat. How can I help you?
Kyle: First: make a note to your colleagues that “Clear Private Data” isn’t a very good answer for troubleshooting browser problems, since it disconnects the chat
Kyle: Second, I still cannot log into Rhapsody online
Eliza: I’m listening. Please go ahead.
Eliza: Am I correct in understanding that you are having problem in sign in to the Rhapsody.com?
Kyle: Correct
Kyle: email/password combo works fine to log into my account details via “My Account” on real.com
Eliza: Sure I can help you in providing the information regarding this issue.
Eliza: Please give me a couple of minutes while I check your account.
Kyle: And thank you for the dehumanizing and demoralizing use of canned, pasted responses identical to the last support person. It makes me feel like a unique and beautiful flower.
Eliza: Thanks for your time and patience.
Eliza: I could see an active Rhapsody Unlimited subscription under this email address: REDACTED
Kyle: Correct
Kyle: … though “Unlimited” seems to be a misnomer given the frequency of authentication problems.
Eliza: Now can you please let me know what is the error message you get when you try to sign in Rhapsody.com?
Kyle: “There was a problem logging you in. Please check your username and password and try again.”
Eliza: Now can you please let me know the what is the web browser you are using to sign to the Rhapsody com?
Kyle: Firefox 3 on a Mac, RhapsodyPlayerEngine 1.1.0
Eliza: May I know the version of Windows (98, ME, XP, 2000) that you are using?
Kyle: No. Because I don’t run Windows on my Mac.
Kyle: It runs Mac OSX 10.5.3
Eliza: Thanks for the information.
Eliza: Now in order to resolve this problem I suggest you to perform this below listed steps.
Eliza: Please follow the steps for uninstalling & installing Rhapsody online in Mac operating system:
- Open up your Main HDD (Where OSX is Installed)
- Find and open up the “Library” folder
- Then open the folder “Internet Plug-Ins”
- In this folder, locate the file “RhapsodyPlayerEngine.plugin” and drag this file to the trash
- Once this file is deleted, please visit http://www.rhapsody.com again and click on sign in to download the plug-in again.
Eliza: Are we in progress?
Kyle: Yes. And it’s working as well as my last experiences installing the plugin.
Eliza: Great! I’m glad it worked.
Kyle: Don’t get too excited there, Eliza.
Kyle: My last experience were not “good”.
Eliza: I see.
Kyle: I shall now restart Firefox, since your guys’ plugin seem to the the only .xpi packaged plugin that silently fails during install
Eliza: Yes.
Kyle: But restarting things several times will often do the trick. It’s a very sad user experience, and great motivation for me to cancel my account.
Kyle: I shall leave you now, to solve the problems of other people.
Eliza: Now can you please try to sign the account and check.
Kyle: And hope that someone in Rhapsody operations finally notices the giant blinking red light that says “authentication is hosed”.
Kyle: Thank you Eliza, it has been robotic and unfruitful. Have a great day!
Eliza: You are welcome.
Eliza: Is there anything else that I can help you with today?
Kyle: Certainly not.
You have disconnected.
Thanks, Eliza. I know you tried. It’s your boss’s fault for providing you with bad tools and no information. Having reinstalled, restarted, rebooted and sacrificed a chicken I am again listening to music. There’s no way for me to tell if I solved a problem or if the time I wasted allowed them to fix a problem on their side. But, if history teaches me anything, I’ll get more data in a few weeks when this happens again.
Pylons on Fedora 8
I’ve started playing with Pylons and like it so far. It has the rails-ish routing system, but doesn’t have some of the nonsense. Additionally, it’s designed to be open and adaptable, letting you plug in your own ORM or eschew using one entirely (unlike Django which seems to really want you to use their badly crippled ORM).
To make things easier for people running Fedora 8 or other RPM-based Linux distros, I’ve created some spec files and F8 RPMs to let you install Pylons in an RPM-friendly way. The other dependencies (like python-simplejson) can be found already via yum. Try them, and let me know what you think; I may submit these for F9.
Update: These have been submitted for review.
This is no Mr. Smith
I’m in favor of Net Neutrality, the concept that the Internet should be free and clear of special “deals” where network owners could charge people to carry their traffic to customers or even block access. Such deals would have crushed things like the blog explosion (a revolution in first ammendment rights) and the advent of streaming audio/video (like YouTube) and social networking (like Friendster) since the giant companies with the big coffers would be able to buy up chunks of last-mile bandwidth. Why would you read an alternative news blog if CNN.com comes through 10 times faster? Why would you try out that new video service, if AOL can pay to get your attention with more money and worse technology? It’s just stupid.
And who are the people making the laws? Well, in one very prominent case: a fool. A 10 minute rambling by Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska is truly something worth hearing. This guy can’t even explain how Netflix gets to your house, and he’s supposed to understand the technologies being developed on the Internet enough to legistlate them? Good lord. If this doesn’t shatter your visions of “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”-type elloquence, nothing will. The brightest and best are not the ones we’ve sent to Washington.
Update: Via “Throw Away Your TV”, Jon Stewart took on Net Neutrality with hilarious results, having specifically taken on Ted Stevens previously.
Update: Thank goodness someone made a Ted Stevens techno remix. Woo!
Better emacs
I really try not to get involved in OS/distro/editor wars, but I can’t help jumping in on a little hot-advocacy-action. There is an article on 10 ways to be more effective in emacs that keeps popping up toward the top of the reddit link list that has been totally driving me nuts. So, I just can’t keep from posting a response.
The Old Man’s iPod
Via BoingBoing, I love to see metion of recent discussions on the hill about the broadcast and audio flags. To sum it up, the 80-plus year-old senator Ted Stevens (R – Alaska) got an iPod for Christmas and discovered the joy of time-shifting some of his favorite radio programs. Armed with this simple experience, he asked the RIAA if the legistlation being proposed would make this illegal: would it make the senator a criminal? How about that! The RIAA lawyer had to answer truthfully that, yes, this would become illegal. Or at least manufacturers of these devices would have to make such activity impossible.
This is great stuff. Maybe they’ll finally realize that this isn’t a war on pirates. It’s simply an industry that doesn’t know how to handle an evolving world trying to hide behind laws. I hope the Senate figures it out and becomes actually insulted by what the RIAA is trying to do to normal citizens.
Update (February 1st, 2006): Sometimes I love the internet. Think maybe more senators could learn the same lesson? Well, heck, why not buy them all an iPod?!
The Open Source vote
Wow. This has got to be one of the most progressive things I’ve seen in a while. Wisconsin has signed into law that the source code used in touch-screen voting machines must be available to the public upon request. Wonderful! It really does make sense: democracy is supposed to be a fairly transparent process. Althought some of the rules (like the Electoral College) are complex, we can all find out how they work. The rules surrounding how a polling place works are matters of public record. Why wouldn’t the code being trusted to implement these rules also be public?
Kudos to the cheese-heads.
The EFF Risk
I have donated money to the EFF several times since I believe in much of what they stand for. We need a “rights defending” group that understands the new online and electronic world, and the EFF specializes in that. However, I have to agree somewhat with the scathing opinion piece on The Register. The EFF, despite its purpose, has really bobbled several important cases and actually hurt the causes they intend to champion. Maybe the EFF needs to examine its staff. Fighting the good fight is admirable, but you also need to fight it well to make a difference.
This sadly reminds me of a sticking point for me in Christiandom. People often feel that being “good hearted” or “on the right side” is enough. But in the service of a cause (or God), excellence is also very important. I know it is impossible, especially when relying on volunteers, to get the best of the best. But it really does bother me to see various forms of “righteous incompetence” justified purely because of the side being taken.
Just ask the Crooked Saint what he thinks of sub-par Christian music, and you’ll get what I’m saying.
OOo
Screw Microsoft. I’m done with their Office products. I’ve been using OpenOffice for a while, and have now given their 2.0 beta2 a good test drive. It’s simply great. Everything almost anyone could need (including DB connectivity and presentation software) in a 75 meg download. Don’t pay for MS Office when you buy a new computer: just get OOo.
Legally yours
In our modern litigious world, it is sometimes hard to know where the lines lie. Fortuntately, every once in a while someone will step in and help out the laypeople of the world with some plain-English guidance. Take it for what it is worth, but the EFF put out a legal guide for bloggers which I think is pretty cool. I’m only a few degrees of separation from people who have gotten sued or fired because of their personal blogs. This seems like a new, interesting realm of law.
