Password Complexity, Good or bad?
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@johnhooks said:
I still don't believe the road analogy is a good one. You either had to A. know the road didn't reach your business which is your fault to begin with, B. you hired a company to build the road and they only finished 99% of it, or C. the road failed somewhere leaving only 99% functioning.
But B is what matches here. You hired someone to deliver a service and it didn't get fully delivered.
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@johnhooks said:
Why? Why can't it matter by percentage?
Percentages don't mean much unless there is a value attached. 1% of a persons life is not worth 1% of an inanimate object. They are both 1% but one has vastly more value than the other. Which is why comparing life and death scenarios to 30 minutes of TV is not a real comparison.
I think that that is misleading, though. I think that the basis for you "they shouldn't complain" is based on the fact that you feel that their concerns are trivial. But to some poor person in Florida, this might be a massive percentage of their income and something that the save up for and make big sacrifices to have. Why do they do that for television? Got me, but they do. This is really, really important to some people, it's their lives to them (surprisingly, to a LOT of people.)
Is it life and death important? Of course not, but we are talking about percentages so that removes that concern. The point is... they spend, say, $100 and don't get what they paid for. The amount we are talking about is the percentage of $100. That's why the scale doesn't matter.
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@johnhooks said:
C. This scenario is the most like what we are talking about. The infrastructure is already in place, but something failed for some reason during the month. The number of reasons for this could be enormous, anything from normal wear and tear to natural disasters like a mudslide. But the scale with which this has to be fixed is infinitely more complex than a 30 minute failure in a TV service window. The TV service obviously came back on after 30 minutes, so the provider didn't need to rebuild their infrastructure. However, with a road failure that causes traffic not to be able to get somewhere will take a complete rebuild of that area. Even a temporary road will take sub-base, a certain asphalt mix meeting SRL levels for that area, etc. So again, scale has to be applied or I could say that all of the United States was worth the same amount as that 30 minute TV window.
Not really, that's the great thing about working in percentages, it removes the scale problems. Everything is better or smaller, but the ratios are roughly constant. That's why we do that specifically. Scale can mislead you in emotional ways really easily.
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@johnhooks said:
A. was already covered, it's your fault for putting you business where you knew the road wasn't going.
But they didn't know. They paid for it to go there, they were told it was going there then... it stopped short. This isn't about a business, this is about a product you bought. Dont' add in the business piece, that adds confusion.
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@johnhooks said:
This is kind of what I don't understand. We will use the business that lost $5 million as an example. They have one internet connection, and it went down for 30 minutes. They lost $5 million. In the real world they would have a second line set up for that scenario, but why would they if they should be given that $5 million from the company who didn't deliver the service for that 30 minutes. Why go through setting up another line (that's a bad analogy since it's not really much extra work but it's the point of extra work period) when you should just be able to get that money from the provider.
It's not about the $5 million, it's about the cost of the line. If that company pays $500/mo for that line and the ISP let's it drop for 30 minuts and $5m is lost... do you think that they will pay $499? How much should they pay for the service that was not continuous?
And this is a bit unfair, companies compete on equal footing with other companies, control SLAs and have many more options. We are talking about real people getting a service that they don't have that much control over.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@johnhooks said:
I still don't believe the road analogy is a good one. You either had to A. know the road didn't reach your business which is your fault to begin with, B. you hired a company to build the road and they only finished 99% of it, or C. the road failed somewhere leaving only 99% functioning.
But B is what matches here. You hired someone to deliver a service and it didn't get fully delivered.
Ok let's go over what actually happened. These customers were customers for a while. It was a small cable company in an area where around 95% of the people had a second home. The rest were people that had enough to buy a ridiculously overpriced house and pay $600 a month in HOA dues.
But B is what matches here. You hired someone to deliver a service and it didn't get fully delivered.
Which is what happened in C also. This scenario would be correct if we just installed their stuff and only finished 99% of the installation. They didn't go from not having service to still not having service but it being 99% finished. Building the road is not the same as using the road and then it stops functioning for a short amount of time. That's why C is more like the scenario I was talking about. This is another reason why the road analogy doesn't work. This was an ongoing service that had a 30 minute interruption. A road doesn't have a small interruption that's fixed without your intervention.
I think that that is misleading, though. I think that the basis for you "they shouldn't complain" is based on the fact that you feel that their concerns are trivial. But to some poor person in Florida, this might be a massive percentage of their income and something that the save up for and make big sacrifices to have.
This might be where the disconnect is , and I probably should have explained better. These were not poor people. They were either retired with this being a second home or wealthy enough to live in these certain HOAs. They may be "poor" from the fact that they have no extra money per month to spend on anything, but that's 100% because of the price of the houses, plus the HOA dues (which were around $600 a month or what most people spend on a mortgage), but they are not poor from the fact that they don't have money.
But they didn't know. They paid for it to go there, they were told it was going there then... it stopped short. This isn't about a business, this is about a product you bought. Dont' add in the business piece, that adds confusion.
In scenario A, the road was already in place. If they didn't know the road didn't go there, then they didn't open their eyes. If they paid for the road to go there, and it stopped short, that's scenario B.
I was acting like the business bought the road, since usually individuals do not purchase roadways.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@johnhooks said:
This is kind of what I don't understand. We will use the business that lost $5 million as an example. They have one internet connection, and it went down for 30 minutes. They lost $5 million. In the real world they would have a second line set up for that scenario, but why would they if they should be given that $5 million from the company who didn't deliver the service for that 30 minutes. Why go through setting up another line (that's a bad analogy since it's not really much extra work but it's the point of extra work period) when you should just be able to get that money from the provider.
It's not about the $5 million, it's about the cost of the line. If that company pays $500/mo for that line and the ISP let's it drop for 30 minuts and $5m is lost... do you think that they will pay $499? How much should they pay for the service that was not continuous?
And this is a bit unfair, companies compete on equal footing with other companies, control SLAs and have many more options. We are talking about real people getting a service that they don't have that much control over.
They did have real control over it. This wasn't a hypothetical scenario. They were real people, who had the choice to buy the service from someone else.
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@johnhooks said:
Which is what happened in C also. This scenario would be correct if we just installed their stuff and only finished 99% of the installation. They didn't go from not having service to still not having service but it being 99% finished. Building the road is not the same as using the road and then it stops functioning for a short amount of time. That's why C is more like the scenario I was talking about. This is another reason why the road analogy doesn't work. This was an ongoing service that had a 30 minute interruption. A road doesn't have a small interruption that's fixed without your intervention.
You can totally describe an unfinished road that way. A working service with a brief interruption.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@johnhooks said:
Which is what happened in C also. This scenario would be correct if we just installed their stuff and only finished 99% of the installation. They didn't go from not having service to still not having service but it being 99% finished. Building the road is not the same as using the road and then it stops functioning for a short amount of time. That's why C is more like the scenario I was talking about. This is another reason why the road analogy doesn't work. This was an ongoing service that had a 30 minute interruption. A road doesn't have a small interruption that's fixed without your intervention.
You can totally describe an unfinished road that way. A working service with a brief interruption.
Not compared to what happened. For an apples to apples comparison, the road would have had to been working and then stopped. Their service was working, and then stopped, and then turned back on.
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@johnhooks said:
This might be where the disconnect is , and I probably should have explained better. These were not poor people. They were either retired with this being a second home or wealthy enough to live in these certain HOAs. They may be "poor" from the fact that they have no extra money per month to spend on anything, but that's 100% because of the price of the houses, plus the HOA dues (which were around $600 a month or what most people spend on a mortgage), but they are not poor from the fact that they don't have money.
Well, that helps in a way. It doesn't change the basics, but it makes me feel less bad for them and I assume that they are all trying to pull a fast one by claiming it is the reason that they had the service.
I truly get it, 99% of people this is a trivial interruption. But it is a real problem when services are treated as metered when people don't have choices about them.
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@johnhooks said:
They did have real control over it. This wasn't a hypothetical scenario. They were real people, who had the choice to buy the service from someone else.
Yes, but they bought it from this company. They have control to not pay next month but the question is about the month where they already paid for something that they did not receive.
There are really multiple carriers with full coverage of all the same stuff? I'm pretty far from having television service myself, but that sounds like a really rare thing. Television choice?
Granted, I managed to grow up and leave home before cable was even offered in my home town. ANd even today, there is only one provider.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@johnhooks said:
They did have real control over it. This wasn't a hypothetical scenario. They were real people, who had the choice to buy the service from someone else.
Yes, but they bought it from this company. They have control to not pay next month but the question is about the month where they already paid for something that they did not receive.
There are really multiple carriers with full coverage of all the same stuff? I'm pretty far from having television service myself, but that sounds like a really rare thing. Television choice?
Granted, I managed to grow up and leave home before cable was even offered in my home town. ANd even today, there is only one provider.
Ya actually Dish and DirectTV had much better options channel wise than we did. They were most likely cheaper too.
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@johnhooks said:
You can totally describe an unfinished road that way. A working service with a brief interruption.
Not compared to what happened. For an apples to apples comparison, the road would have had to been working and then stopped. Their service was working, and then stopped, and then turned back on.
But an unfinished road is working, and then stops, and then starts again. You just have to get over the hump.
Just like the television service, parts of it worked, parts of it didn't. The one dimension is physical and the other is time, but the end result is the same - it doesn't deliver on what was expected. It works, stops, then works again. It's the stops bit that is in question.
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@johnhooks said:
Ya actually Dish and DirectTV had much better options channel wise than we did. They were most likely cheaper too.
With all the same coverage . I dont know much abotu these things but I thought that local cable often had things that satellite cannot get.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@johnhooks said:
Ya actually Dish and DirectTV had much better options channel wise than we did. They were most likely cheaper too.
With all the same coverage . I dont know much abotu these things but I thought that local cable often had things that satellite cannot get.
Well, I don't know about the area I'm in now, but if you got a $20 antenna, it covered all of the local stuff for that area. They had their own local TV antenna stuff for the city.
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@johnhooks said:
Well, I don't know about the area I'm in now, but if you got a $20 antenna, it covered all of the local stuff for that area. They had their own local TV antenna stuff for the city.
Where I grew up I was lucky, like 20-24 OTA channels in the 70s and 80s. But just down the road from me... zip. Nada. Lots of people where I'm from had no television till cable came in sometime recently enough that I don't know when it was because I was gone.
It's regional, but there are definitely big areas with no options.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@johnhooks said:
You can totally describe an unfinished road that way. A working service with a brief interruption.
Not compared to what happened. For an apples to apples comparison, the road would have had to been working and then stopped. Their service was working, and then stopped, and then turned back on.
But an unfinished road is working, and then stops, and then starts again. You just have to get over the hump.
Just like the television service, parts of it worked, parts of it didn't. The one dimension is physical and the other is time, but the end result is the same - it doesn't deliver on what was expected. It works, stops, then works again. It's the stops bit that is in question.
Ah, but the part it isn't finished to wasn't working previously because it was never there. The traffic was the important aspect in the comparison. The traffic couldn't get to where it was going. If the road never went there to begin with, then it couldn't have stopped working because there was no road there anyway.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@johnhooks said:
Well, I don't know about the area I'm in now, but if you got a $20 antenna, it covered all of the local stuff for that area. They had their own local TV antenna stuff for the city.
Where I grew up I was lucky, like 20-24 OTA channels in the 70s and 80s. But just down the road from me... zip. Nada. Lots of people where I'm from had no television till cable came in sometime recently enough that I don't know when it was because I was gone.
It's regional, but there are definitely big areas with no options.
Being flat helped a lot I assume.
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@johnhooks said:
Ah, but the part it isn't finished to wasn't working previously because it was never there. The traffic was the important aspect in the comparison. The traffic couldn't get to where it was going. If the road never went there to begin with, then it couldn't have stopped working because there was no road there anyway.
Traffic could not get where it was going, the people could not watch the show that they wanted.
The traffic could successfully drive somewhere else and the people were successfully able to watch something else at a different time.
Seems the same to me. Both work for something other than the intended purpose.
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http://i.imgur.com/oZ9O0JR.jpg
I'll just leave this here...
