What is Digg?181 Comments
- Yorn, on 10/12/2007, -8/+235There's nothing wrong with writing a blog entry and then submitting it to Digg. What is wrong is all the people who find something *on someone else's blog, or some website* and then write a 3 paragraph blog entry, basically paraphrasing whatever else was said, and then link to it from Digg. Regardless of whether or not the story was good, you should never link to your blog when there's a better link.
IMHO, the best way to solve this problem is for digg to implement a REALLY simple feature, "Here's the Real URL". Whenever you click on "Here's the Real URL", it give you a text box and you can paste the real URL in there. Once 1/7th or even 1/10th of the users who dugg the story do that, the URL is replaced by the one that everyone commonly linked to.
Doing this wouldn't even be horribly hard to code, though it might be a bit difficult in an MFC framework, I don't know. - starman, on 10/12/2007, -5/+48It's not my blog, it's my friends'.
- avidlinuxuser, on 10/12/2007, -0/+34@Obsidian743 Here's the part about removing 1.5 GB of ram.
"In fact, he suggested something that I will be writing to Dell about. He actually suggested that she install only one of the four memory modules, close the box, determine quickly if that module was okay, and then leave, telling me to continue installing Windows and call tech support if I had any more problems! He actually suggested to her that she LEAVE OUT 1.5 GB of my memory, memory I paid for, presumably without telling me what had been done. She said, "I would do that, but I'm not that cruel" and promptly hung up on him." - doolittle, on 10/12/2007, -0/+29importance of off-line diags (like memtest, in this case) could have been a strong point in user-level diagnosing prior to tech support.
I always keep an UBCD (aka "ultimate boot cd") basic version from
http://ubcd.sourceforge.net/download.html
handy since it is a sure-fire way to isolate hardware problems. Telling a tech support rep "it failed memtest" or "the hdd fails the manufacturer-level diags and have to replace the oem drive" and in extreme cases "the cpu and / or mobo fails to run the mersanne prime stress test, and the system passes memtest and hdd diags".
A knoppix boot disk and the linux version of prime95 (static linked) is always handy as well.
Also an excellent way to isolate windows-specific crashes if all hardware diags pass. - admdrew, on 10/12/2007, -4/+33"Now had this been a Mac..."
...you would've been stuck on hold on Apple's tech support number listening to the same U2 track over and over... - pingwax, on 10/12/2007, -1/+27I'm pretty sure that no amount of diagnostic information is going to convince some of these tech support people to listen to you. Page 1 in their training materials seems to be "the customer is an idiot, ignore the customer".
- B111, on 10/12/2007, -3/+28True, it was poorly written, but I got the sense that it took a lot of fighting with Dell to finally acquiesce and send him the replacement memory.
It's amazing that they wanted the tech to take out the memory and not tell him. I can just imagine what would have happened hd they done this and he discovered it.
"Your tech was here, now I'm missing 1.5 Gigs of RAM."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes?"
---insert hours of same---
"well mr. customer, you can't verify that you're telling the truth, so you're pretty much *****." - silicon, on 10/12/2007, -2/+21SIMM? you mean DIMM...
- apocalizer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+19Pretty horrible, but at least there are some good people at Dell to make up for the bad ones. I'm not ever going to buy a Dell with that kind of idiot tech support (I'm still going to use that Inspiron 1300 that I won because you can't complain about a free computer).
- Yorn, on 10/12/2007, -1/+19There are good people at Dell. One of the things that really bothers me today with phone and technical support is:
1) that there is no system for Geeks to prove they are geeks and are capable of fixing the problem themselves if they are given warrant to.
2) that phone support techs are incapable of believing there is someone more knowledgeable about the product than they are.
Now, I don't want to upset any of them, because I know a good deal of you read digg, but if you work in a call center for an ISP, or just a general help phone line, be aware that there are OTHER people out there that regularly post about overclocking on HardOCP, read Tom'sHardware religiously, and provide technical support for free at ComputerHope.
Here's a suggestion: If you read your solutions from a script, then one of two things needs to happen: you need to get promoted, or, you need to assume the person on the other end knows more than you. I understand that there are some dumb people out there that aren't capable of turning their computer on, but some of us actually only call technical support once we've determined there is a hardware failure.
I find it discouraging that Dell's own tech is given the same kind of horrible service that those of us capable of determining dead hardware are given. It basically means that you're destined to lose. - cwill341, on 10/12/2007, -2/+19SIMM... DIMM... who cares? They are both memory modules. I think we get the point.
- theorb77, on 10/12/2007, -1/+16I know! SIMM? What year is this, 1994?
Where are my parachute pants? - Drahkar, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13@meagan
Actually the title isn't misleading because Dell did tell the technician to remove the memory modules and leave once it was working. Nowhere in the title does it say that the technician actually did it. - Spytap, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13Reading is good before commenting, because it DOES in fact talk about it:
"In fact, he suggested something that I will be writing to Dell about. He actually suggested that she install only one of the four memory modules, close the box, determine quickly if that module was okay, and then leave, telling me to continue installing Windows and call tech support if I had any more problems! He actually suggested to her that she LEAVE OUT 1.5 GB of my memory, memory I paid for, presumably without telling me what had been done. She said, "I would do that, but I'm not that cruel" and promptly hung up on him." - teckjunkie, on 10/12/2007, -35/+47Normally I wouldn't digg a story of someone that submits a link to their own blog but this is a pretty interesting story.
- Otto, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12Yorn: Tech support tends to have that effect on people, over time. I once worked for a printer company, doing phone tech support. It was sectioned up into various groups, such as people who dealt with Windows users, people who dealt with Mac users, people who dealt with hardware problems, etc. My group dealt with the leftovers, basically. We got relatively few calls per day, but those calls were from sysadmins of unix and mainframe systems (Sun, AIX, AS400, etc, etc) and they tended to know WTF they were doing.
But still, something like 25% of the time, the printer wasn't plugged in to the network, or had no power, or the dude used the wrong cable... Yes, this was less than the Windows group, but it was still enough to jade even the most seasoning geek. Oh sure, I did get the calls where the guy had sent some arcade hex to the printer and it failed to do what it was expecting, and I'd have to have him put the printer in hex dump mode and send his commands to it and then fax me the dump so I could correct his commands for him, but those were only once or twice a month, tops. The "failure to provide power to printer" call was once a day, at least.
Let me tell you, a sysadmin dude has spent 3 hours trying to figure out why the cable from the AS400 box isn't working and calls you up... well... getting him to actually check the power cable on the printer is no trivial task. - jaredvolkl, on 10/12/2007, -3/+13What's an MFC framework? I'm sure you meant MVC.
- M2Ys4U, on 10/12/2007, -3/+13S and D are next to eachtother on the keyboard (on QWERTY at leasst), so assume it's a typo and STFU.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10FTA:
"He still insisted it was a software problem and refused to send memory." - edzieba, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10The only problem with this is when the person on the end of the phone answers "the cpu and / or mobo fails to run the mersanne prime stress test, and the system passes memtest and hdd diags" with "OK, have you tried turning it off and on again" or "Do you use Norton? You should use Norton. Or you might get a virus. It could be a virus".
(note: these were two answers I recieved when calling NTL tech support about a loss of connectivity with my modem. When they eventualy sent an engineer, it turned out that the installer which has been called to the house next to us can cut the wires to us.) - ElectroBot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10And yet a significant (over 50%) amount of the time it is true. That's why the first questions they (tech support people) usually ask you are "Is the machine plugged in?" -type of questions.
- M2Ys4U, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9Digg has a "[reply]" link for areason - use it.
- seqiro, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9@meagan
The title states that Dell told the repair tech to take the RAM and leave (which happened). It does not say that the tech actually did this. I don't find it misleading. - isemism, on 10/12/2007, -3/+11"had this been a mac..:"
The power connectior would have incinerated, however the gui would have been quite pretty. The tech would have had to charge $300 in advance before stealing components as well. - frequeniquity, on 10/12/2007, -0/+814 paragraphs down
FTB:
In fact, he suggested something that I will be writing to Dell about. He actually suggested that she install only one of the four memory modules, close the box, determine quickly if that module was okay, and then leave, telling me to continue installing Windows and call tech support if I had any more problems! He actually suggested to her that she LEAVE OUT 1.5 GB of my memory, memory I paid for, presumably without telling me what had been done. She said, "I would do that, but I'm not that cruel" and promptly hung up on him. - Yorn, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10Doesn't sound like you read the article, he's complaining about ONE person at DELL that first, refused to ship the memory, and second, suggested the tech just take the three non-working sticks of RAM with her and say it was fixed. I doubt the tech would have told the customer that was what the conversation entailed had the person on the other end of the phone not been totally rude about it. I doubt it was anyone with any real power anyway. They'll probably get a chance to lose their job over this, or Dell will at least be spending some time changing their idiotic policies that let a guy like this thrive in that environment.
And yes, I meant MVC. Sorry, been a long morning. - superxero044, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10I had a Radeon 9800 that came with a computer I bought from dell. It constantly overheated and I asked for a replacement. They came and it would only overheat when I played games or ran apps so they said it was the fault of the software which was not covered by their warranty. DAMN THEM!!!!
- groceryheist, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7I love AMDs tech support. I bent the pins on my own processor after the 7 day replacement garentee. Called them and told the rep exactly that. And do you know what? she sent me a BETTER cpu than the one I broke because they had discontinued it for one witht the same speed but higher l2 cache!
- headzoo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7@yorn - This is why I like DreamHost's contact form. When submitting a query, you can select from a drop down menu your level of computer knowledge. Supposedly if you select "uber geek" from the drop down, the tech support people won't talk to you like a child. It's worked for me.
- dogred, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5@Obsidian
RAMBUS chips are SIMMS...used for the first P4 processors... - BobbyOnions, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I swear this is absolutely true; received it today regarding a faulty hard drive. I've naturally obscured a few details. This is an email from a Dell tech, to me. Note I allocate each supplier with an email address in our domain - makes tracing the source of rogue incoming emails a bit easier ;)
--- snip ---
Sorry B*****. I only got a crash course in DellServ. What is the case
number?
-----Original Message-----
From: B**** [mailto:dell@****.com]
Sent: 18 July 2006 17:58
To: W****, V****
Subject: Re: Case #: 20060718103406*** (KMM***2742I57L***)
--- snip ---
Yes, the subject line has the case number and he asks me what the case number is! - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5You know, this seriously reminds me of a time when our Citrix box went down. I got on the phone with Dell (we had a same day 24/7 support contract) and sure enough they sent someone out . . . seriously though the man was pushing 70-75 years old. He was barely able to walk up the stairs into our server room, and needed a magnifying glass to change out the screws to the mobo. Not to mention he couldnt take the server out of the rack and proceeded to try and turn the machine on with no ram or processor!!!
- EtherGnat, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4How about an optional multiple-choice touchtone quiz when you call Dell? Answer all the questions right and they actually transfer you to someone who knows what the @#$% they're talking about.
- blueangel5383, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5I used to own a dell, and it came with a faulty burner. I called tech support to get another burner. Simple? Not so for deal customer support...not only did they waste my time and phone minutes, the 1st one didn't speak english and don't know anything about computers (she was asking someone else in the background, it was like "hold on" )
I had to go to class...and I hang up.. (it took 30mins )
called later in hope to get an english speaking person, the person told me that the previous person wrote that I said my computer gone mad.... what the heck... I said the burner is messed up (again....english speaking aptitude test should be given..)
disclaimer: I have nothing against people with english as a second language (english is my second language as well) I just think they need to consider communication factors especially the primary mean is going to be PHONE!
..
now I am a happy apple owner, with 1 call I get good customer support and fast repair on my discolored and moo-ing macbook... nothing is perfect.....but at least I can understand the tech support and they don't make me run rediculous tests that have nothing to do with the problem... - Obsidian743, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6The article says they couldn't get to the diagnostic disks which I'm guessing had memstest86 on them.
- MisterKen, on 10/12/2007, -6/+10...she would have taken it to the 'Genius Bar' (insert laugh track here) and would have received a 20 minute lecture about how the 'genius' has a blog too, the inner workings of manufacturing of DIMMs, and a non-too-subtle reference that she should have waited for the new Macs coming out at the developers conference. All said with an air of superiority that makes you want to slap their head off their shoulders.
- isemism, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6Naw, it was a 386 SX.. lets see.... 1.5Gb @ 8Mb / stick.... Samn.. they owe her 192 SIMMs...
- masamunecyrus, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6@Yorn:
They can just put it in the current "Bury Story" combo box, but instead of burying the story, it'd fade the story out and make a box popup (like all those web 2.0 sites do... "Lightbox", or something like that), and then you can input your URL. - erkokite, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Couldn't agree more. I had an athlon xp 2000+ that had overheating problems and wouldn't run at stock fsb speeds(probably due to the cheap after market fan I put on it). It eventually bit the dust, and AMD sent me a new 2100+ model even though my chip was an OEM chip that I had had for about a year.
- LacY, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I've had the same issue. Because our college has an agreement with Dell, every computer in our lab is a Dell, and I end up being the person who has to call Tech support when they invariably break. I can call with any issue, and tell them what I've done to diagnose the problem, and (after being passed to at least 3 different people) they always act like I'm a complete moron who has probably forgotten to turn the monitor on. I had a computer that wouldn't boot--it went straight to a bluescreen, and this guy kept telling me "go to the control panel..." or "click on 'my computer'". When I'd try to explain why I couldn't do this, he'd just talk slower and like I was a dumb blonde--"Okay, you know the menu at the bottom of the screen? Where it says start? Click on that..."
Even better would be their "try this, then call us back--we'll make a case file so you won't have to tell us what we've tried already." They *never* do this--I'd still have to tell them the whole story, and have the new tech have me run the same diagnostics. I know they *do* have to deal with some complete retards, but acting like everyone is isn't good business.
Though to be fair, once they *do* figure out the problem, they are usually very quick to fix it/send parts, etc. - MicrowavedH2o, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4... well ...
Apple's tech support is good, but I encounter the same problems with them that I do with many tech support people. The problem with over the phone tech support in general is that they all assume that you are an idiot - someone that knows nothing about computers - I try to explain what I think the problem is, having tried to fix it myself (I try to avoid calling tech support at all costs), but they always start at square one: "Try restarting your computer..." But, they have to... most phone tech support people don't know much at all and are following scripts, so its much harder for them to take advantage of one's own diagnostic tests.
The beauty of the genius bar is that you can explain what you think it is, and since they can actually look at the computer if you bring it in, they can check it much faster than someone telling you what to do over the phone. While, I have met some rather obnoxious/arrogant "genuises," the problem gets fixed much faster, as they know what they are doing and speak english, as opposed to the phone support that is blatantly following automated scripts from their console... Thus, its worth it. - erkokite, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Actually Rambus used RIMMS.
- dogred, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6RAMBUS were SIMMs
- jrizzo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Problem is, they are all like that. I used to work as a Dell certified technician (not actually for Dell though) and I can testify that their tech support is not only the stupidest people in the world, but they receive no training of any significant level (they tell you where the mobo and ram is). Dell is a big company, they make money when you buy a PC and loose money when you call for tech support. After they sell you a PC the make a VERY DELIBERATE effort to screw you in every way possible since that's how they save money.
- SilentBobSC, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5LMAO... I was called up by my step-mother one day b/c they had bought a Mini, taken it home and plugged it in. "Works out of the box" my ass! The damn thing wouldn't connect to the net for crap, I could ping the router and even external boxes like my DNS server at the office, but no sites through Safari. So I figured I would give Apple tech support a call, I got on the phone with Ian who talked down to me the whole time while giving me the distinct impression I was nothing but a bother for him.
Now, I work in IT both in programming and on-site network design/maint/repair, so it can be safely said I know what the heck I'm talking about, and since I also handle phone support, I try to speak clearly and politely when speaking with another tech. Regardless, after a whopping 20mins of "support" Ian's fix was "well, you should probably reformat the machine"... REFORMAT?!? A machine that's not even been on 10hrs? Isn't that what you Mac fanbois are always berating Windows about and now an Apple Tech is telling me to reformat?!? Works right out of the box... yeah my ass... So after watching this fiasco, they decided to pack up the Mac and take it back. I wound up building them a PC system which has not had problem one since it was powered on. - Snakedal337, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4I get jacked around like this left and right. You usually have to curse at the people, and outsmart them before they believe you know what a virus is. Example:
Me w/ AT&T:
Tech: No sir, the reason your internet is slow is because of spyware!
Me: Look asshat. First off, I told you, in my logs, it shows I am getting a "DENIAL OF SERVICE" attack on my home line
Tech: I really don't think thats possible sir... Have you ran a spyware scan.
Me: I just told you like 10 ***** minutes ago I run LINUX. Spyware isn't compatible with my system. I'm staring at the logs RIGHT NOW, and the IP Address (insert ip here) is flooding them! What part of this don't you understand?
Tech: Okay okay sir, well I suggest you get some anti-spyware softw-
Me: Give me your manager please
Tech: I am the manager
Me: Give me someone above you
Tech: There is no one above me here sir, you will have to call back next monday.
Me: Eat *****. And Die.
God I hate depending on companies.
//End Rant. - billybob476, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4If it was an 'article' I'd agree. However it's not, it's a blog post.
- PraiseChaosX, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5That doesn't necessarily mean those Dells were that good... They might have decided you're just that bad at PC repair.
- daven1986, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4couldnt she have just used memtest86+ to make sure, or dont dell know how to do this either?
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