This chat log is unedited, other than to redact certain personally identifiable information.

Make sure you read all the way to the end, where the really juicy bits are.

I’m filing this under /robots, because based on my experience, I think an Eliza-bot might be more effective at solving problems.

info: “Please wait for an agent to respond.  You are currently ’1′ in the queue.” 
info: Privacy Statement
You are now chatting with ‘Trey’.
Mark: Hello.
Trey: Thank you for contacting Xbox Customer Support. My name is Trey. Please give me a moment to review your concern. How are you doing today?
Mark: Doing ok. HAving trouble connecting.
Trey: Glad to hear that you’re doing okay.
Trey: Just to verify your concern, you’re having issues connecting to LIVE, am I right?
Mark: Yes.
Mark: Error is: “Cannot connect to Xbox LIVE. Select Test Connection to troubleshoo, or try downloading your profile again.”
Mark: I’ve checked my connection already.
Trey: I see. I’ll do my best to assist you with this Mark.
Mark: I’ve been able to log on to XBL with other accounts.
Mark: Went and checked my billing info, changed it to a good billing method.
Mark: (information was outdated, could have been causing the issue)
Mark: It’s been about a half hour, still not letting me log in, though.
Trey: I apologize for the inconvenience this has caused you.
Trey: Are you referring to the account you are currently signed in?
Mark: Yes.
Mark: Gamertag “Mr Rizzn”
Mark: Sorry… “MrRizzn” No space.
Trey: One moment to check the account for you.
Mark: ok
Trey: Thanks for waiting.
Trey: I have here the account pulled up.
Mark: ok
Trey: As checked, there is no LIVE gold subscription on this account.
Trey: Did you purchase this with a contract?
Mark: yes
Mark: It was that Christmas special.
Trey: What kind bundle was it?
Mark: You get the XBox for $99, and you sign up for a couple years of XBL at a different rate.
Mark: I can’t remember what it was per month.
Mark: I definitely have an account, because I’ve used it before, and I have MSFT points showing up in my account on the website.
Mark: It even says “Gold Member” at the top right next to my name when I’m logged in on the website.
Mark: But I try to look at my XBL settings, and I’m noticing it’s just asking me to join.
Mark: Something is definitely malfunctioning.
Trey: I see. I checked the account as well and I can its under the Entertainment for all plan.
Trey: For this kind of issues, I’ll have to escalate it to our advocacy team. But lets try some trouble shooting steps first.
Mark: I’ve troubleshot everything up to this point.
Mark: It’s not a networking issue.
Mark: It’s clearly some sort of account/billing issue.
Mark: Let’s solve this.
Trey: I see. One thing though, have you tried deleting your profile and redownload it?
Mark: Of course not.
Mark: That’s a massive pain in the ass, and very time consuming.
Mark: What’s the likelyhood of that solving the problem?
Mark: Particularly when there seems to be a discrepancy on the website and in your system
Mark: Not on my console.
Trey: Some issues are resolve by refreshing the profile. Deleting the Profile won’t delete your saved games and achievements if you just select the “Delete Profile Only”
Mark: Way to dodge the question.
Mark: I’ll do this, but it just means I’ll be twice as irritated once you finally escalate the call.
Trey: I know how frustrating this is for you, but please understand that we need you try even simple troubleshooting first before we can escalate it, one of the protocols that we follow.
Mark: Oh good, genius.
Mark: Now it says “Sorry, Xbox LIVE profiles can’t be downloaded right now. Try again later.”
Mark: So now I can’t even play in offline mode.
Trey: I see. I apologize for that. Is there and error code?
Mark: The error is the one I pasted above, in quotes.
Mark: The code is 800704DC
Trey: Thanks. One moment please.
Trey: Thanks for waiting.
Trey: I have a link here on solutions to this specific error code Mark.
Trey: Please click here
Trey: On that page please type “800704DC” on the text field and click FIND.
Mark: ok
Mark: Yeah, I’ve already done all that.
Mark: I wouldn’t have been able to log into my account and chat with you if I didn’t know the correct password.
Mark: Resetting my password was one of the things I did before I initiated contact with you to solve the *billing issue* with my account.
Mark: I’m really losing patience here. Can I talk to someone who can solve the problem instead of making things worse?
Mark: Not to mention the fact that if I were to reset my password, this chat session would be lost and I’d have to start all over with a new person.
Trey: Please stay on the line.
Trey: My immediate supervisor will handle this chat.
Mark: ok
JR: Thanks for waiting and I apologize for the wait Mark. My name is JR, supervisor of Trey for Xbox. I hope that you are doing fine today.
Mark: Well, I’m a little irritated at the moment, I’ll be honest.
Mark: I now no longer have the ability to log in as myself, let alone log in to XBL.
JR: I do understand that Mark, and we apologize for the inconvenience that this has brought you.
JR: For your issue in regards to downloading your profile, we’ve been having that lately and it seems that our system is under going maintenance. Please do not worry about it, just give it a good 30 minutes up to an hour of rest and you will be able to re-download your profile.
Mark: What?
Mark: No.
Mark: And this doesn’t solve teh core issue.
Mark: I’ve been on this chat longer than that.
Mark: If it was going to magically resolve itself, then it would have already.
Mark: I need a real solution.
Mark: Not a “take two and call me in the morning”
JR: For that Mark, we need to escalate it to our Advocacy Team so they investigate or review why you are unable to log in to Xbox Live.
Mark: Let’s do that, then.
Mark: I’ve been asking for that for the last half hour, and instead been asked to do things that make the problem worse.
JR: I’ll have Trey here forward this concern to them immediately. Please allow Trey a couple of minutes to submit it.
JR: I personally apologize for the inconvenience that the troubleshooting Trey has made you Mark. This is a standard procedure for troubleshooting Xbox Live login issues.
JR: We will need your contact email address and contact phone number so if ever our Advocacy Team needs more information, they can contact you quickly.
Mark: Perhaps it’s time to re-examine the procedure for these cases. It was obvious to me that the issue was in the system, not on the console (and seemed to be to Trey as well) but he wouldn’t escalate until I performed a useless and harmful procedure.
Mark: [redacted] - 903-253-0143
JR: Duly noted Mark. Again, I am terribly sorry for this.
Mark: Let’s just solve this and move on.
JR: Of course Mark.
JR: Thanks for waiting Mark. Our Advocacy Specialist team will reach out to you within 3  days. Your service request number is [redacted]. Please write this number down for your records.
JR: They will contact you via e-mail at [redacted]. If more information is required to address your issue they will call you at 903-253-0143.
Mark: OK
Mark: Wait,.,,fauuuuuu
Mark: 3 days?
Mark: Are you kidding me?
Mark: this is bullcrap.
JR: That is the standard turn-around time Mark. But in most cases, they contact earlier.
Mark: Wow. God help you guys when you go to the cloud gaming model on the XBox One.
Mark: So that’s it?
Mark: We’re done?
Mark: I guess so.
Mark: Wow. I’ve never been this disappointed in a Microsoft product or service, ever.
Mark: And I installed Windows ME.
JR: Do you have any other concerns that needs to be addressed Mark?
Mark: Not at this time.
Mark: This is pretty much a show stopper.
JR: I’ll personally take responsibility for this Mark. I can only apologize as much, but it will still boil down to your satisfaction.
JR: Since we are not able to change or update any payment issues with your subscription, we need to forward this to the right people who will be able to do it as soon as possible.
JR: Please do make sure to clear the line for your phone and check your email regularly or on an hourly basis for our Advocacy Team’s update on your issue.
Mark: I can’t believe the wait time is up to 3 days. I’ve never heard of such a thing.
Mark: Yeah. I can’t guarantee I can put my life on hold for 3 days.
Mark: I have a job, family, travel.
Mark: I have my phone with me most of the time, but 3 days is insane.
JR: Like I’ve said Mark, usually they contact in just about 24 hours after we submitted or forwarded the concern to them. It is rare that it will take exactly 3 days for them to answer or respond.
Mark: Even 24 hours is a real long time. Tomorrow is a work day. 
Mark: Let’s say you’re in my shoes. Are you going to be able to take a call from XBLAT during work?
JR: I can answer the phone and tell them to call me again later in a more convenient time.
Mark: Brilliant.
Mark: OK, well, this is going nowhere.
JR: Terribly sorry to have taken a lot of your time for this Mark. Would there be anything else that I can help or assist you with?
Mark: I think you know what I’d like, but we both know I’m not going to get to play my video games in the next five minutes.
Mark: Whatever.
Mark: We’re done, I guess.
JR: You can play the games offline without having to sign in a profile.
Mark: No I can’t
JR: But the onyl drawback for this is the achievements.
Mark: … because the stupid account won’t download.
Mark: Remember?
JR: only* sorry for the typo.
JR: You can actually play game discs or games without profiles Mark. I am playing that way most of the time.
Mark: !!!
Mark: Wow.
Mark: So you advocate not using XBox Live, as a Microsoft employee?
Mark: Good to know.
JR: I’ve been having internet issues recently.
JR: I am trying to fix and I’ve been talking to my internet service provider for quite some time now.
Mark: OK, well, that’s interesting.
Mark: I’ve got to go now, and not play my video games (since I am unable to access my Cloud-saved file).
Mark: But thanks for your not-help.
Mark: Goodbye.

“I haven’t been this disappointed in a Microsoft product or service, ever. And I installed Windows ME.” is a post from: Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins

2 Comments

At June 3, 2013, StuntmanMike wrote: "This is pretty much a show stopper."    sorry but lololol...  what a cluster  Wayne Thomas EdwardsAt June 3, 2013, rizzn wrote: @StuntmanMike  Wayne Thomas Edwards Right? What else could they possibly do to/for me at that point? Erasing my save games for me? Nuking my cloud drive? Asking me to put the console in the microwave as an additional troubleshooting method?

If I thought that GReader sucked, I wouldn’t be upset that it was gone. I’d have migrated away years ago – it was certainly easy enough to do.

Don’t pitch me your RSS reader or newsreader by telling me you’re better than GReader. It’s not going to work. It’s like telling me that I’ll love this girl you’re setting me up on a date with because she’s so much better than my wife who just died. Not the best pitch method.

This RSS Reader Puts Out is a post from: Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins

You’re welcome for that.

So, I was in this Harlem Shake video today… is a post from: Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins

Based on my research so far, he and his wife lived in the area their entire lives, never venturing outside the area, during the first half of the 19th century.

Written at the bottom of their tombstone are the words: "ni cheir hi er aur periag ni ellir fwyso fi cwerth hi o arian."

I’ve very recently become enthralled with looking into the past, specifically through the lens of the genealogy of my family.

It is, perhaps, an interesting hobby to take up for someone who is professionally obsessed with the future, and perhaps even doubly interesting for someone who is adopted, and thus not genetically tied to their known ancestors (as perhaps most genealogical researchers are).

I’ll leave aside the very interesting technological discussions one could have about the nature of big data and what it is that the digital archiving seeks to do in the modern age (and trust me, there’s a very interesting structured v. unstructured data exposition to be had there). I’ll save that for another time.

What is particularly fascinating to me, at least at this moment, is the wormhole in time that technology has allowed me to hear the last words of one of my ancestors (mind you an ancestor of no great particular historical import, in the grand scheme of things): "The value of my wife cannot be measured in riches nor gold."

It’s not what most would call the most earth-shattering sentiment ever expressed by an individual, but given the gulf of space and time between Edward Hopkin and Mark Hopkins, I can’t help but marvel at it just a little that a sentiment of morality, personality, and emotion made it from him to me.

Breeching the gulf of space and time … is a post from: Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins

He quotes George Saunders (emphasis, Justin’s): "If there are 10 readers out there, let’s assume I’m never going to reach two of them. They’ll never be interested. And let’s say I’ve already got three of them, maybe four. If there’s something in my work that’s making numbers five, six and seven turn off to it, I’d like to figure out what that is. I can’t change who I am and what I do, butmaybe there’s a way to reach those good and dedicated readers that the first few books might not have appealed to. I’d like to make a basket big enough that it included them.”

But then Justin asks the question: "What if the tactic you employ to reach “those good and dedicated readers the first few books might not have appealed to” actually alienates the audience you do have?"

This is a question I ponder regularly. I began my blogging career as a youngster in the 90s creating pages on Tripod. I moved on to Diaryland, chronicling to an audience my weird life working with nerds in the dot-com era boom and bust cycle. Eventually I started more heavily newsblogging around the time of 9/11, and turned it into a career as a freelancer. Then I focused on one type of tech while I was at Mashable, and here at SiliconANGLE, we’ve gone with another type of tech.

I know all about morphing your voice to please broader audiences, and the expense it has on your first audience. I can tell you that I know of perhaps less than a dozen people that have stuck with me through more than three of my creative tectonic shifts (let alone followed me from the beginning).

As we grow our video operation in 2013 at +SiliconANGLE, we’re making a number of decisions about creativity, distribution and what we want to cover editorially that will likely increase our audience, with the goal of staying true to what made our core audience love us to begin with.

It’s an interesting mental exercise, and one worth having no matter what creative endeavor you participate in. I recommend it.

A Few Thoughts on Maintaining Audience and Creative Integrity is a post from: Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins

1 Comments

At February 13, 2013, nopanhack wrote: too creative http://creativefanz.com/

Derrick Harris posted about IDC, who finally released a Big Data market sizing report.

The headline from the post is “IDC says big data will be $24B market in 2016; I say it’s bigger.”

Research firm IDC is predicting a big data market that will grow revenue at 31.7 percent a year until it hits the $23.8 billion mark in 2016. That’s a big number for a relatively new market, but it only tells part of the story of where big data technology will make money.

Defining “big data” isn’t always an easy task, and breaking it out into a group of separate technologies might not be either. While this report appears to subsume a May 2012 report from IDC predicting an $813 million Hadoop market, it certainly doesn’t include the market for analytics software. In July, IDC predicted that market — which is a critical piece of the overall big data picture — would hit $51 billion by 2016. (Heck, IBM’s Steve Mills said he expects IBM to do $15 billion in analytics revenue itself by 2015.)

I generally like Derrick work, but he’s totally ignoring (or nicking?) the good work that Jeff Kelly did earlier in 2012 on the Big Data market sizing report. Originally published in Februrary, and updated in November of last year, it put the Big Data market at $53.4 in 2016.

From Jeff’s report:

As of early 2012, the Big Data market stands at just over $5 billion based on related software, hardware, and services revenue. Increased interest in and awareness of the power of Big Data and related analytic capabilities to gain competitive advantage and to improve operational efficiencies, coupled with developments in the technologies and services that make Big Data a practical reality, will result in a super-charged CAGR of 58% between now and 2017.

As explained in our Big Data Manifesto, Big Data is the new definitive source of competitive advantage across all industries. For those organizations that understand and embrace the new reality of Big Data, the possibilities for new innovation, improved agility, and increased profitability are nearly endless.

I talked to Jeff Kelly today, who says that they’re working currently on the 2013 version of the market sizing report, and it’s due out at the end of the month.

He told me today that they stand by the near term overall numbers, and that the long range forecast of $53.4 billion will likely be revised upward, but didn’t give a specific figure.

SiliconANGLE and Wikibon have been all over Big Data from the origins of the movement (having incubated our company inside of Cloudera for the first couple years we were around and covered nearly every major Big Data event with #theCube), so it’s nice to see market validation from older publications like GigaOM and well known research firms like IDC as they chime in on the big data movement.

How Big is Big Data? IDC Says Only $24B. I Say “Close, But No Cigar.” is a post from: Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins

1 Comments

At May 12, 2013, pujashree wrote: Automateandvalidate a leading provider of microcontroller, mixed-signal, analog and Flash-IP solutions, today announced the expansion of its Embedded Code Source application store and embedded user community for PIC® MCU software/firmware code examples, tools and utilities, which often include the source code.

The Free Music Archive wants to wish Creative Commons a Happy Birthday with a song. But there’s a problem. Although "Happy Birthday To You" is the most recognized song in the English language and its origins can be traced back to 1893, it remains under copyright protection in the United States until 2030. It can cost independent filmmakers $10,000 to clear the song for their films, and this is a major stumbling block hindering the creation of new works of art.

A panel of judges that doesn’t include Geddy Lee or Zach Wylde (but does include Lawrence Lessig) will determine which entrant will win some sort of funky distribution agreement that includes recipients at “Jai Alai squads and bowling alleys.”

I’m not making any of this up.

Gee willakers. It must be obvious day on Camp Stupid. [Happy Birthday!] is a post from: Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins

1 Comments

At February 7, 2013, Kai Mentz wrote: love the video!

This really doesn’t bode well for whatever comes out of the negotiations.

Fiscal Cliff and CBO Projections is a post from: Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins

This doesn’t have anything to do with political ideology, although if you attach yourself too firmly to political ideology, you’re probably not going to like this post.

Of course, the “solutions” on fixing our economic and fiscal crisis are “obvious.”

The left says “increase taxes, cut the military.”

If we raised tax rates on all income brackets to 100% at the federal level, we still wouldn’t have enough money to pay off the debt. Even if our debt were zeroed out today, we can’t afford to live in the PRESENT, as is. Our CURRENT spending is so high, that taxing 100% of the ‘rich’ wouldn’t pay the CURRENT bills.

As for the military? Don’t be simplistic and naive. Why do you think all these European countries have the luxury of trying things like socialized medicine? Why do you think Japan was able to rebuild their economy after being literally nuked?

It’s because the US military was used for their border protection, instead of just our own. The world doesn’t like to admit it, but they rely on the US to be the world’s policemen, and they don’t pay us for it.

Perhaps it is time to retreat into our own borders and let the world descend into utter chaos? You’d rather have that? What effect do you think that would have on our economy?

I don’t advise it – I do think that a slow and wise draw-down on our presence around the world is probably a better alternative (which is why I don’t advise drastic and immediate cuts to military spending).

The right says “cut taxes, cut entitlements and welfare.”

Welfare is nothing, though. We could afford to pay welfare just about everyone – at the current cost levels – and everyone could have all their meals paid for. It wouldn’t cause a burp in government spending.

Look at that graph.

We have three major culprits that are killing us: Military, Social Security, and Medicare/Medicaid.

Look at the government like a business: if you cut SS, you cut revenue, so put that aside. If you cut military too much, you also cut some revenue, but we could spend a lot less and still adequately defend our borders, so that’s on the table. We can cut Medicare/Medicaid, though, because it doesn’t drive revenue for the US, and in tough times, sometimes a businesses benefits need to be cut to make it out.

We get spending under control for a few years, then we get rid of that honking Net Interest part (that was 6% of the bill), and maybe we can look at restoring some of our benefits.

Make no mistake, though – there’s no way to "grow our way out of this," and we can’t simply "increase taxes," either. We need to cut spending.

We want our cake and we want to eat it, too.

Problem is, we can’t afford to do that anymore. It’s time to let someone else be the dominant military and economic player on the world stage. We overplayed our hand – we tried to promote our way of life around the world, but forgot that it costs money to do that. Then we see the utopia these other countries are able to build when they don’t have to fund their own military, and tried to do the same for ourselves.

We can’t do both. We basically need to decide, as a country, if we want global security (and all the economic and liberty that goes along with it), or if we want a nanny state of our own like most other Western nations. You get to pick one, not both, because the next global superpower won’t be, going around “killing people in the name of freedom,” as the peaceniks like to say. They’ll probably be doing it in the name of fascism, communism, statism, theism, or some other -ism that we don’t likely adhere to.

Everyone likes to pretend every issue is cut and dried. “Stop killing people with tanks and jet planes, and then unicorns will fart rainbows and life will be good,” or “Just tax the rich and we can afford free healthcare and doctors,” or “Just lower taxes and the economy will rebound.”

Anyone that has a one sentence solution to all of the problems in the world (or even one problem in the world) hasn’t thought it through.

This is not a cheerful post.

The problem is that most people (in government and outside of it) haven’t even thought through the issue well enough to have a one-sentence solution, let alone a nuanced one. They simply want to keep kicking the can down the road.

That’s untenable though. It will end with our ruin.

My Thoughts on the Impending(?) Ruin of America is a post from: Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins

1 Comments

At December 19, 2012, ArtFewell wrote: "the next global superpower won’t be, going around “killing people in the name of freedom,” as the peaceniks like to say. " worse and what I think has already largely happened is that we dont need to kill a single person directly to kill and hurt a lot of people. We may not name our colonies the same, but we still follow the Britain model where our military industrial complex has become like the modern east india tea company. We dont need to kill anyone, with the type of sanctions we can impose we can force nations into all types of unethical arrangements simply by not allowing them to participate in global trade and forcing starvation to those who dont comply with our whim. This can be used for good, and it can and has been used to force emerging countries into unethical contracts to benefit our whim as a superpower ... if you can call us that when our nation is being driven by the whim of a relatively small number of those that control the military industrial complex ... it seems they are the superpower. It is far more scary than guns imho becasue, how can you raise the ire of citizens and watchdog groups when there is nothing to sensationalize. We are compartmentalizing and sanitizing the appearance of unethical practices.

I distinctly remember feeling a bit embarrassed when I had to publish this post at Mashable, that detailed precisely what Project Beacon was (and wasn’t - that is, a threat to Google).

I remember using the line “you can never go wrong underestimating the foresight of the Facebook ad team” several times over the years.

All that to say, I’m pretty sure that I’ve made the prediction a few times – just not sure exactly where that prediction showed up. My guess is that it’s lost to history in one of the mis-managed Mashable podcast archives.

Why did I waste all that time tonight looking up what I said way back when? Because Mathew Ingram at GigaOm published a post that supposedly confirms that Facebook is finally doing just that – launching an external Ad Network. He says it’s because of the new Privacy and TOS that Facebook is implementing that puts the writing on the wall that this is becoming a reality.

I didn’t find his logic nearly as convincing, though, as I found these court documents that John Furrier came across last month. We never published anything on it, mostly because we’re really not in the business of highlighting it when our competitors are involved with Wall Street scandal, but if you do peruse the linked documents, you’ll find that the Wall Street Traders responsible for bringing to IPO Facebook illegally disclosed to Techcrunch information about a forthcoming external-facing ad network for Facebook.

It’s all interesting, and frankly, I think it’s a move that Facebook should have pursued almost five years ago. Back then, Google was vulnerable – a lot more publishers relied on pageview journalism and the cost-per-action model Google provided. These days, you can’t throw a rock without hitting a content mill that’s about run it’s course with CP-anything monetization.

The web has matured. Everyone is looking to the next business model, and moderately better behavioral marketing from Facebook isn’t going to be the silver bullet it would have been in 2007.

Facebook’s Launching an External Ad Network (or are they?). is a post from: Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins