[SWLUG] Employment agencies

[Steve Hill]

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On Wed, 2 Mar 2005, Julian Hall wrote:

> I agree there, but you know why they don't.  Microsoft's punitive licensing 
> probably bars them from putting other OSs on the machines, and the paltry 
> Education budgets can't stretch to having machines bought with no OS or 
> custom built without the MS subsidy.

Very likely - this is presumably one of the reasons why Bill is getting 
his knighthood. :)
If we're very lucky then the MiniMacs will make the prospect of good 
non-windows machines more affordable though.

> to know the correct command syntax to load the game *and* balance the volume 
> on the tape deck properly (hush.. I'm THAT old.. deal with it ;)).

Ahh, good times. :)

> Admittedly they tended not to give me the "dot dot" line, but then asked "How 
> do I get my email?" faced with a flipping big "Get Mail" button in the corner 
> of the screen.

I know I'm turning this into a rant, but this reminded me of the one that 
comes up every so often here:

(Irate) Customer: The bloody email server you installed here is broken and 
is rejecting mails I send!  I've got a very important document that needs 
to be sent now and it's just not working!
Me: Ok, what error are you getting?
Cust: I don't know, just some technical rubbish error message!
Me: Can you read it to me?
(on the rare occasion the customer actually bothered to keep the error)
Cust: It says "mail.yahoo.com reported recipient mailbox is full"
Me: Ok, what that means is that when your server tried to deliver mail to 
the server at yahoo.com, that server rejected the mail because the 
mailbox of the recipient is infact full...

What more proof does anyone need that people will panic when they see an 
error message instead of actually reading what it says in plain English? 
:)

Oh, another one that we had problems with was a upgrade system I worked on 
whcih would give the customer an informational warning under some 
circumstances which read something like "Warning: foo has happened 
but this isn't a problem it just means that you need to do bar".  Of 
course, shear panic sets in at the customer's end and we get a support 
call with a panicing customer saying "my upgrade has just failed with a 
massive error message".  The message got changed to start off with *biig* 
writing at the start saying "THIS IS NOT AN ERROR - IT IS INFORMATIONAL" - 
we still got calls from people panicing about the "error".

I definately think that the current trend towards using single types of 
systems when educating people reduces the amount of lateral thinking that 
people are prepared to do when faced with a slightly different system.  I 
wonder if you see this sort of thing in other fields... "Arrgh, this beer 
has got a weird cap that won't unscrew! help, I can't work it" "Yes, 
that's coz it's a can" :)

  - Steve       Jabber: steve at nexusuk.org     Web: http://www.nexusuk.org/

      Servatis a periculum, servatis a maleficum - Whisper, Evanescence

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