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Shibboleths that get you past the initial script stage

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Re: Shibboleths that get you past the initial script stage

#61

Post by aasasd »

netcan wrote: post #43
aasasd wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wish the "shibboleth" idiom (which is a good one) was translated, rather than transliterated. [...] A good modern example is "LondonDerry/Derry. This'd be my choice for an English translation of shibboleth. Well, the thing is, I'm not an Englishman so have no idea what's the deal with ‘Derry’ is, but I know what a shibboleth is. It has become an English term—and btw not an idiom in English since it has no other m…

I agree. Terms become terms and we can't change it. I just meant that idioms tend to be richer when the source is material. Point taken on finding an example that everyone understands. Any political context creates shibboleths by the dozen. The UK is good for making ones that stick around. "Nationist" and "National" political movements, for example, are apposite (and opposing).

Yeah no, don't do that. After reading about the Derry thing, I realized I better forget all about it and never mention it in the presence of an Irishman, a Northern-Irishman or anyone else from GB, and especially not botch my reference to any one side. ‘Shibboleth’ has the nice quality that no Ephraimites recently had, or are likely to soon have, misfortunes because of the phenomenon, and the whole affair was three thousand years ago.

Where I'm from, some people, having nothing better to do, occasionally raise noise saying that ‘to each his own’ is offensive because it happened to be written by Nazis on a concentration camp. I don't think I need any more unnecessarily politically aroused stubborn people around than there already are.

Re: Shibboleths that get you past the initial script stage

#62

Post by bouk »

jordansmithnz wrote: post #50

I’ve given thought in the past to some sort of ‘support reputation system’. After calling tech support, they’d rate your manner and how capable you seemed, and this would feed through into your future calls (e.g. calling an ISP with a genuine + very technical question might mean you go straight to the highest tier of tech support next time you call). It would save time for tech support workers too; no need to vet ver…

This is a good idea! It could also figure out if you pay your bills on time and share it with other companies so your good behavior will get you better rates in different places. And we could track if you jaywalk or perform other bad behavior, and deny you air or train travel if you’re not a good citizen.

Re: Shibboleths that get you past the initial script stage

#63

Post by ahofmann »

jordansmithnz wrote: post #50

I’ve given thought in the past to some sort of ‘support reputation system’. After calling tech support, they’d rate your manner and how capable you seemed, and this would feed through into your future calls (e.g. calling an ISP with a genuine + very technical question might mean you go straight to the highest tier of tech support next time you call). It would save time for tech support workers too; no need to vet ver…

Over the years, the people who were technically capable were the ones who made the most unnecessary work for me. I trained myself to ignore everything they tried to do to solve the problem. If I have a technical problem, my colleagues should do the same with my input.

Re: Shibboleths that get you past the initial script stage

#64

Post by k__ »

everyone wrote: post #35

So when this guy is dealing with a doctor. He pretends to be a doctor himself? I assume the doctor would notice the guy is acting like a weird asshole for some reason but not mention it. I guess the tweeter thinks hes being cool and 'hacking' his interactions with people, but I reckon he's just acting like a weird asshole and people are having to deal with it. This is just quite funny imo.

Well, I think there is a difference between acting like a doctor and just showing that you did a bit of background research yourself.

Re: Shibboleths that get you past the initial script stage

#65

Post by cjfd »

lolcat5e wrote: post #30
artsyca wrote: post #24

How about 'lollapalooza' this word was similarly used to distinguish friend and foe

Likewise for Scheveningen (Dutch/German)

There is an even nicer word for dutch/german. slechtstschrijvende/schlechtstschreibende. Yes, 9 consonants in a row and you have to pronounce all of them like you are a beatboxer.

Re: Shibboleths that get you past the initial script stage

#66

Post by csydas »

jordansmithnz wrote: post #50

I’ve given thought in the past to some sort of ‘support reputation system’. After calling tech support, they’d rate your manner and how capable you seemed, and this would feed through into your future calls (e.g. calling an ISP with a genuine + very technical question might mean you go straight to the highest tier of tech support next time you call). It would save time for tech support workers too; no need to vet ver…

This already happens. I would be shocked if any mature support branch for a large project __didn't__ have their CRM littered with notes about various companies and specific persons within a given company, even with Consumer Tech Support lines.

Typically, skipping specific steps in common troubleshooting is not done unless the person provides some verification on a new case/call to validate that this step was indeed done, simply because even professionals make mistakes, but specific environmental factors, the person'(s) relative technical knowledge, their behavior in the past with support, common pain points in their environment, and other such things are all recorded pretty heavily.

Usually though this only means that you'll skip Tier 0/1 Support though for most companies. Usually there's always a small reserve of "big guns" that are reserved only for the cases that really need them.

Keep in mind though that this is mostly for companies that specifically look to work with Technology Professionals; when you're talking about generic Consumer Support, such a system is feasible but often non-sensical from any business perspective for the Companies when we're discussing Consumer Support. Comcast's monopoly is only one reason why they were able to weather "worst support ever" for so many years; the simple fact is that they got pretty good at handling vocal customers, or at least adding a public face that made most consumers not care. At best, with such supports, you'll just get X replaced regardless of what X is, and any issue that isn't solved by that tends to be over the head of most people's interests, so any outrage from highly technical persons mostly just gets ignored.

I know what you want, and you can get this with Tech Companies. But if you want fast and good support from Consumer Tech (ISPs, home tech, etc), you have two routes: play the game and just move through the motions ASAP, or post on Twitter and hope that you garner enough attention to escalate your case. Both are a waste of time and energy, IMO, and I know which one would take less of my time personally.

Re: Shibboleths that get you past the initial script stage

#67

Post by notacoward »

I've found that pretending to know someone's profession, or one related to it, is generally a very bad approach. It's easily seen through, at which point you're worse off than before. Instead, what I do with members of other professions is try to impress on them that I do not know their business but respect its complexity and our roles within the scenario. Whether it's a doctor or a plumber or even a computer technician (a field which I probably do know better than they do), I explicitly steer away from diagnoses even when I have a pretty clear idea what the problem is. Instead I describe as clearly as possible symptoms, timing/frequency, possibly related changes, things I've tried and results I've gotten, etc. This has generally worked much better for me than deceptive or manipulative hacks. Often I get thanks or compliments for having made their job easier, which makes me happy. YMMV

Re: Shibboleths that get you past the initial script stage

#68

Post by nkrisc »

notacoward wrote: post #67

I've found that pretending to know someone's profession, or one related to it, is generally a very bad approach. It's easily seen through, at which point you're worse off than before. Instead, what I do with members of other professions is try to impress on them that I do not know their business but respect its complexity and our roles within the scenario. Whether it's a doctor or a plumber or even a computer technic…

This method works wonders for corporate tech support. They're pretty used to the "my monitor won't turn on (it's not plugged in)" type users so when you try to tell them you know what's wrong, they assume you're there former type and you have no idea what you're talking about. Instead I very clearly tell them the specific symptoms and relevant information that they would look up anyway.

Recently I had a corporate installed process maxing out my CPU so I went to the help desk to see the techs (the triager at the front desk thought it might be a fan issue and that I didn't know what was wrong). Since I was able to tell them the exact process and other details, they immediately recognized it as a specific issue they had seen before and we skipped the whole diagnosis back and forth. If I had gone in there and said, "the fan is running really high" I'd probably still be there.

Re: Shibboleths that get you past the initial script stage

#69

Post by TheCoelacanth »

Tenoke wrote: post #18
OscarCunningham wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legally, people make distinctions between different kinds of ownership. So you can be the "beneficial owner" without being the "registed owner". In fact every public US stock is owned first by Cede and Company. Any public stock you own is a contract with them (via intermediaries). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cede_and_Company

As far as I understand, Cede's contractual rights make it so you are pretty close to 'owning' the stock compared to ETF/Mutual Fund. >So you can be the "beneficial owner" without being the "registed owner". Are you the 'beneficial owner' of an ETF's invested assets or just of the ETF instead?

You are the registered owner of the ETF, but the beneficial owner of the underlying shares.

Re: Shibboleths that get you past the initial script stage

#70

Post by FabHK »

indocomsoft wrote: post #49
FabHK wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Allegedly, during the invasion of the Netherlands by Nazi forces commencing on May 10th, 1940, the Dutch used "Scheveningen" or "beschuit" as a shibboleth to distinguish German speakers from Dutch. I don't quite understand that, as most Germans don't speak Dutch, full stop, and it would be trivial to distinguish them thereby, while presumably if you have gone to the trouble of learning Dutch, you'd know how to pronou…

I think it’s because in German, sch is one consonant (like sh in English), while in Dutch, sch is a consonant cluster of s-ch, ch as in Loch Ness.

Yes, but presumably you’d learn that when you learn Dutch. I maintain that it is easier for a German speaker to learn the pronunciation of “Scheveningen” than to learn the entire Dutch language, and that L1 German speakers that learned Dutch as a foreign language will pronounce “Scheveningen” correctly, or, at any rate, not make the trivial mistake of analysing “sch” as the trigraph "sch," pronounced [ʃ], rather than as the letter "s" and the digraph "ch", producing the consonant cluster [sx].
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