From: ST102315 at brownvm.brown.edu (Jake) Subject: Re: Modem Does Not Connect Date: 23 Feb 1997 Message-ID: <5epvic$sds@cocoa.brown.edu> Newsgroups: alt.tech-support.recoveryIn article <19970221050100.AAA12374@ladder02.news.aol.com>, razzcomp at aol.com (RAZZCOMP) said:
I need to find out why my modem doesn't work with Windows95 programs, but works very well with all other programs not undre the Microsoft domain.Sir/madam, I object! Why, precisely, do you feel that you NEED to find out why your 'modem' doesn't work with 'Windows95 programs'? What horrendous outcomes can there possibly be if you DON'T find out such information? Will continents be destroyed? Will alien invaders kidnap your dog and kill your houseplants? Will famine break out? You've made it this far--surely you could manage somehow to survive, at least for a little while longer.
I submit that a statement closer to the truth is that you want to find out why your modem doesn't work with Windows95 programs. And yet, it seems that that is still probably far from accurate. Do you really want to learn the mysteries of electrons, data compression, and the algorithms used to turn your pornographic GIFs into a stream of ones and zeros, and then into electrical signals traveling along the phone lines? Do you wish to know the full details of how compression works? Do you care what the difference between bps and baud is? Naturally, only you can say, but from where I stand it seems extremely unlikely.
So perhaps what you ought to have said was 'I want someone to fix it so that my modem works with Windows95 programs.' And yet...that's probably not quite right either. As a problem description, it is incredibly vague, and as someone in the technical support business I know that vague problem descriptions are also frequently inaccurate. Is it likely that someone who doesn't know enough to know what information would be necessary for a tech to make even a preliminary diagnosis will know enough to get even the basics of what's going on right? Not in the slightest.
So perhaps your best strategy was to post nothing at all, read the FAQ for the newsgroup, and/or call the modem's tech support number, or Microsoft's. It's unfortunate that this idea of silence did not occur to you, but I suppose that we all live and learn, or at least live.
-jwgh
--
"People now ask me what I am going to do next. I feel I can hardly write
a sequel to /A Brief History of Time/. What would I call it? /A Longer
History of Time/? /Beyond the End of Time/? /Son of Time/?"
- Stephen Hawking, /Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays/