Justin Ronco's Space

http://windows.microsoft.com

I’ve been working on this site and the platform driving behind it for over a year now.  It is so great to see it going live!  Go check it out and learn about Windows 7.

We currently have only a small set of stuff there, but now that the system is live we'll be pushing out more and more…

Via Gamasutra: http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=21759

“Ziff Davis has sold its 1UP division to Hearst's UGO Entertainment, and is shutting long-running print magazine EGM in the process.”

I started reading EGM as a teen back in the 1990’s.  It was the 16bit era and I was eagerly following along all the incredible new games and the battle between the consoles.  This was probably the golden age for the gamer magazine, and EGM really was king.  They had the news, the guides, great reviews, interesting gossip, screenshots galore – and plenty of pages of it!

The next generation of consoles, however, is where I started to see the path we’ve completed.  I had gotten out of gaming a bit toward the middle of the decade, but was pulled back in by the lure of the “Ultra 64” – Nintendo’s newly planned monster console.  This brought me be back to EGM, but it was also at this time that I first got onto the “world wide web”.  In particular, there was a fan run website for Nintendo enthusiasts tracking the developing details of the new console.

The lesson I learned here was that a monthly print magazine just couldn’t get info out as fast as a little website run by a few dozen fans.  I’m pretty sure EGM was getting the exclusive interviews, really detailed press releases, and (honestly) the well written content – but they couldn’t match the speed the web had to disseminate the info.

And so it’s been for over a decade now.  I’d long since given up on getting real news out of the magazine, but I’ve always kept it around as that connector to my childhood.  Even now, when I’m just not into the big name games like I used to be I would still read my favorite monthly gaming mag.

But it looks that not keeping up with the news exclusives or being able to feed the minute-by-minute content addiction of today’ gamers the mag lost them their audience.  They couldn’t keep up with the online sites, so that’s where the advertisers went.  The magazine then deflated – eventually hitting pretty much rock bottom in terms of page count – until it’s final cancellation.

Goodbye EGM.  You’ll be remembered fondly.

I've been following the odd "cool" thing for Microsoft .Net for years now.  I need to write about Futures (awsome), Ajax.Net came true, I'm seriously hoping for Asp.Net MVC, and then there are the dynamic languages coming down the pipe.

But F# is the talk of the day.  F# is a functional programming language targeting the .Net platform.  So it interacts with all the standard stuff you see in C#, Asp.Net, and VB.Net while pumping in the functional style/paradigm.

Functional, particularly pure functional, have had pocket support within industry for years - but they've had trouble crossing over to the mainstream.  I think it's mainly because of the level of abstraction.  Programmer tend to think in terms of "how do I get there" while functional programming (much like SQL or regular expressions) ask you to think in terms of "what do I want to have at the end".

Hm, that's not a great introduction to the functional model is it?  OK, go read Wikipedia.

OK, now I just need something interesting to do with the language.  I can hit the console and compute basic arithmetic just fine - but let's do something with some depth.  I want to explore the truely functional features of the language first, and then see how... well how polluted it becomes when you hit state based libraries common to .Net (sorry mscorlib & system, but you weren't originally designed for this were you?).  Also, lex and yacc?  I haven't seen you guys in awhile.

I canceled my Verizon Wireless account back in May.  Canceled meaning that I no longer use the service and I no longer pay them - so complete cancellation.  It was an interesting an experience and I thought I'd comment on it a bit.

First, some history.  I opened the account in early 2004 when I first moved out to Washington state.  I needed a cell phone and my primary concern was getting something decent with a good coverage plan.  At the time Verizon Wireless had a much better nationwide plan than most other providers, and it appeared to work relatively well in general.  So I that's what I got.

That was several years back.  Since then having top of the line nationwide has become less of an issue as the other providers have caught up.  I've also come to realize that I mostly just need the phone to work in a few hotspots: my home and my office.  Verizon Wireless always failed both of those, which makes it pretty difficult to be happy as a customer.  I tend to get poor reception in the places I tend to be.  And I pay them for this monthly.

So I decided to cancel the account, but I knew I'd be in for some struggle.  I have some knowledge around how CS agents are trained to handle account cancellations, so I went in prepared for a fight.  As far as an agent is concerned you are doing the wrong thing.  They have an account that, especially from a customer like me, is pure profit.  They don't want that account to close and the money to stop, so it's in their interest to save the account regardless as to what I want.  In particular, the actual phone agent is often rated and paid on a scale based on their ability to save accounts from cancellation.

So I called this morning and went through the termination process.  I had my information ready - account number, phone number, recent bills, credit card info, general billing info (address, phone).  I was "emotionally prepped" to struggle my way through.  And it wasn't necessary.  At all.  I went through voice recognition for about a minute providing basic info and was then transferred to "Jill".  Jill did ask a few leading questions around why I was canceling the account (answer: "I just want to cancel"), but she appears to have completed the cancellation without giving me any gruff.  In fact, the entire call took - I timed it - less than four minutes.

Let's repeat that.  It took less than four minutes to cancel my Verizon Wireless account.

I was very clear that I was cancelling the account, and I really wasn't giving the agent a hook to argue.  I suppose they have some numbers around the probability of convincing someone like me to keep the account.  So if I'm categorized as "just not reasonable" it may be the case that the agent is trained to give up and to move on.  Rather than having them stay on the phone with a lost cause they can probably minimize costs by cutting the call short and moving on to the next case.

Still, this was a surprise to me.  Yea Verizon Wireless - great job with support!  Even though I won't be using the service, it makes me comfortable recommending them and, perhaps someday, returning to the service.