Zhari - Slashdot User

Comment Re:Pay CSRs better. (Score 1) 245

by Zhari on Tuesday April 17, 2007 @08:03PM (#18775927) Attached to: Customers Treated as Culprits in Support Calls?

That was a long post, but it deserves a place of honour among Ask Slashdot responses. In fact, I find it hard to believe that you've only known CSR's, and never spent any time as one yourself. You hit the nail on the head about many of the difficulties about working support.

I'd like to add one further bit of information: Management often actively discourage their more technically inclined CSR's from providing assistance with unsupported applications or platforms. At my place of work (an ISP) we support: Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows 2000, Windows XP Home and Pro, Mac OS 9, and Mac OS X. Note that there is no support for Vista yet (though that will be forthcoming), and certainly no support for *BSD or Linux. There is no assistance for routers either, we can just tell the customer which settings to use, and direct them to call the router manufacturer for any further assistance.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing either. It is an attempt to create a uniformity of service and support. Trying to train all the new recruits on the ins and outs of linux networking, or trying to learn the configuration process for the thousands of makes and models of routers in the marketplace is just not possible. While most routers are setup in largely the same way, we're often dealing with customers who need us to be able to tell them *exactly* what to look for. You need to be able to describe other icons around the one the customer is looking for, and be able to describe each in many different ways, using colours, shapes, and weird metaphors for some customers. You don't learn all this in a training room. Trial by fire, and lots and lots of practice.

Support representatives deserve their own day, just like secretaries.

New Zero-Day Vulnerability In Windows 231

Posted by Zonk on Saturday November 04, 2006 @11:44PM from the worst-day-of-the-week dept.

Jimmy T writes "Microsoft and Secunia are warning about the discovery of a new 'Zero-day' vulnerability affecting all Microsoft based operating systems except Windows 2003. Both companies states that the vulnerability is currently being exploited by malicious websites. One attack vector is through Internet Explorer 6/7 — so be aware where you surf to."

Hans Reiser Arrested On Suspicion of Murder 1651

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday October 10, 2006 @09:53PM from the sad-day dept.

Many readers wrote about the arrest today of Hans Reiser, author of ReiserFS, by Oakland, CA police on suspicion of murdering his estranged wife. From the San Francisco Chronicle: "Hans Reiser, 42, was taken into custody at 11 a.m., hours after Oakland police and FBI technicians searched his home in the Oakland hills. His estranged wife, Nina Reiser, 31, has been missing since Sept. 3, when she dropped off the couple's son and daughter at his home on the 6900 block of Exeter Drive... Police made the arrest based on circumstantial evidence and have not found Nina Reiser's body, [Hans Reiser's attorney] Du Bois said. 'I have no idea what the circumstantial evidence is,' he said. 'When I hear what the evidence is against him, I'll make a decision as to whether he'll talk to them.'" kimvette writes, "While the disappearance (and possible murder) of his wife is tragic, Linux users will wonder where this will leave Reiser 4. If Reiser is found guilty, will Novell or IBM pick up the pieces and finish up Reiser 4 for inclusion in the kernel or is this the end of the Reiser filesystem project? Will there be any future for the Reiser filesystem, and if Hans is found guilty and the project is continued, will the project be renamed to avoid notoriety?"

ESR Says Linux Followers Should Compromise 540

Posted by Zonk on Friday August 25, 2006 @04:29PM from the wake-up-and-smell-the-penguin dept.

jpheasant writes "Eric Raymond argues time is running out to win over the iPod generation. To get there, he says the Linux community will need to make 'compromises.' For starters: 'Linux believers will have to reach out beyond self-absorbed geeks who learns Klingon and attends science fiction conventions in his spare time.'" From the article: "I mean that we need to be prepared to go to the rights holders for these proprietary codecs and say, we'll give you money, give us a license; and this is something that the Linux community has a huge antipathy to doing because we've got all this idealism about open source. And in the long run, I think that's true, I view comprising with the proprietary codec vendors as a tactical move designed to get us larger end user market shares, so that in the end we can push more things to the open."

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