U.S. Cybercops Caught Flat-Footed by Massive Global Cyberattack


Despite the sensationalist title, it's an interesting read.

Airing of a grievance:

It ticks me off that customer support people always end their emails with "Hope this helps," "Cheers," or a combination of the two. It's not that I don't enjoy a friendly email chain, but most of the time the information contained in their responses is so sparse that it doesn't justify a "Hope this helps" -- often it only makes the user more frustrated. I vow to never end an email with "Hope this helps" (or any variant thereof) unless (a) my boss makes me do it, or (b) I think I have actually helped the user.

What would you like them to say?

http://www.amazon.com/Anger-Manageme.../dp/0737305916

Hope this helps,
gm

I want you to fix the problem, not do some thing that might solve it. If you only hope it helps, you are leaving the door open for the chance that it doesn't.

It's usually hard to solve the problem when you get an incredibly vague email, which is barely literate.

Having worked in customer service, and done email support, I will tell you that it is absolutely vital that you never imply that would you have just sent is "guaranteed" to work. Because there are no guarantees. The customer that's pissed off because he has unrealistic expectations of customer service is far less of a hassle than the one who was assured his problem was solved, but then has to come back for more help

That's ridiculous. Wanting something that is a 100% guaranteed solution is an unreasonable expectation for a very good tech support person, and certainly an unreasonable expectation for a run-of-the-mill-company tech-support person.

Maybe I'm biased since I think I ended most of my emails/newsgroup posts with "hope that helps" when I was a TA.

I'm actually well aware of the non-100%-ness of support. I do it all the time in the PlaceMint thread. I was just having some fun and adding to the rant.

In other news, today I fixed a dead lock condition that has been hanging around our program for over a year. Until today we never knew the magic incantation that would 100% reproduce it. But in the last month or two we have been working on testing code to help simulate events while doing engineering testing and that let us reproduce it.

Talking of anger issues I'm going through anger at the moment. At work I have the ****tiest computer. 900mb Ram, Intel Celeron from 2004. No graphics card. It's a slow ass POS!!!

I usually hold out until about 3pm. But nowadays I can't hold out for more than a few hours before I rage.

My usual programs I have loaded are SQL Server (1gb ram minimum recommended), VS2008, and a remote desktop somewhere. They also want me to run anti virus constantly which I pretend to but just close it all every time I turn my computer on. I can't have Fireworks loaded if I want it loaded as it's just too much, so I load and unload it as and when I need it (annoying if I want to change a few pixels). About 30 secs to load that up which is a LOT slower than it sounds.



End effect is:

- When I click on things there's a noticeable delay
- Switching windows has to be done strategically because it's slow
- I have to be careful how many files I have open at once
- Making any database changes should be a last resort because it's so utterly slow (if I update my dmbl schema with 1 small change I usually go and make a coffee)
- Opening a webpage in a new tab sometimes freezes up for 30s +
- Cursor randomly dissapears from VS
- When I right click on things we are talking about a 0.5 second delay before menu pops up
- Random freezes lasting 5 - 60 seconds throughout day
- If I have to rebuild the website (a 2 second process on my home PC it takes around 40 seconds to 2-3 mins total)

All round, utter fail. It's so bad now I've started raging and squeeze my mouse as hard as I can and smash it up and down on the table. It's so bad, often I don't work because it's too frustrating. It's really really frustrating, it tilts me like nothing I've ever experienced, the tilt is more than anything I have experienced in poker. I can't work sometimes. I get so angry at this god damn computer. So angry.

I just don't understand why they don't buy me a new Pc. It would cost them around 3 days wages for a pretty decent one. My productivity would go up hugely because working might be fun again, I'll get more done and I wont leave work every day really stressed out and angry.

Nothing worse than a deadline you are striving to hit but you're ****ing mouse lags the **** up and you can't click on ****, with the ****ing (jfc im raging typnig about this) with the ****ing windows XP restart in 15 mins? popup every half an hour which is slow to popup so a lot of time I press enter without realising and the whole computer just reboots losing a good 30 mins (10 mins of decent computer) work.

The in house server that runs the webpages as well, so little diskspace on it, so little diskspace I get funny errors like "ASP.net can't run this webpage because there is not enough diskspace available." This is a well written trim small page. Not some hulk. Then I spend 15 mins finding files I can delete which are >100kb big.

They know it's a slow pos but I just don't get it, don't get it! Help! THIS COMPUTER IS RUINING MY LIFE. I get so angry that when I get home I can't work on my OWN work, I'm just too tired and pissed off.

I've dropped strong hints. They've stood behind me telling me how slow my PC is, even saying things like "wow jesus christ your computer is slow!" I might just come flat out and say look I can't work on this dinosaur crap it's ridiculous you get better value if you spend a few hundred £

Sorry for vent feel better now

If you haven't even told them you want/need a new computer, then start by doing that?

Dropping hints usually only works if you're dropping hints someone wants to get.

If all else fails, open it up, break a few random things inside and then tell them that your computer won't even start up now.

I saw the 900 mb and was like holy crap I only have 16 lol. In other news mb != gb

I also do 30-60 minutes of tech support each day and often say stuff like "hope it helps" because people are usually like "hey my ---- isn't working plz help"

When I ask for support from somewhere I provide tons of pertinent info and get good answers almost every time. Customers don't usually make it easy though

Have you explained to them that they are paying you for all the time you are sitting there not doing anything waiting for the computer. Buying a new computer pays for itself very quickly, especially something that far gone. Earlier this week my manager did the math on buying a brand new server to host the project's repository. Based on the average pay rate of an engineer and the traffic statistics, if the load times of trac were increased by 400ns, the server would pay for itself very quickly.

This is the exact opposite of my experience. I find that I provide tons of pertinent information and then the support person follows their script and asks me something along the lines of "Is it plugged in"?

+1 to being explicit and making a *business case* for why you need a reasonable computer.

+1 to stuff in your machine getting broken if the above fails.

novel suggestion: i would polish my resume and monitor craigslist. a company too stupid to fix an easily fixable problem like buying a reasonably modern machine for its devs is a company too stupid to get much of anything else right ime.

also i don't care how smart you are or how detailed your bug report: the first question should always be "is it plugged in?" (unless you explicitly stated that it was).

No, People should use common sense. If I tell you "My screen is displaying error message XYZ", I shouldn't have to explicitly say "and my computer is plugged in".

I'm fine with starting with simple questions. My point was more that most support people I've dealt with don't understand the problem they're trying to fix - and so they have no understanding of how the information I'm giving them already rules out some subset of the simple questions.

Gullanian:

Record the number of long delays your computer forces on you in a day. Everything 30 seconds or more where you can't work. Add it up, multiply it by your hourly rate (if you don't get paid by the hour, your yearly salary/2000 should do it), then compare that with the price of a hot new computer - not top of the line, but comfortably above average.

Send it to your boss, and you'll have a new computer in two weeks.

They don't care if you're frustrated. You're a computer nerd, they just think you want a new toy. They do care if the old computer is costing them money.

Caller says "i see nothing on my display". How many questions do you ask before checking the plug?

Is the power light on for the monitor? "No" Push the power button, is it on now? "No" Is it plugged in?

So, 2.

Totally different situation, but in this case basically 1. Although I'd be polite and probably phrase it as: "Let's check that all the connections are tight. Start at the wall and ..."

I'm with JJ. There is a big difference between "It doesn't work" and "X isn't happening when it should be, even after I tried Y."

Woop! My first ever app has been accepted for the Mac App store and is on sale Website is http://ginkapps.com/splitscreen (app store link http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/split...310?ls=1&mt=12).

It is a super simple app for Mac OSX that allows you to split your windows to either the left or right of the screen.

If anyone would like a free copy, PM me for a promo code (would really appreciate feedback).

Congrats. I don't use Mac, which prolly marks me an ameteur, but that looks useful. What language?

Its written in Objective-C with bit of AppleScript. First time I have used Objective-C