"seaweedsteve" <seaweedsteve@gmail.com> hath wroth:
>I agree! I read the manuals just in case there IS some useful
>information. There are sometimes gems of actual functional info
>buried in the mountains of noise and repetition. But it's usually
>all in the "set-up guide" as you say, and often comes down to a
>sentence or two that tells me something I actually need to know.
Yep. I just skim the docs for the numbers, URL's, and startup
incantations to get me started. The rest is usually obvious.
I once wrote a manual for a direction finder for the USCG. One full
page on how to turn it on. Another full page on how to turn it off.
However, the manual turned out quite well because I was being coached
by an experienced tech writer from HP. Among the various lessons, I
learned something that seems to be lacking in most consumer manuals.
If the manual gives instructions for the user to do something, the
manual should also show what the expected result should be. For
example, if one is expected to type in a MAC address, the screen dump
should show a real MAC address and what it should look like.
>Hey! I always thought it was the um, anyway, now I know. I was a
>tech writer in Silicon valley for a brief stint in the late 80s. I
>liked it, but they weren't consumer products I wrote about.
I won't hold that against you. Not the tech writing part, but the
part where you claimed to have enjoyed it. You can always recognize
the experts in any field. They're the ones that do the job perfectly,
and hate every minute of it because they've done it so often and for
so long. Anyone who is still enjoying themselves, just hasn't done it
often enough or long enough to become terminally disgusted and
cynical. Incidentally, that's roughly why I've had 3 professions in
my life and am considering a 4th.
>I think
>that I got it right explained and organized all the loose knowledge
>about that Rolm mark 7600 confabulator into a cohesive document.
Argh. Telco manuals are written in a foreign language. It may
resemble English, but telco policy is to never use any terms found
elsewhere in the electronics industry. That dates back to the daze of
the first AT&T breakup (there will be more breakups as soon as the
Democrats get into power), where the various Baby Bells did not want
to be accused of getting into the computah business. It may look,
act, run, and smell like a computah, but to the telco crowd, it's
called a switch. At the time, it was certain death to anyone that
offered to publish a list of translations. Hopefully, you've
recovered from the experience.
>But, of course, most people are hacks, don't have enough interest in
>what they do...
It varies. I have customers that watch over my shoulder, take notes,
ask good questions, and learn from the experience. I'm a frustrated
instructor, so I tend to give a running commentary on what I'm doing.
I often suspect they are interested because they don't want to pay me
to fix it after they screw it up again, but I prefer to give my
customers the benefit of the doubt. However, for most people, you're
correct. They just want to plug and play without the learning
experience. "Why can't this stuff be easier?" is the most common
exhibition of frustration. I have various stock answers, but I never
shove it in their face by mentioning that they don't spend the time to
learn anything about their computers. Many of my customers entire
business operations are based on the functioning of their computers,
yet they treat them like it was some manner of fashion accessory. I
don't complain, because they pay me, but an adjustment of priorities
might be in order.
>> I could go on and on, but it's Monday morning and the computah is
>> ringing with yet another dull and inefficient VoIP conference call.
>> (Hello? I can't hear you, can you hear me? Talk slower. What? Don't
>> talk when I'm interrupting. Garble-garble. Turn off the video. Can
>> you hear me now? Ad Nausium)
>
>Sounds like VOIP on landlines (vs Satellite) is problematic too. I had
>imagined that it would work for normal broadband...
You're assuming that this was with a dedicated broadband connection,
and not an office corporate LAN. The problem is never the computer or
even the ISP. It's the local constipation and bottleneck caused by
what the user or his accomplices across the office are doing at the
time he's trying to make a VoIP phone call. I have QoS setup to give
priority to G.711 and G.729 traffic on my systems. Many routers do
not. The result is that someone on the same WLAN connection watching
YouTube videos at the same time as the VoIP call will trash the call.
Even the VoIP users are clueless and will be doing something else that
will slow their computer down. For example, one person was having
nothing but trouble with the 9AM conference call, but would be fine at
any other time. When I rescheduled her computahs virus scan for some
other time, call quality dramatically improved.
--
Jeff Liebermann
jeffl@comix.santa-cruz.ca.us
150 Felker St #D
http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060
http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
curious about how wireless to wired network bridges work 
Linear Mode
