As a DBA, I’d like to tell you that the number one bottleneck in most web applications that use a database is that the damn programmers have no idea how to write programs that use a database effectively.
OTOH, why is that I can browse almost any site on the web with ease during the times I can’t connect to this board?
Seriously, though, things have been pretty bad the last few days, although generally the board is waaaaaaaay better than it was a few years ago.
Some people could be having no problems at all simply because they don’t connect a lot or stay connected or use the board in lengthy sessions. Unless you’re massively unlucky, and unless the board is slow most of the time, it stands to reason that if you hit the board only five times and get one timeout, it’s a different perspective than if you hit it fifty times and get ten timeouts.
No Mai Tais? What the hell am I paying this money for then?
OK then. clears throat
No, they don’t.
That was easy.
Wow. We paying customer’s don’t have that right? And yet, many of us do continue to complain, even in the face of not having the right to complain.
Of course, by saying “door, ass” etc., you are also complaining, in this case about your fellow customers. And yet management does nothing about your complaints, too. You should complain.
Man, that was a fucking waste of bandwidth.
I’m not a database guy by any stretch of the imagination, but the fact that there are gigantic vBulletin sites that run just fine (searches and all) leads me to believe that they know what they’re doing.
That’s my opinion.
Please point out where in the thread I said “door, ass” or complained about my fellow “customers” in another way.
Nope, I’m content.
You’re both right!
A few years back I worked with an Oracle DBA that was a freaking wizard. I learned a lot of little SQL tricks that would would help programs work more efficiently with an Oracle database.
That having been said, most of the problems with program/database interaction is not poor SQL (although that certainly comes into play), but with databases just not being tuned very well, if at all. A well set up database that is properly balanced to give optimum output for the machine and the expected load makes a world of difference.
With the troubles we’ve seen lately, either this database has not been tuned, or it is installed on a woefully inadequate machine.
And you have every right to it. It’s a stupid opinion, of course. You’ve basically said that in the world of shopping you prefer to be walked over. Restaurant has bad service? Not gonna complain. You go to the shop for a tuneup but afterwards your car runs like crap? Not gonna complain. Your ISP shuts off your internet by mistake? Not gonna complain.
Well, I mixed you up with the “door, ass” person. But as for the other part of your sentence, your post is your cite.
Sounds like you’re complaining, to me.
I wondered about that too. I have to do the “check/repair” thing on mine once in a while or it starts to drag pretty badly.
These two paragraphs cover everything I was going to say. Thanks for saving me the typing.
No, I have said that I have no right to complain. That is my opinion, and will remain my opinion until a) someone shows where this right comes from or b) my definition of “right” changes.
Didn’t say any of that.
Which part of my post? “OK then”? “clears throat”? “No, they don’t”? “That was easy”? Seriously, which of these is me complaining?
Alright, let’s follow this, shall we?
With me so far? You’ve out and out disagreed with the opinion that paying customers have a right to complain about service. Logically, that means you believe that paying customers do not have the right to complain about service.
No, you didn’t say it, but it is a clear implication of the statement “paying customers do not have the right to complain about service”. If you don’t have the right to complain, you don’t have the right to complain. Anywhere. Period. End of story. If you are unhappy with service, your only choice is to bend over and take it or walk out the door. There is no in-between.
Seriously, that doesn’t sound like you’re complaining? Well, in all fairness, you’re not paying me, so I guess you can complain about me all you want.
Ponder Stibbons, I think you’re wasting your time with Pedanticguy.
Agent Foxtrot made a statement of opinion and challenged people to refute it, using the kind of language you use when challenging people to refute that the Earth is round. I refuted it. How is that complaining? And, since you’re probably going to claim that this post is complaining, how is asking that complaining? And so on. Whenever you’re ready.
Quite right.
Yo, Pricey, I’ve made it as clear as possible. If it isn’t clear now that not only did you not refute jack, but that “customers don’t have a right to complain” is one of the stupidest contentions anyone has ever made on these boards, then screw it. I’m done playing. Go troll someone else.
By not explaining it at all? By attributing things to me that I never came close to saying? Bangup job.
Except that I did. Refuting an opinion is as simple as expressing a different opinion.
Still unable to actually show why, I take it?
[…raising hand…] Priceguy fan here. 
I have to say that I was really surprised to hear you say that. I’m sure I can’t (and wouldn’t if I could) force upon you how I view rights, but just so you understand why I disagree with you, I’d appreciate it if you’d hear me out. Wait until the end though, because it says some things that, taken alone, may shock a bit. But I promise to tie it all together. Note that this is an ethics viewpoint, and not necessarily a legal one.
At the most basic level, I think rights represent the authority that accrues to ownership of property. You are born with certain rights because you are born with certain property — your body and your mind. With your body comes the right to life; i.e., you have the authority to defend your life and use your body in the way that you believe best secures your safety and happiness. Other people are born with this same right. Therefore, while you have the right to do with your own body what you please, you have no rights with respect to someone else’s body because that right is theirs. Therefore, you may not initiate any physical force that harms someone else bodily. But you may use responsive (as opposed to initial) force to defend your own.
Likewise, you are born with your mind. It’s okay if you believe that your mind is an extension of your body since we’ve already established that you’re born with that as well. Ownership of your mind entitles you to the right to give or withhold your consent as you see fit, in order to secure your safety and happiness in the manner that you believe is best for you. But again, others have this same right, and so you have no right to sway their consent by means of deception. That would be a mental coercion that strips them of the ability to exercise their will by tricking them into consenting to something other than what they believe they are consenting to. Therefore, you may not initiate deceit that bends someone’s will. But you may use responsive (as opposed to initial) deceit to regain consensual freedom.
Now, the idea is that one right leads to another through the peaceful and honest economy of praxis among free people. In other words, you may use your body and your mind to acquire even more property that you will own. So long as you initiate no force or fraud in your dealings, whatever property you acquire comes with the authority to call the shots with respect to it — in other words, the right to say what may or may not be done with it. That’s because that property is an extension of what you owned originally. Your new property is the product of your labor, which is a product of your body and/or your mind, and the same rights are extended to it.
So, if you own a message board, you have all rights with respect to it so long as you do not use it to interfere in the equal rights of others. You have the ethical authority to decide what will be its terms of service, who may or may not post, who will moderate or administrate it, and so on. One of the reasons I usually don’t get heavily involved in these board complaint discussions is because of how I view the rights of the board’s owners. If they wish to give lousy service, it is their right. They promise nothing more than the privilege to post, along with a few trivial perks, and so ethically, that is all they must deliver.
The only reason they can succeed in treating customers like dirt is because those who tolerate it perceive that there is no competitor who will treat them better. Straight Dope does have a rather unique feel to it, and there really isn’t anywhere else that people can go for a similar community — one where hundreds of brilliant people post on a wide variety of relatively mature topics (the Pit notwithstanding) where the goal of the board is to eradicate ignorance (at least to some degree on some matters). If enough Dopers got sufficiently fed up, and started a board of their own, it could have an impact here. But until then, lots of people are willing to put up with second-tier service and two-bit equipment and software.
Anyway, that’s how I see it.
As far as a right to complain, the board’s owners do confer upon us that privilege. That’s what the Pit is used for. A cynic might say that it is a clever administrative tactic to relegate all complaints to a forum where flaming is not only permitted but encouraged. Nevertheless, it’s what we have. And so, there is a right to complain here, but that right belongs to the board’s owners. All we have is their permission, which they could withhold at any time. But they won’t ever need to do that so long as everybody is free to shit on your complaint, thereby doing the dirty work of snuffing out dissent with jokes and catcalls.
Only the most popular complaints will get the attention of the board’s owners. And barring the rise to administrative leadership of someone who just plain enjoys being kind to people, only a mass exodus of paying members will have any effect on customer service. Even then, though, I’m not sure that the Chicago Reader cares that much. They’ve said repeatedly that we’re more of a burden than a help financially. So basically, this fishbowl of complain-and-wait is all we have to work with until something better comes along. So cut a little slack to people who complain. They won’t likely get satisfaction anyway, and no one is harmed by their effort.
You’re an amazing little troll, Pricey. I swore I wouldn’t come back to this, yet here I am.
Go back and read post #73.
That sentence is what is technically known as “a lie”.
Jesus H. Christ I hate semantic arguments. Is that what this has been about all along. A cute little language trick? You really had nothing to say at all but were just playing on the usage of the word “refute”? Fuck you.
Saying it does not make it so.
Fits with my experience, too. Early evening UK time, I find it’s often a case of open a few tabs, go peel a potato or two, come back and see if they’ve loaded. Would make more sense to take the laptop into the kitchen with me, I suppose.
And I do find the self-congratulatory defence against criticism, ‘it’s such a great community’, really tiring. As FordPrefect suggested, it’s taking pride in the amateurishness of a board which can’t even function well in its pared-down state.