Thursday, November 22, 2007
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Sunday, August 12, 2007
Friday, August 3, 2007
Thursday, May 10, 2007
These are actual call centre conversations
These are actual call centre conversations;
Ah, Yes, those IDIOTS, IDIOTS…
Customer: “I’ve been ringing 0700 2300 for two days and can’t get through to enquiries, can you help?”
Operator: “Where did you get that number from, sir?”.
Customer: “It was on the door to the Travel Centre”.
Operator: “Sir, they are our opening hours”.
——————————————————————-
Samsung Electronics Caller: “Can you give me the telephone number for
Jack?”
Operator: “I’m sorry, sir, I don’t understand who you are talking about”.
Caller: “On page 1, section 5, of the user guide it clearly states that I
need to unplug the fax machine from the AC wall socket and telephone Jack
before cleaning. Now, can you give me the number for Jack?”
Operator: “I think you mean the telephone point on the wall”.
——————————————————————–
RAC Motoring Services Caller: “Does your European Breakdown Policy cover
me when I am travelling in Australia?”
Operator: ” Doesn’t the product name give you a clue?”
——————————————————————–
Caller (enquiring about legal requirements while travelling in France):
“If I register my car in France, do I have to change the steering wheel to
the other side of the car?”
——————————————————————–
Directory Enquiries Caller: “I’d like the number of the Argoed Fish Bar in Cardiff please”.
Operator: “I’m sorry, there’s no listing. Is the spelling correct?”
Caller: “Well, it used to be called the Bargoed Fish Bar but the ‘B’ fell
off”.
——————————————————————–
Then there was the caller who asked for a knitwear company in Woven.
Operator: “Woven? Are you sure?”
Caller: “Yes. That’s what it says on the label; Woven in Scotland “.
On another occasion, a man making heavy breathing sounds from a phone box
told a worried operator: “I haven’t got a pen, so I’m steaming up the
window to write the number on”.
————————————————————————–
——————————————–
Tech Support: “I need you to right-click on the Open Desktop”.
Customer: “OK”.
Tech Support: “Did you get a pop-up menu?”.
Customer: “No”.
Tech Support: “OK. Right-Click again. Do you see a pop-up menu?” Customer:
“No”.
Tech Support: “OK, sir. Can you tell me what you have done up until this
Point?”.
Customer: “Sure. You told me to write ‘click’ and I wrote ‘click’”.
———————————————————————
Tech Support: “OK. In the bottom left hand side of the screen, can you
see the ‘OK’ button displayed?”
Customer: “Wow. How can you see my screen from there?”
——————————————————————–
Caller: “I deleted a file from my PC last week and I have just realised
that I need it. If I turn my system clock back two weeks will I have my
file back again?”.
Ah, Yes, those IDIOTS, IDIOTS…
Customer: “I’ve been ringing 0700 2300 for two days and can’t get through to enquiries, can you help?”
Operator: “Where did you get that number from, sir?”.
Customer: “It was on the door to the Travel Centre”.
Operator: “Sir, they are our opening hours”.
——————————————————————-
Samsung Electronics Caller: “Can you give me the telephone number for
Jack?”
Operator: “I’m sorry, sir, I don’t understand who you are talking about”.
Caller: “On page 1, section 5, of the user guide it clearly states that I
need to unplug the fax machine from the AC wall socket and telephone Jack
before cleaning. Now, can you give me the number for Jack?”
Operator: “I think you mean the telephone point on the wall”.
——————————————————————–
RAC Motoring Services Caller: “Does your European Breakdown Policy cover
me when I am travelling in Australia?”
Operator: ” Doesn’t the product name give you a clue?”
——————————————————————–
Caller (enquiring about legal requirements while travelling in France):
“If I register my car in France, do I have to change the steering wheel to
the other side of the car?”
——————————————————————–
Directory Enquiries Caller: “I’d like the number of the Argoed Fish Bar in Cardiff please”.
Operator: “I’m sorry, there’s no listing. Is the spelling correct?”
Caller: “Well, it used to be called the Bargoed Fish Bar but the ‘B’ fell
off”.
——————————————————————–
Then there was the caller who asked for a knitwear company in Woven.
Operator: “Woven? Are you sure?”
Caller: “Yes. That’s what it says on the label; Woven in Scotland “.
On another occasion, a man making heavy breathing sounds from a phone box
told a worried operator: “I haven’t got a pen, so I’m steaming up the
window to write the number on”.
————————————————————————–
——————————————–
Tech Support: “I need you to right-click on the Open Desktop”.
Customer: “OK”.
Tech Support: “Did you get a pop-up menu?”.
Customer: “No”.
Tech Support: “OK. Right-Click again. Do you see a pop-up menu?” Customer:
“No”.
Tech Support: “OK, sir. Can you tell me what you have done up until this
Point?”.
Customer: “Sure. You told me to write ‘click’ and I wrote ‘click’”.
———————————————————————
Tech Support: “OK. In the bottom left hand side of the screen, can you
see the ‘OK’ button displayed?”
Customer: “Wow. How can you see my screen from there?”
——————————————————————–
Caller: “I deleted a file from my PC last week and I have just realised
that I need it. If I turn my system clock back two weeks will I have my
file back again?”.
Saturday, March 31, 2007
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Paying attention to not paying attention
NEW YORK - Researchers are studying a pervasive psychological phenomenon in which oh man we've got to finish doing the taxes this weekend ... C'mon, admit it. Your train of thought has derailed like that many times. It's just mind-wandering. We all do it, and surprisingly often, whether we're struggling to avoid it or not.
Mainstream psychology hasn't paid much attention to this common mental habit. But a spate of new studies is chipping away at its mysteries and scientists say the topic is beginning to gain visibility.
Someday, such research may turn up ways to help students keep their focus on textbooks and lectures, and drivers to keep their minds on the road. It may reveal ways to reap payoffs from the habit.
And it might shed light on attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, which can include an unusually severe inability to focus that causes trouble in multiple areas of life.
More generally, scientists say, mind-wandering is worth studying because it's just too common to ignore.
Michael Kane, a psychologist at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, sampled the thoughts of students at eight random times a day for a week. He found that on average, they were not thinking about what they were doing 30 percent of the time.
For some students it was between 80 and 90 percent of the time. Out of the 126 participants, only one denied any mind-wandering at the sampled moments.
Prior work has also turned up average rates of 30 percent to 40 percent in everyday life.
"If you want to understand people's mental lives, this is a phenomenon we ought to be thinking about," Kane said.
Of course, a lot of mind-wandering is harmless, as when you think about a work problem while munching a cheeseburger. The problem comes when it distracts you from something you should be paying attention to.
The result of that can be tragic. Kane noted the 2003 case of a college professor who drove to work in Irvine, Calif., one hot August day, parked and went to his office. Whatever was going through his mind, he'd lost track of the fact that his 10-month-old son was in the back seat. The boy died in the heat. In 2004, virtually the same thing happened in Santa Ana, Calif.
A more common task that demands concentration is reading. Even here, people's minds wander 15 to 20 percent of the time, said Jonathan Schooler of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. And they often don't realize it, he said.
He and colleagues had college students read passages from "War and Peace" and other books. The volunteers pushed a button every time they noticed their thoughts straying, and that happened regularly, Schooler said.
But more surprisingly in such experiments, when the volunteers are interrupted at random times and asked what they're thinking, "we regularly catch people's minds wandering before they've noticed it themselves," Schooler said. And these stealth episodes appear to hamper reading comprehension, he said.
In Kane's study, scheduled for publication later this year, volunteers carried devices that beeped at random times and asked questions about their thoughts. Most of the time when caught mind-wandering, the students said they'd deliberately stopped focusing on what they were doing.
Their wandering thoughts trained more on everyday things than on fantasies, and much more than on worries. That's similar to what previous studies have found. "A lot of what they're reporting is ... mental to-do lists," Kane said.
But what leads to this?
"The mind is always trying to wander, every chance it gets," Schooler said. In his view, the mind has not only the goal of achieving whatever task we're focused on, but also personal goals simmering outside of our immediate awareness. These are things like making plans for the future, working out everyday problems, and better understanding oneself. Sometimes, one of these goals hijacks our attention. And so our mind wanders.
Brain-scanning evidence links mind-wandering to basic operation of the brain. Malia Mason of Harvard's Massachusetts General Hospital and colleagues recently reported that mind-wandering taps into the same circuitry that people use when they're told to do nothing — when their brains are on "idle."
Schooler, who's studying brain-wave activity associated with mind wandering, welcomes what he sees as a surge of interest in the topic. He and others say there's plenty to learn.
One goal is finding ways to help people realize when their mind is wandering and bring it under control, Schooler said. He plans to test whether meditation training might help.
But there's even a more basic question, he said. Why is the brain wired to wander? What could possibly be good about that?
"Mind-wandering is probably more often helpful than harmful," Kane said. For one thing, the cost is low: despite notable exceptions, life usually doesn't demand our full attention.
"A lot of human daily life is autopilot," he said. "There's a whole lot of what we need to do that we can do without thinking about it, from driving to eating .... We do occasionally miss that turn on the way home, but we get through the day pretty well."
Given that, a mechanism that encourages us to devote some idle brain capacity to planning and solving problems "seems like a pretty good use of time," he said.
Schooler is exploring the idea that mind-wandering promotes creativity. "It's unconstrained, it can go anywhere, which is sort of the perfect situation for creative thought," he said.
Mason points out that just because the human brain wanders doesn't necessarily mean there's a good reason for it. Maybe, she said, the mind wanders simply because it can.
But even she sees an upside.
"I can be stuck in my car in traffic and not go absolutely crazy because I'm not stuck in the here and now," she said. "I can think about what happened last night. And that's great."
Mainstream psychology hasn't paid much attention to this common mental habit. But a spate of new studies is chipping away at its mysteries and scientists say the topic is beginning to gain visibility.
Someday, such research may turn up ways to help students keep their focus on textbooks and lectures, and drivers to keep their minds on the road. It may reveal ways to reap payoffs from the habit.
And it might shed light on attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, which can include an unusually severe inability to focus that causes trouble in multiple areas of life.
More generally, scientists say, mind-wandering is worth studying because it's just too common to ignore.
Michael Kane, a psychologist at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, sampled the thoughts of students at eight random times a day for a week. He found that on average, they were not thinking about what they were doing 30 percent of the time.
For some students it was between 80 and 90 percent of the time. Out of the 126 participants, only one denied any mind-wandering at the sampled moments.
Prior work has also turned up average rates of 30 percent to 40 percent in everyday life.
"If you want to understand people's mental lives, this is a phenomenon we ought to be thinking about," Kane said.
Of course, a lot of mind-wandering is harmless, as when you think about a work problem while munching a cheeseburger. The problem comes when it distracts you from something you should be paying attention to.
The result of that can be tragic. Kane noted the 2003 case of a college professor who drove to work in Irvine, Calif., one hot August day, parked and went to his office. Whatever was going through his mind, he'd lost track of the fact that his 10-month-old son was in the back seat. The boy died in the heat. In 2004, virtually the same thing happened in Santa Ana, Calif.
A more common task that demands concentration is reading. Even here, people's minds wander 15 to 20 percent of the time, said Jonathan Schooler of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. And they often don't realize it, he said.
He and colleagues had college students read passages from "War and Peace" and other books. The volunteers pushed a button every time they noticed their thoughts straying, and that happened regularly, Schooler said.
But more surprisingly in such experiments, when the volunteers are interrupted at random times and asked what they're thinking, "we regularly catch people's minds wandering before they've noticed it themselves," Schooler said. And these stealth episodes appear to hamper reading comprehension, he said.
In Kane's study, scheduled for publication later this year, volunteers carried devices that beeped at random times and asked questions about their thoughts. Most of the time when caught mind-wandering, the students said they'd deliberately stopped focusing on what they were doing.
Their wandering thoughts trained more on everyday things than on fantasies, and much more than on worries. That's similar to what previous studies have found. "A lot of what they're reporting is ... mental to-do lists," Kane said.
But what leads to this?
"The mind is always trying to wander, every chance it gets," Schooler said. In his view, the mind has not only the goal of achieving whatever task we're focused on, but also personal goals simmering outside of our immediate awareness. These are things like making plans for the future, working out everyday problems, and better understanding oneself. Sometimes, one of these goals hijacks our attention. And so our mind wanders.
Brain-scanning evidence links mind-wandering to basic operation of the brain. Malia Mason of Harvard's Massachusetts General Hospital and colleagues recently reported that mind-wandering taps into the same circuitry that people use when they're told to do nothing — when their brains are on "idle."
Schooler, who's studying brain-wave activity associated with mind wandering, welcomes what he sees as a surge of interest in the topic. He and others say there's plenty to learn.
One goal is finding ways to help people realize when their mind is wandering and bring it under control, Schooler said. He plans to test whether meditation training might help.
But there's even a more basic question, he said. Why is the brain wired to wander? What could possibly be good about that?
"Mind-wandering is probably more often helpful than harmful," Kane said. For one thing, the cost is low: despite notable exceptions, life usually doesn't demand our full attention.
"A lot of human daily life is autopilot," he said. "There's a whole lot of what we need to do that we can do without thinking about it, from driving to eating .... We do occasionally miss that turn on the way home, but we get through the day pretty well."
Given that, a mechanism that encourages us to devote some idle brain capacity to planning and solving problems "seems like a pretty good use of time," he said.
Schooler is exploring the idea that mind-wandering promotes creativity. "It's unconstrained, it can go anywhere, which is sort of the perfect situation for creative thought," he said.
Mason points out that just because the human brain wanders doesn't necessarily mean there's a good reason for it. Maybe, she said, the mind wanders simply because it can.
But even she sees an upside.
"I can be stuck in my car in traffic and not go absolutely crazy because I'm not stuck in the here and now," she said. "I can think about what happened last night. And that's great."
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Study links sense of humor, survival
Study links sense of humor, survival
BUDAPEST, Hungary - Laugh and the world laughs with you. Even better, you might live longer, a Norwegian researcher reports.
Adults who have a sense of humor outlive those who don't find life funny, and the survival edge is particularly large for people with cancer, says Sven Svebak of the medical school at Norwegian University of Science and Technology.
He released his study of about 54,000 Norwegians, tracked for seven years, at the American Psychosomatic Society meeting here.
At the start, patients filled out questionnaires on how easily they found humor in real-life situations and how important a humorous perspective was.
The greater a role humor played in their lives, the greater their chances of surviving the seven years, Svebak says. Adults who scored in the top one-quarter for humor appreciation were 35% more likely to be alive than those in the bottom quarter, he says.
In a subgroup of 2,015 who had a cancer diagnosis at the start, a great sense of humor cut someone's chances of death by about 70% compared with adults with a poor sense of humor, Svebak says.
BUDAPEST, Hungary - Laugh and the world laughs with you. Even better, you might live longer, a Norwegian researcher reports.
Adults who have a sense of humor outlive those who don't find life funny, and the survival edge is particularly large for people with cancer, says Sven Svebak of the medical school at Norwegian University of Science and Technology.
He released his study of about 54,000 Norwegians, tracked for seven years, at the American Psychosomatic Society meeting here.
At the start, patients filled out questionnaires on how easily they found humor in real-life situations and how important a humorous perspective was.
The greater a role humor played in their lives, the greater their chances of surviving the seven years, Svebak says. Adults who scored in the top one-quarter for humor appreciation were 35% more likely to be alive than those in the bottom quarter, he says.
In a subgroup of 2,015 who had a cancer diagnosis at the start, a great sense of humor cut someone's chances of death by about 70% compared with adults with a poor sense of humor, Svebak says.
Al-Qaida No. 3 says he planned 9/11
Al-Qaida No. 3 says he planned 9/11
WASHINGTON - Khalid Sheikh Mohammed confirmed his notoriety as al-Qaida's most ambitious operational planner when, according to military transcripts, he confessed to planning and supporting 31 terrorist attacks, topped by 9/11, that killed thousands of innocent victims since the early 1990s.
The gruesome attacks range from the suicide hijackings of Sept. 11, 2001 — which killed nearly 3,000 — to a 2002 shooting on an island off Kuwait that killed a U.S. Marine.
Many plots, including a previously undisclosed plan to kill several former U.S. presidents, were never carried out or were foiled by international counterterror authorities.
"I was responsible for the 9/11 operation from A to Z," Mohammed said in a statement read Saturday during a Combatant Status Review Tribunal at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Mohammed's confession was read by a member of the U.S. military who is serving as his personal representative.
The
Pentagon released a 26-page transcript of the closed-door proceedings on Wednesday night. Some material was omitted, and it wasn't possible to immediately confirm details. Some elements of it refer to locations for which the United States and other nations have issued terrorism warnings based on what they deemed credible threats from 1993 to the present.
Mohammed, known as KSM among government officials, was last seen haggard after his capture in March 2003, when he was photographed in a dingy white T-shirt with an over-stretched neck. He disappeared for more than three years into a secret detention system run by the
CIA.
In his first public statements since his capture, his radical ideology and self-confidence came through. He expressed regret for taking the lives of children and said Islam doesn't give a "green light" to killing.
Yet he finds room for exceptions. "The language of the war is victims," he said.
He also said he "consider George Washington as hero. Muslims many of them are considering
Osama bin Laden. He is doing same thing. He is just fighting. He needs his independence."
In laying out his role in 31 attacks, his words drew al-Qaida closer to plots of the early 1990s than the group has previously been linked, including the 1993 World Trade Center truck bombing in which six people died.
Six people with links to global terror networks were convicted in federal court and sentenced to life in prison for that attack.
Mohammed made clear that al-Qaida wanted to down a second trans-Atlantic aircraft during would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid's operation.
And he confessed to the beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in a section of the statement that was excised from the public document, The Associated Press has learned. Pearl was abducted in January 2002 in Pakistan while researching a story on Islamic militancy. Mohammed has long been a suspect in the slaying, which was captured on video.
President Bush announced that Mohammed and 13 other alleged terror operatives had been moved from secret CIA prisons to the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay last year. They are considered the 14 most significant captures since 9/11.
The military began the hearings last Friday to determine whether the 14 should be declared "enemy combatants" who can be held indefinitely and prosecuted by military tribunals.
If the 14 are declared enemy combatants, as expected, the military would then draft and file charges against them. The detainees would be tried under the new military commissions law signed by Bush in October.
The military barred reporters or other independent observers from the sessions for the 14 operatives and is limiting the information it provides about them, arguing that it wants to prevent the disclosure of sensitive information.
Legal experts have criticized the U.S. decision, and The Associated Press filed a letter of protest, arguing that it would be "an unconstitutional mistake to close the proceedings in their entirety."
The transcripts refer to a claim by Mohammed that he was tortured by the CIA, although he said he was not under duress at Guantanamo when he confessed to his role in the attacks. The CIA has said its interrogation practices are legal, and it does not use torture.
Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, questioned the legality of the closed-door sessions and whether the confession was actually the result of torture.
"We won't know that unless there is an independent hearing," he said. "We need to know if this purported confession would be enough to convict him at a fair trial or would it have to be suppressed as the fruit of torture?"
In listing the 28 attacks he planned and another three he supported, Mohammed said he tried to kill international leaders including
Pope John Paul II,
President Clinton and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.
He said he planned the 2002 bombing of a Kenya beach resort frequented by Israelis and the failed missile attack on an Israeli passenger jet after it took off from Mombasa, Kenya.
He also said he was responsible for the bombing of a nightclub in Bali, Indonesia. In 2002, 202 were killed when two nightclubs there were bombed.
Other plots he said he was responsible for included planned attacks against the Sears Tower in Chicago, the Empire State Building and
New York Stock Exchange in New York City, the Panama Canal, and Big Ben and Heathrow Airport in London — none of which happened.
The Pentagon also released transcripts of the hearings of Abu Faraj al-Libi and Ramzi Binalshibh. Both refused to attended the hearings, although al-Libi submitted a statement claiming that the hearings are unfair and that he will not attend unless it is corrected.
"The detainee is in a lose-lose situation," he said.
Al-Libi, whose name means he is a Libyan, reportedly masterminded two bombings 11 days apart in Pakistan in December 2003 that targeted Musharraf for his support of the U.S.-led war on terror.
Binalshibh, a Yemeni, is suspected of helping Mohammed with the 9/11 attack plan on New York City and Washington and is also linked to a foiled plot to crash aircraft into London's Heathrow Airport. His hearing was conducted in his absence.
WASHINGTON - Khalid Sheikh Mohammed confirmed his notoriety as al-Qaida's most ambitious operational planner when, according to military transcripts, he confessed to planning and supporting 31 terrorist attacks, topped by 9/11, that killed thousands of innocent victims since the early 1990s.
The gruesome attacks range from the suicide hijackings of Sept. 11, 2001 — which killed nearly 3,000 — to a 2002 shooting on an island off Kuwait that killed a U.S. Marine.
Many plots, including a previously undisclosed plan to kill several former U.S. presidents, were never carried out or were foiled by international counterterror authorities.
"I was responsible for the 9/11 operation from A to Z," Mohammed said in a statement read Saturday during a Combatant Status Review Tribunal at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Mohammed's confession was read by a member of the U.S. military who is serving as his personal representative.
The
Pentagon released a 26-page transcript of the closed-door proceedings on Wednesday night. Some material was omitted, and it wasn't possible to immediately confirm details. Some elements of it refer to locations for which the United States and other nations have issued terrorism warnings based on what they deemed credible threats from 1993 to the present.
Mohammed, known as KSM among government officials, was last seen haggard after his capture in March 2003, when he was photographed in a dingy white T-shirt with an over-stretched neck. He disappeared for more than three years into a secret detention system run by the
CIA.
In his first public statements since his capture, his radical ideology and self-confidence came through. He expressed regret for taking the lives of children and said Islam doesn't give a "green light" to killing.
Yet he finds room for exceptions. "The language of the war is victims," he said.
He also said he "consider George Washington as hero. Muslims many of them are considering
Osama bin Laden. He is doing same thing. He is just fighting. He needs his independence."
In laying out his role in 31 attacks, his words drew al-Qaida closer to plots of the early 1990s than the group has previously been linked, including the 1993 World Trade Center truck bombing in which six people died.
Six people with links to global terror networks were convicted in federal court and sentenced to life in prison for that attack.
Mohammed made clear that al-Qaida wanted to down a second trans-Atlantic aircraft during would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid's operation.
And he confessed to the beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in a section of the statement that was excised from the public document, The Associated Press has learned. Pearl was abducted in January 2002 in Pakistan while researching a story on Islamic militancy. Mohammed has long been a suspect in the slaying, which was captured on video.
President Bush announced that Mohammed and 13 other alleged terror operatives had been moved from secret CIA prisons to the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay last year. They are considered the 14 most significant captures since 9/11.
The military began the hearings last Friday to determine whether the 14 should be declared "enemy combatants" who can be held indefinitely and prosecuted by military tribunals.
If the 14 are declared enemy combatants, as expected, the military would then draft and file charges against them. The detainees would be tried under the new military commissions law signed by Bush in October.
The military barred reporters or other independent observers from the sessions for the 14 operatives and is limiting the information it provides about them, arguing that it wants to prevent the disclosure of sensitive information.
Legal experts have criticized the U.S. decision, and The Associated Press filed a letter of protest, arguing that it would be "an unconstitutional mistake to close the proceedings in their entirety."
The transcripts refer to a claim by Mohammed that he was tortured by the CIA, although he said he was not under duress at Guantanamo when he confessed to his role in the attacks. The CIA has said its interrogation practices are legal, and it does not use torture.
Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, questioned the legality of the closed-door sessions and whether the confession was actually the result of torture.
"We won't know that unless there is an independent hearing," he said. "We need to know if this purported confession would be enough to convict him at a fair trial or would it have to be suppressed as the fruit of torture?"
In listing the 28 attacks he planned and another three he supported, Mohammed said he tried to kill international leaders including
Pope John Paul II,
President Clinton and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.
He said he planned the 2002 bombing of a Kenya beach resort frequented by Israelis and the failed missile attack on an Israeli passenger jet after it took off from Mombasa, Kenya.
He also said he was responsible for the bombing of a nightclub in Bali, Indonesia. In 2002, 202 were killed when two nightclubs there were bombed.
Other plots he said he was responsible for included planned attacks against the Sears Tower in Chicago, the Empire State Building and
New York Stock Exchange in New York City, the Panama Canal, and Big Ben and Heathrow Airport in London — none of which happened.
The Pentagon also released transcripts of the hearings of Abu Faraj al-Libi and Ramzi Binalshibh. Both refused to attended the hearings, although al-Libi submitted a statement claiming that the hearings are unfair and that he will not attend unless it is corrected.
"The detainee is in a lose-lose situation," he said.
Al-Libi, whose name means he is a Libyan, reportedly masterminded two bombings 11 days apart in Pakistan in December 2003 that targeted Musharraf for his support of the U.S.-led war on terror.
Binalshibh, a Yemeni, is suspected of helping Mohammed with the 9/11 attack plan on New York City and Washington and is also linked to a foiled plot to crash aircraft into London's Heathrow Airport. His hearing was conducted in his absence.
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
ElBaradei unable to meet NKorea nuke envoy
ElBaradei unable to meet NKorea nuke envoy
BEIJING - The chief U.N. nuclear inspector, in Pyongyang for talks on how
North Korea will close its main atomic reactor, was unable to meet with the country's top nuclear negotiator Wednesday, the agency's spokeswoman said.
The announcement came a day before officials from the U.S. and the North were set to meet with their counterparts from
South Korea, China, Russia and Japan in Beijing to discuss economic and energy cooperation as part of five working group sessions established under the Feb. 13 accord.
North Korea pledged during six-nation disarmament talks in Beijing last month to shut down its only operating nuclear reactor by April 14, in return for energy aid and political concessions.
ElBaradei, head of the Vienna-based
International Atomic Energy Agency, had been slated to meet with North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan, IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said in a telephone interview from Pyongyang.
They said "he was busy preparing for the six-party talks," Fleming said. She would not release any other details but said ElBaradei met with another vice foreign minister of the same rank, Kim Hyong Jun, instead.
It was not immediately clear if the change in schedule was a setback to denuclearization efforts, but Fleming said everything else was "going as scheduled" so far.
In late 2002, North Korea expelled IAEA inspectors after U.S. officials accused the communist nation of running a secret uranium enrichment program in violation of a 1994 disarmament deal.
The North later restarted its main reactor at Yongbyon and is believed to have produced enough plutonium in recent years for as many as a dozen nuclear bombs — including the one it detonated in an underground test blast on Oct. 9.
The North is to eventually receive total assistance worth 1 million tons of heavy fuel oil for abandoning all its nuclear programs. U.S. officials have stressed that must include the alleged uranium enrichment program, which the North has never publicly acknowledged.
On Tuesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said China would head a group on the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, while South Korea would lead the economic and energy cooperation group and Russia would take charge of the group on peace and security in Northeast Asia. A session on economic and energy cooperation will be held at the South Korean Embassy in Beijing on Thursday, the South's Foreign Ministry said Tuesday.
The working group sessions are to be followed by a full session Monday of the six-nation North Korea nuclear talks.
The U.S. also has pledged by Thursday to resolve financial restrictions against a Macau bank where North Korea held accounts. North Korea boycotted the nuclear talks for more than a year after the bank was blacklisted over alleged complicity with the country in counterfeiting and money laundering.
Meanwhile, the North on Tuesday criticized the U.N. Development Program for suspending its work in the country over U.S. allegations that aid funds were diverted to illicit purposes, including the nuclear program.
The North Korean Foreign Ministry called the claims "sheer lies" aimed at tarnishing its image and said it had yet to receive an official explanation for the pullout, according to a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.
BEIJING - The chief U.N. nuclear inspector, in Pyongyang for talks on how
North Korea will close its main atomic reactor, was unable to meet with the country's top nuclear negotiator Wednesday, the agency's spokeswoman said.
The announcement came a day before officials from the U.S. and the North were set to meet with their counterparts from
South Korea, China, Russia and Japan in Beijing to discuss economic and energy cooperation as part of five working group sessions established under the Feb. 13 accord.
North Korea pledged during six-nation disarmament talks in Beijing last month to shut down its only operating nuclear reactor by April 14, in return for energy aid and political concessions.
ElBaradei, head of the Vienna-based
International Atomic Energy Agency, had been slated to meet with North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan, IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said in a telephone interview from Pyongyang.
They said "he was busy preparing for the six-party talks," Fleming said. She would not release any other details but said ElBaradei met with another vice foreign minister of the same rank, Kim Hyong Jun, instead.
It was not immediately clear if the change in schedule was a setback to denuclearization efforts, but Fleming said everything else was "going as scheduled" so far.
In late 2002, North Korea expelled IAEA inspectors after U.S. officials accused the communist nation of running a secret uranium enrichment program in violation of a 1994 disarmament deal.
The North later restarted its main reactor at Yongbyon and is believed to have produced enough plutonium in recent years for as many as a dozen nuclear bombs — including the one it detonated in an underground test blast on Oct. 9.
The North is to eventually receive total assistance worth 1 million tons of heavy fuel oil for abandoning all its nuclear programs. U.S. officials have stressed that must include the alleged uranium enrichment program, which the North has never publicly acknowledged.
On Tuesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said China would head a group on the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, while South Korea would lead the economic and energy cooperation group and Russia would take charge of the group on peace and security in Northeast Asia. A session on economic and energy cooperation will be held at the South Korean Embassy in Beijing on Thursday, the South's Foreign Ministry said Tuesday.
The working group sessions are to be followed by a full session Monday of the six-nation North Korea nuclear talks.
The U.S. also has pledged by Thursday to resolve financial restrictions against a Macau bank where North Korea held accounts. North Korea boycotted the nuclear talks for more than a year after the bank was blacklisted over alleged complicity with the country in counterfeiting and money laundering.
Meanwhile, the North on Tuesday criticized the U.N. Development Program for suspending its work in the country over U.S. allegations that aid funds were diverted to illicit purposes, including the nuclear program.
The North Korean Foreign Ministry called the claims "sheer lies" aimed at tarnishing its image and said it had yet to receive an official explanation for the pullout, according to a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Monday, March 12, 2007
Working For The Weekend - Loverboy
Working For The Weekend - Loverboy
Everyone's watching, to see what you will do
Everyone's looking at you, oh
Everyone's wondering, will you come out tonight
Everyone's trying to get it right, get it right
Everybody's working for the weekend
Everybody wants a little romance
Everybody's goin' off the deep end
Everybody needs a second chance, oh
You want a piece of my heart
You better start from start
You wanna be in the show
Come on baby lets go
Everyone's looking to see if it was you
Everyone wants you to come through
Everyone's hoping it'll all work out
Everyone's waiting they're holding out
Everybody's working for the weekend
Everybody wants a little romance
Everybody's goin' off the deep end
Everybody needs a second chance, oh
You want a piece of my heart
You better start from start
You wanna be in the show
Come on baby lets go
(quick break)
You want a piece of my heart
You better start from start
You wanna be in the show
Come on baby lets go
You want a piece of my heart
You better start from start
You wanna be in the show
Come on baby lets go
Everyone's watching, to see what you will do
Everyone's looking at you, oh
Everyone's wondering, will you come out tonight
Everyone's trying to get it right, get it right
Everybody's working for the weekend
Everybody wants a little romance
Everybody's goin' off the deep end
Everybody needs a second chance, oh
You want a piece of my heart
You better start from start
You wanna be in the show
Come on baby lets go
Everyone's looking to see if it was you
Everyone wants you to come through
Everyone's hoping it'll all work out
Everyone's waiting they're holding out
Everybody's working for the weekend
Everybody wants a little romance
Everybody's goin' off the deep end
Everybody needs a second chance, oh
You want a piece of my heart
You better start from start
You wanna be in the show
Come on baby lets go
(quick break)
You want a piece of my heart
You better start from start
You wanna be in the show
Come on baby lets go
You want a piece of my heart
You better start from start
You wanna be in the show
Come on baby lets go
Technology
Technology
Call Centres use a wide variety of different technologies to allow them to manage the large volumes of work that need to be managed by the call centre. These technologies ensure that agents are kept as productive as possible, and that calls are queued and processed as quickly as possible, resulting in good levels of service.
These include ;
* ACW (After call work)
* ACD (automatic call distribution)
* Agent performance analytics
* Automated surveys
* BTTC (best time to call)/ Outbound call optimization
* IVR (interactive voice response)
* Guided Speech IVR
* CTI (computer telephony integration)
* Enterprise Campaign Management
* Outbound predictive dialer
* CRM (customer relationship management)
* CIM (customer interaction management) solutions (Also known as 'Unified' solutions)
* Email Management
* Chat and Web Collaboration
* Desktop Scripting Solutions
* Outsourcing
* Third Party Verification (Third party verification)
* TTS (text to speech)
* WFM (workforce management)
* Virtual queuing
* Voice analysis
* Voice recognition
* Voicemail
* Voice recording
* VoIP
* Speech Analytics
Call Centres use a wide variety of different technologies to allow them to manage the large volumes of work that need to be managed by the call centre. These technologies ensure that agents are kept as productive as possible, and that calls are queued and processed as quickly as possible, resulting in good levels of service.
These include ;
* ACW (After call work)
* ACD (automatic call distribution)
* Agent performance analytics
* Automated surveys
* BTTC (best time to call)/ Outbound call optimization
* IVR (interactive voice response)
* Guided Speech IVR
* CTI (computer telephony integration)
* Enterprise Campaign Management
* Outbound predictive dialer
* CRM (customer relationship management)
* CIM (customer interaction management) solutions (Also known as 'Unified' solutions)
* Email Management
* Chat and Web Collaboration
* Desktop Scripting Solutions
* Outsourcing
* Third Party Verification (Third party verification)
* TTS (text to speech)
* WFM (workforce management)
* Virtual queuing
* Voice analysis
* Voice recognition
* Voicemail
* Voice recording
* VoIP
* Speech Analytics
A call centre or call center
A call centre or call center (see spelling differences) is a centralized office used for the purpose of receiving and transmitting a large volume of requests by telephone.
A call centre is operated by a company to administer incoming product support or information inquiries from consumers. Outgoing calls for telemarketing, clientele, and debt collection are also made. In addition to a call centre, collective handling of letters, faxes, and e-mails at one location is known as a contact centre.
A call centre is often operated through an extensive open workspace for call center agents, with work stations that include a computer for each agent, a telephone set/headset connected to a telecom switch, and one or more supervisor stations. It can be independently operated or networked with additional centres, often linked to a corporate computer network, including mainframes, microcomputers and LANs. Increasingly, the voice and data pathways into the centre are linked through a set of new technologies called computer telephony integration (CTI).
Most major businesses use call centres to interact with their customers. Examples include utility companies, mail order catalogue firms, and customer support for computer hardware and software. Some businesses even service internal functions through call centres. Examples of this include help desks and sales support.
A call centre is operated by a company to administer incoming product support or information inquiries from consumers. Outgoing calls for telemarketing, clientele, and debt collection are also made. In addition to a call centre, collective handling of letters, faxes, and e-mails at one location is known as a contact centre.
A call centre is often operated through an extensive open workspace for call center agents, with work stations that include a computer for each agent, a telephone set/headset connected to a telecom switch, and one or more supervisor stations. It can be independently operated or networked with additional centres, often linked to a corporate computer network, including mainframes, microcomputers and LANs. Increasingly, the voice and data pathways into the centre are linked through a set of new technologies called computer telephony integration (CTI).
Most major businesses use call centres to interact with their customers. Examples include utility companies, mail order catalogue firms, and customer support for computer hardware and software. Some businesses even service internal functions through call centres. Examples of this include help desks and sales support.
Friday, March 9, 2007
For all Employees Who Work with Rude Customers
For all Employees Who Work with Rude Customers
An award should go to the Virgin Airlines gate attendant in Sydney some months ago for being smart and funny, while making her point, when confronted with a passenger who probably deserved to fly as cargo. A crowded Virgin flight was cancelled after Virgin's 767s had been withdrawn from service. A single attendant was re-booking a long line of inconvenienced travellers. Suddenly an angry passenger pushed his way to the desk. He slapped his ticket down on the counter and said, "I HAVE to be on this flight and it HAS to be FIRST CLASS". The attendant replied, "I'm sorry, sir. I'll be happy to try to help you, but I've got to help these people first, and I'm sure we'll be able to work something out." The passenger was unimpressed. He asked loudly, so that the passengers behind him could hear, "DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHO I AM?" Without hesitating, the attendant smiled and grabbed her public address microphone: "May I have your attention please, may I have your attention please," she began - her voice heard clearly throughout the terminal. "We have a passenger here at Gate 14 WHO DOES NOT KNOW WHO HE IS. If anyone can help him find his identity, please come to Gate 14." With the folks behind him in line laughing hysterically, the man glared at the Virgin attendant, gritted his teeth and said, "F... You!" Without flinching, she smiled and said, "I'm sorry, sir, but you'll have to get in line for that too*****
An award should go to the Virgin Airlines gate attendant in Sydney some months ago for being smart and funny, while making her point, when confronted with a passenger who probably deserved to fly as cargo. A crowded Virgin flight was cancelled after Virgin's 767s had been withdrawn from service. A single attendant was re-booking a long line of inconvenienced travellers. Suddenly an angry passenger pushed his way to the desk. He slapped his ticket down on the counter and said, "I HAVE to be on this flight and it HAS to be FIRST CLASS". The attendant replied, "I'm sorry, sir. I'll be happy to try to help you, but I've got to help these people first, and I'm sure we'll be able to work something out." The passenger was unimpressed. He asked loudly, so that the passengers behind him could hear, "DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHO I AM?" Without hesitating, the attendant smiled and grabbed her public address microphone: "May I have your attention please, may I have your attention please," she began - her voice heard clearly throughout the terminal. "We have a passenger here at Gate 14 WHO DOES NOT KNOW WHO HE IS. If anyone can help him find his identity, please come to Gate 14." With the folks behind him in line laughing hysterically, the man glared at the Virgin attendant, gritted his teeth and said, "F... You!" Without flinching, she smiled and said, "I'm sorry, sir, but you'll have to get in line for that too*****
Thursday, March 1, 2007
Friday, February 23, 2007
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Friday, February 16, 2007
DUMASSED Customers:
DUMASSED Customers:
“Hi how can I help you today?”
“Yeah, I’m missing information from my account”
“Hmm, Missing information, very strange, well send them in and I will consider them for you”
“But I’ve already sent them in”
(We do a search using the Computer, Negative the details were not sent in)
Dumbass Customer starts to whine and whinge…
“Excuse me, this is not the WHINE line, if ya want that call a Radio Station”
Ohhhh-Yeah, It’s time to Kick Ass and Chew some Bubble Gum, But I’m all out of GUM!!!!
(LOCK AND LOAD)
The Mini-Asalt Cannon, as used by Arnie in the Terminator 2 Film,
And were off to do a HIT!
“Here you go Dumbass, here’s how to send an e-mail”
Dumbass Customer TERMINATED!
“Hi how can I help you today?”
“Yeah, I’m missing information from my account”
“Hmm, Missing information, very strange, well send them in and I will consider them for you”
“But I’ve already sent them in”
(We do a search using the Computer, Negative the details were not sent in)
Dumbass Customer starts to whine and whinge…
“Excuse me, this is not the WHINE line, if ya want that call a Radio Station”
Ohhhh-Yeah, It’s time to Kick Ass and Chew some Bubble Gum, But I’m all out of GUM!!!!
(LOCK AND LOAD)
The Mini-Asalt Cannon, as used by Arnie in the Terminator 2 Film,
And were off to do a HIT!
“Here you go Dumbass, here’s how to send an e-mail”
Dumbass Customer TERMINATED!
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Hello and Welcome
This is the Looneybin, where you will learn oh-god-yes,
all about DUMASSED Customers...
all about DUMASSED Customers...
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