08.14.06

Liveperson.net: Support to shoot yourself in the foot with

Posted in Web, Technology, SocialIssues at 4:48 pm by Danny Dawson

a.k.a How StartLogic.com Consistently Lets Me Down

// This is a transcript of the second part of my conversation with Rob M. after our initial greeting was followed with a browser crash caused by the Liveperson.net Java Applet.

Please wait for a site operator to respond.
You are now chatting with ‘Rob M.’
Rob M.: Welcome to “Startlogic’s” live chat service. How may I assist you?
Danny: Hi Rob.
Danny: we got cut off.
Rob M.: Please give me the password for email account
Danny: You have my permission to reset it on your end.
Rob M.: No I will need it from your end.
Danny: Sending my password in plain text via http to an unfamiliar URL is not something I’m confident in doing.
Rob M.: Well this chat uses secure URL
Danny: Excuse me..comfortable, not confident
Danny: I don’t know about you but I’m on http, not https
Rob M.: But your connect is directly from your computer within my chat software
Danny: The connection from my computer is insecure because it’s over the http protocol. That said, even if it was over https, the URL I’m looking at is “liveperson.net”, which is not the company I do business with directly. If you are someone authorized to conduct business on behalf of Startlogic, you should have access to a contact at startlogic who can provide you with the necessary information.
Rob M.: Well then you will get a reply for your issue through ticket once the issue is resolved, the ticket is still open
Danny: I’d like to know why I haven’t received a reply yet.
Rob M.: Because the ticket is still open in the support dept.
Danny: And the lack of a receipt acknowledgement email?
Danny: It’s been four days. For an urgent issue, this is unacceptable.
Rob M.: Well the email you got with the ticket id was the acknowledgement email
Danny: That’s an acknowledgement that the server received my email. Not a person.
Danny: Is anyone even looking into the issue?
Rob M.: Yes you will get a reply when the issue is resolved
Danny: When you and I end this chat, you’re going to feel no contractual obligation to look further into this issue. What assurance do I have that I will receive a timely response?
Rob M.: Well the issue is still open in the support dept and it will not be closed unless replied to you.
Danny: That’s not reassuring.
Danny: If your car breaks down and you bring it into the shop, how long do you expect to wait around until they let you know what’s going on and give you a time estimate?
Rob M.: Well this issue is with level 2 techs and once they get it resolved, they will get back to you.
Danny: aha! So it has been assigned to a technician?
Rob M.: Yes a level 2 tech
Danny: does the technician have a name?
Rob M.: No
Danny: if you would like to help debug this issue, you could try sending an email to [email removed]
Rob M.: Sure
Danny: You’ll get a bounce message describing the problem.
Rob M.: May I help you with anything else?
Danny: Did you get the bounce message?
// The next several messages came in very quick succession.
Rob M.: Well it will take some time
Rob M.: May I help you with anything else?
Rob M.: May I help you with anything else?
Rob M.: Please contact us if you face problems.
Rob M.: We’re available 24/7 via chat, email, or phone.
Rob M.: Take care and thank you for choosing StartLogic, Good Bye !
Chat session has been terminated by the site operator.

If you could change something regarding our service and/or products, what would you change?

I would change the entire concept of subcontracted support. Your drones are completely powerless to *actually* help me with my problems, and they either don’t have the ability or they outright refuse to contact someone at the company with whom I’m *actually* doing business in order to resolve an issue when they are unable. I’d suggest you find a different line of work before the market for your services crashes entirely.

08.13.06

Perplex City and Magic Squares

Posted in Web, Technology, Games at 9:55 pm by Danny Dawson

I vaguely remember hearing about Perplex City when it was first launched, but I was too caught up in just about everything else to take too much notice. I do remember thinking that a worldwide puzzle/scavenger hunt game with an online component sounded right up my alley, but I was disappointed that the “crossover into real-life” events were centered in a country I had never set foot in.

A number of times since then, I’ve been reminded of the game’s existence, most recently when I heard that Perplex City would be having its first official U.S. event right here in San Francisco…on a day when I already had obligations. In spite of my inability to attend the event, there’s been a resurgence in my interest, and last Friday while in Berkeley for a concert I picked up a few packs of “PC” cards from Games of Berkeley.

Whoo boy, the good times are a-startin’. I love myself a good mental workout, and the Perplex City cards provide just that in diverse forms and at varying intensity. From pattern-matching to pop-culture knowledge, logic puzzles, physics problems, political trivia all abound.

Probably my favorite aspect of Perplex City problem-solving so far is scripting solutions to some of the more complicated puzzles. When I was working on a solution for card #098 ‘Magic Square’, I came up with a script which can be used to solve any 4 by 4 magic square, where the rows, columns, and diagonals all add to the same number.

My first attempt was far less than ideal: it randomly arranged the 16 numbers and then tested to see if everything added up properly (i.e. bogosort). When I let it run for ten minutes at a time, it would run through about 12-13 million combinations and not come up with a single solution.

My second attempt used iteration to go through possibilites in a fixed order and guaranteed me a solution eventually…within the next 56 years (seriously, I calculated), if I let the script run constantly, it would check every possible arrangement of numbers for ‘magic squareness’.

My third attempt is the one I finally found success with. Essentially, it’s a modified version of the second script where I run validity tests incrementally instead of all at once after a square is constructed. The spaces within a square are filled in a spiral pattern and rows, columns, and diagonals are tested the moment they’re testable, which results in maximum efficiency.

Where the first script would have required hundreds or possibly thousands of years, and the second script nearly a lifetime, my third script only took about 23 minutes and 35 seconds to find all 924 possible solutions for a 4×4 magic square.

As it turns out, there are 54 unique solutions to the Perplex City Magic Square card.