Rants

Ugh yeah… I’ve got a bee in my bonnet, and I’m having another winge.

I don’t know what the cause is, but for whatever reason, there’s been an increase in the number of people who, instead of properly typing words out, and at least attempting proper spelling and grammar (which I’ll admit, I don’t always get perfect myself), instead, insist on cheap shortcuts. Even on exams, there are people out there who would rather write “2”, “u” and “ur”, instead of spelling those words out properly.
For people who are from a non-English speaking background, yeah fair enough, they won’t know all the intricacies of the English language. But at least they try to get things right. The people I speak of, are those who have only ever known one language, English, have been taught (presumably) literacy skills at school, yet still insist on hard to read, cheap, dodgy shortcuts.
I’ve got a simple motto which I stick by:

If you want a question answered, and not mocked, make sure it can be read.

I don’t know about others… but I do get a lot of email, and I also have a lot of things to do in real life. I’ve got better things to do than to try and decipher a badly written email. Okay, there are some well-known acronyms such as “LOL”, those are fine. But dropping letters for the sake of it (laziness), is not on. On SMS messages, I can tollerate it to a point: you’re working on a telephone keypad, with limited space to write a message. On online games, I’ll tollerate it (to a lesser extent) as one has limited time to construct a message. I won’t, however, tollerate it on email messages, on chatroom protocols such as IRC, or on instant messenger systems, where one is presumably working on a decent-size keyboard and has ample time to write the message.
I mean, how long does it take to type “2”, vs typing “to”, “too” or “two”? How about “u” vs “you”? Are you really saving much time by dropping letters? I’d say no. Are you helping the reader understanding your message? Again, no. In fact, I’ve seen instances where someone has used “2”, and I’ve been left guessing which word they actually meant.

Grammar is an issue too… but less so. Probably the worst problem here, is people writing big long sentences with no breaks. Big blocks of text are hard to read too.

SI units are another point of confusion — more than once I’ve commented to someone about how quick their sub-Hz computer is, not everybody understands that SI units are case-sensitive. This is particularly important when asking networking-related questions… is “mbps”, MegaBytes per second, Megabits per second, Millibits per second?? Okay, B (bytes) vs b (bits) was never standardised, even though this is the common convention, but to be sure, perhaps MBytes or Mbits is better ;-).

Anyway… enough of my ranting… I’ve got it out of my system now. 🙂 Just to say, next time you’re writing an email to one of us, please do us a favour, and write your message properly. Pretty please? 😀

Yep, I’m sure everybody knows what I’m on about… it’s those annoying people, that ring just as you’re about to take a bite of your hot dinner … or wake you up/disturb you in the middle of the day, to sell you something you’re not interested in.

I’ve endured it for quite some time now. Somebody rings on the landline phone (thankfully they haven’t touched my mobile), and starts their marketing blurb. Sometimes they’ll ask for a “Mr Longland” … and after further probing, maybe I can get a “D G Longland” out of them (being my father’s phone line, he’s listed in the phonebook, and this is where they get the number from). Depending on my mood, I’ll either be highly synical or flippant, or I’ll play dumb.

Each time it happens though, I still can’t help but think … they’re doing it all wrong. Just because a number is in the phone book … that doesn’t instantly give them the right to use it to make an unsolicited commercial phonecall. At the moment for us here in Australia, there are two options:

• Request our number to be made silent. This would prohibit anyone from publishing your phone number basically. But this wouldn’t stop those call centres that just hit +6173 then throw 7 more random digits on the end. It’s also an inconvenience for people who know us.
• Get added to the ADMA Do Not Call List. Now this will help cull calls from crowds that are a member of this association … but what about others?

I thus propose another solution.

Rather than just calling anyone, then having people opt-out of the service… instead… people should opt-in to receiving calls. This is how it’d work.

1. A telemarketing company puts out an advert in the media (radio, TV, newspapers…etc.), listing possible service areas that people might be interested in, as well as a phone number for people to contact for more information. Let’s say for the example, this crowd are in contact with mobile phone carriers, internet providers, mortgage crowds, and a few other companies.
2. People who are interested then ring this number. An operator (or a computer) answers, and gives them the rundown of the services available.
3. The caller then selects the services they want, along with specifying a preferred contact phone number and times to call.
4. The company then adds the caller to their call-list.

This has a number of advantages:

• Their people no longer get abused by people who aren’t interested.
• They pay less to run the companies, because fewer calls are wasted.
• Customers here about the services they are interested in, and may attract more by word-of-mouth.

Disadvantages:

• There’s an additional cost to pay for adverts (which is offset by fewer calls)
• Harder for new players to become established.

Maybe if companies took this approach… fewer people would be needlessly disturbed… and they might become more successful as a result. 🙂