Great moments in internet advertising

Of course the teaser headline should cut off mid-sentence, to make you wonder how it finishes... (Hitchcock-like suspense!) Unfortunately, sometimes it just ends up telling the truth a little too well....

Adventures in Tech Support, Ctd.

The software for the AllShareCastHappyJoyousHarmonyFuntime dongle updated itself on my tablet. I therefore assume it's compatible.

Oh, and it's available at several places online for about half of what the manufacturer's website is selling it for. Just saying.

Adventures in Tech Support

So I got myself a tablet the other day, a Samsung Tab 4 10", model SM-T530NU. It's a nice tablet. I like it.

I took it to work to see if I could get it to interface with our overhead projectors. It took 2 adapters--mini-USB to HDMI, HDMI to VGA--and got no result. So, *after* trying this, I check the help files on the tablet.

No, as it turns out you can't just redirect the screen out the port, but there's something called Screen Mirroring that works with a separate dongle, sold separately. For about a hundred bucks. (SEE: What the market will bear, charging.) Basically this gizmo plugs into an HDMI device, and the tablet broadcasts wirelessly to this gizmo.

OK, fine. But as I'm looking at the web page for the device in question, I see a link for "list of compatible devices," and double-check, and lo and behold, my tablet isn't on it. Though several earlier Samsung tablets are.

So: The tablet's documentation says to get this gizmo, but the gizmo's documentation says the tablet's not supported. Well, it doesn't explicitly say that my model ISN'T supported, but my tablet isn't on the list of things that ARE supported. A lot of their phones and tablets are, but not this one. Is that significant, or not?

Hmmmm..... That's when I made my mistake and tried the online tech support.

Large companies started using automated text-processing chatbots instead of real people for tech support years ago, to cut costs. They don't do the job very well and tend to be frustrating to use, but they're cheap and don't take vacations or complain about overtime. Since customer support is pretty much pure cost overhead, there's a strong incentive to do it as absolutely cheaply as possible.

And so the comedy of errors and repeating myself began. The first chatbot asked for the model number and then took 3 minutes to determine that it didn't know anything about that model and so it passed me to another one. That meant starting over from the beginning, because of course the reason a call is passed along can't be provided by the system  doing the passing.

This time it only took 3 attempts to get my question--is the AllShareCastHappyFriendlyJoyousHarmony device compatible with this tablet?--across. And a loooong delay, ending in "that device isn't compatible with all tablets, you can find more information here," with a link back to the web page that caused me the question in the first place. It asked for confirmation that I could reach the page, and then switched immediately into "thank you very much my I upsell you into some other things?" mode.

So, I have no idea if:

• The AllShareCastHappyFriendlyJoyousHarmony device is in fact compatible with my tablet, and they just haven't updated the webpage; 
• The AllShareCastHappyFriendlyJoyousHarmony device was compatible with earlier models, and they just copied the help files on the tablet without checking to see if they still applied or not (meaning it's a crapshoot and they don't know if their devices work together or not), or 
• The AllShareCastHappyFriendlyJoyousHarmony device is definitely not compatible with my tablet and the documentation on the tablet itself is just wrong, being carried over incorrectly from an earlier model. 

Now, I'm mighty curious about which of those it might be. But not curious enough to pay a hundred bucks to find out.

And the beat goes on....

Quote of the day

"[T]yranny loves surveillance, because it breeds conformity. It means people will only do that which they want other people to know they’re doing — in other words, nothing that is deviant or dissenting or disruptive. It breeds orthodoxy." 
-- Glenn Greenwald

Tech history in a meaningless-but-fun ranking

The Atlantic has a good article up on the 50 greatest breakthroughs since the wheel. Much fun.

Dear Salon.com....

You win. You've made it clear that it's impossible to view your site without getting bombarded with ads for the "American Blackout" special tomorrow night. They must have paid a lot for that kind of marketing.

I hope it's enough to offset the readers you're losing.

I usually hit your site a couple of times a day. I'll be back next week.

My final experience with Time Warner

What does it say about a company that by far the most friendly, courteous, and efficient interaction I had with it...was when I went to their location to return my equipment and cancel my account? Seriously, if the rest of their operation was as professional as well-run as the person I dealt with this morning, I might still be a customer.

But it isn't. So I'm not.

...And this, apparently, is the 500th post of this blog. Well, that's something.

My Personal Hero For Today

...is Rebecca Vitsmun of Moore, OK. Anyone who puts Wolf Blitzer on the spot, and graciously identifies herself as an atheist, at a time of great personal stress, is worth celebrating.

No, it is not necessary to thank the Lord, in order to be happy (and yes, grateful) that one's family is OK.

h/t: article at Salon

UPDATE: Roger Ebert is STILL Dead!

And it's the weekend, so it's time for Salon to recycle Roger Ebert's article.... because pageviews.

Roger Ebert, dead for months, still does not fear death

Shortly after his diagnosis, Roger Ebert wrote an essay for Salon.com entitled "I do not fear death." As essays go, it wasn't bad. Thought provoking. The comments thread degenerated into a bible-beater vs militant atheist snarkfest, but Ebert can't be blamed for that.

The week he died, the article was pulled back onto the front.

And the week after that.

And the week after that.

And about every two weeks since. It wasn't there yesterday, but it's back up today.

I get that it's a good essay... but why is it still being dragged to the front page months after he died? Salon's published better essays than this. They've published more important essays than this.

What demented click-whoring algorithm keeps dragging up this out of date essay? We may never know.

Today's dose of pretension

Do high end headphones really matter? 

Quote of the day

"Not much shocks you on the gay scene. But seeing Helen Mirren dressed as the Queen cussing and swearing and making you stop your parade - that's a new one."

--Mark McKenzie, 

pride parade organizer, on being told off by Dame Helen Mirren, 

who was performing in a nearby  theater

Quote of the day

I am undefeated in single combat—though only because I have never been in a fight and flee anytime I see anyone who looks even vaguely threatening. 

--Graeme Wood, The Atlantic

Words to live by, indeed. 

A mess all the way around

The controversy at PyCon about possibly-sexist jokes and the reaction to them triggers a few thoughts...and since the title of the blog is "Random Musings," here are some random musings....

• That such jokes were being made would not be a surprise to anyone who knows geeks. 
• Yes, they were out of line. "It's part of geek culture" is no excuse, and we can't ignore that kind of thing and then wonder why so few girls are interested in entering the field when they grow up. 
• That said, it's not clear that asking for the guys to be ejected over a passing joke was the optimum response. Would a withering glare and a "that's not funny" have been impossible? 
• From there, it's a spiraling tale of corporate cowardice, of firing anyone who's come to the public attention, and bad internet behavior. (Death threats and hacking attacks? Over a misunderstanding over a joke? Everyone take a deep breath and grow up. If the people who got fired aren't making such threats or attacks, I don't see how anyone else has the right to.) 

Though I'm looking forward to the next python meetup get-together, so I can talk with some people who were at the conference... It's usually a good bet that the more the media has come to a consensus about what happened, the more wrong that consensus is. 

Mashup/redub of the day

Twitter-menace, or threat?

From the world of bad beer....

So there's a lawsuit against Anheuser-Busch alleging that they've been watering down their beer....

How could they tell?

Glitch strikes again...

This is getting to be kind of fun....

Amusing Glitch Update

So I've got some sort of odd glitch in my web browser. On certain blogs that I visit fairly often, it sometimes happens that when I first visit the site after starting the browser, there's an off-by-one error on video embeds; the video shown in a post is actually the correct video for the story before it. Reloading the page clears the problem.

But occasionally it's just amusing enough to be worth doing a screengrab first:

I just wonder....

...how many years of his tax returns did Congressman Ryan have to provide to the Romney team as part of the vetting process?

Just saying.

Anti-atheist discrimination

Interesting article over at Salon about the discrimination faced by atheists. I've run into it occasionally. The first time I explicitly hit it was in junior high, when it was made very clear by my peers, and my teachers, that some opinions were simply wrong and should be kept to myself in any event. 

My views on religious issues have waxed and waned over the years since then, though I'm currently  back in my default strongly-doubting agnostic mode.  (Making the positive claim that something doesn't exist is much more difficult than the observation that there's a notable lack of evidence for something existing.) 

The only sort I've bumped up against lately is the informal variety. The sort that's perfectly legal, and that our society says is acceptable. So, for example, if someone informs me that I couldn't possibly be moral, that I'm not fit to stand in front of a classroom, that I'm not loyal to my country (and too dim-witted to understand what my country is 'really' all about), well, I'm supposed to just thank them for trying to help me be a better human being for pointing out to me how awful it is that I'm not like them. I've had all of those happen, by the way. 

On the other hand, I've also not had problems (at my current job) with people evangelizing me on the job, knocking my performance appraisal, or spamming me with "god will hate you if you don't forward this" emails.  Updating my filters has taken care of the emails from friends, former friends, people with whom I took high-school classes in the same building, distant cousins, etc. I've learned from experience, they won't take you off their "Emails For Jesus" list no matter how often you ask, so it's easier, and kinder, with less hurt feelings all the way around, to just update the filters so it's not taking up space in the inbox and be done with it. 

Incidentally...what made me question religion and turn to the more austere, but reality-based, appeal of reason in the first place? Reading the Bible. All of it, cover to cover. But that's another story, for another day....