Fjodor's thoughts

Customer Relations Done Right

By Fjodor on Apr. 30, 2013.

Customer relations, especially of the support kind, is an area fraught with peril for any company, especially since:

1. People will tend to contact customer support only in times of trouble
2. On those occasions, most answers can lead to some sort of disappointment, but the customer is especially primed towards negativity

Much as negative blogging in cases of severe Customer Relations deficiencies are both warranted and needed, I am happy to be writing this post as an example of what I believe to be one of the best experiences I have ever had with any support department of any company ever. There were some initial misgivings on my part, but as you shall see, those were either unfounded or of no importance in the end.

Now, on a whim of wanting to get my system upgraded to some SSD lovin’, I recently bought a HighPoint Technologies RocketRAID 620 dual-port SATA 3.0 controller. I didn’t want anything to do with the actual RAID capabilities, but wanted it to control a 120GB Intel SSD and a 3Tb regular HDD as two different and independent drives.

Buying hardware, especially on a lean budget, can be somewhat of a challenge if you, as I, exclusively run Linux as your OS. I was thus disappointed, but not surprised, to learn that I would need an out-of-kernel driver, which I,though, had no trouble finding instructions for installing under DKMS.

Shortly afterwards, I began to notice some seemingly ominous warnings in the system log about I/O errors to the effect that a SCSI command, WRITE_SAME, had failed on the HDD connected to the board. Since no errors where reported for the SSD, I decided to swap out the HDD with another, dissimilar disk. The problem, however, manifested itself again, pointing towards a problem with either the board or its driver.

At this point, I had had to patch the driver with an unofficial patch in order to support Linux 3.6+, had had to DKMS-enable the driver in order to use it at all, and was presented with a, quite frankly, shoddy looking support page design, so my hopes were modest, to say the least.

On the plus side, though, they actually did have provisions for me to accurately state that I was using Linux (not a given, sadly), so I made a reasonable effort to describe the problem and hoped for the best.

Now, writing bug reports for software that you haven’t reported bugs for earlier is not always easy – you don’t know what information is the most relevant, and you don’t even know if the developers prefer to have any and all info dumped on them, or if they prefer to engage and ask specifically for what they need, based on a more sparse, initial, report. I would prefer the latter myself, so that’s what I normally do.

Here is when the magic seemed to happen. Obviously, the responding developer or technician needed more info in order to find the root cause of the problem, and whereas I was initially dismayed to read that “The driver does not support WRITE_SAME”, I was obviously too negatively biased in my assessment of that answer, since the reply to my subsequent question as to whether that meant that I should just make a habit of disregarding log messages to the effect of I/O errors, which came in on a Friday, was that they would send me an updated driver during the course of the following week.

Imagine that!

On Wednesday that following week, well within the promised time frame, my support ticket was updated with an upload of the next version of the driver (subsequently offered on their product page as well), and as far as I can tell, no further problems regarding this board present themselves in the logs.

To recap:

1. I notice a problem and misdiagnose it
2. Upon later, correct, diagnosis, I report the problem with a Linux driver to the manufacturer
3. Even though the driver is external to the Linux kernel, I get extremely swift response in order to pinpoint the problem
4. Within less than a week, the manufacturer releases a new version of the driver to address the problem and also sends me a copy of that release in the actual bug report
5. I hereby endorse http://highpoint-tech.com whole-heartedly, not least to show that stellar customer support is in the actions of your company’s developers and technicians and not in how fancy your bug reporting interface might look

HighPoint, you have my highest appraisals for how you handled this issue!

Det værste fra to verdener

By Fjodor on Feb. 14, 2013.

Der er rigeligt med eksempler på kommentatorer, der henviser til, at blokpolitik burde have været uddød forlængst (find dem selv, det er ikke det, der er pointen i det følgende), og selvom jeg, i blokpolitisk perspektiv, mestendels er borgerlig, så er jeg ikke blind for, at den side har nogle alvorlige problemer i visse sammenhænge, medens “den anden side” har nogle ret gode argumenter i andre. Heraf følger, naturligt, diverse nytænkninger om kortvarige politiske alliancer, alene på baggrund af det enkelte emne, hvorefter man er fri til at indgå nye af slagsen.

Som udgangspunkt går jeg ud fra, at det nok er den vej, det går, og jeg går også ud fra, at det faktisk vil være en god ting! Men:

Hvis jeg ikke husker meget galt, var det den tidligere regering, der troede, at de valgte at privatisere postetaten (Post Danmark, PostDK, eller hvad de nu kalder sig), og det er vist den nye regering, der har gennemført den seneste revidering af Postloven.

Dermed har vi, in effect, præcist det værste fra begger verdener, og det vil jeg demonstrere med nedenstående historie. Hvis jeg har kedet dig hidtil, så glæd dig, i det mindste til det følgende:

Den 31. januar i år foretog min kæreste en bestilling på nettet. Vi har, siden den seneste lovs ikrafttræden, været ulovlige borgere, eftersom hverken vore navne eller vort husnummer har stået på den, ellers lovligt opsatte, postkasse, som vi blev tvunget til at købe omkring årsskiftet. Angånde husnummeret, så står det dog med store kobberbogstaver på husmuren, ca 50cm over postkassen.

I den forbindelse har vi, da vi ofte modtager forsendelser, set en hel del passivt-aggressive beskeder på de pakkesedler, som vi dog, ellers hidtil, har modtaget, og min kæreste er da også blevet personligt skældt ud af det pakkepostbud, som jeg går ud fra, er ansvarlig for det følgende (uagtet at han ikke syntes at være i tvivl om, at hun var den rette at skælde ud).

Nuvel: i forbindelse med bestillingen, indsneg der sig en stavefejl i den emailadresse, som min kæreste opgav til forhandleren, og modtog derfor, naturligvis, ikke et “track-and-trace”-nummer per email, hvilket hun dog ikke tænkte over før senere. Efter et rimeligt antal dages tid forespurgte vi dog i den lokale postbutik, om pakken lå der – “Nej”.

Eftersom vi var opmærksomme på, at vi, alene, kunne være ansvarlige for, at en eventuel email med sporingskode ikke var dukket op, og eftersom vi, fejlagtigt, *stolede på PostDK*’s integritet, valgte vi dog at vente lidt med at beklage os nogen steder, og tænkte “den dukker nok op”.

Det gjorde den ikke…

Cirka samtidigt med, at den utroligt søde og servicemindede ekspedient i vores lokale “postbutik”, som PostDK har udliciteret til Kvickly, efter min forklaring om, hvorfor jeg havde spurgt til den samme pakke så mange gange, bemærkede at hun har en veninde, der arbejder for det selskab, som pakken oprindeligt var bestilt fra, skete der så endelig noget, og det er det, der er hele kernen i historien:

1. Pakken var afsendt fra forhandleren dagen efter den aften, hvor den var bestilt
2. Pakken var, ved en fejl fra PostDK’s side markeret “til udbringning” frem for “til afhentning”
3. Ved at pille lagene af labels af, har vi kunnet konstatere, at *pakkebuddet* har markeret den som “adressaten ukendt på adressen”, og prompte har sendt den retur
4. I forbindelse med 3 har den *ikke* ligget til afhentning, og er ej heller blevet skrevet ind i noget system, hvor den kunne spores udfra vor adresse
5. PostDK har, i den forbindelse, heller ikke informeret forhandleren om, at pakken er sendt retur, hvilket gav det problem, at forhandleren ikke, indenfor den ellers lovede svartid, kunne svare os på, hvor tingene var blevet af
6. Veninden til førnævnte, udliciterede, ekspedient brugte en aften i sin fritid på at spore den, og mere af den næste formiddag på at få PostDK til at genudsende pakken uden udgift for hverken dem eller os
7. Pakken er nu modtaget, 13 dage senere
8. Vi troede, at forhandleren var dårlig til at håndtere sagen.
9. Vi kan konstatere, at de har gjort langt mere for at opklare den, end vi kunne have drømt om
10. Vi var enormt tæt på at proklamere for alverden, at bemeldte forhandler ikke var til at have med at gøre, eftersom vi ikke engang overvejede, om PostDK kunne have bidraget til miseren, men:
11. Minimum én, lokal, medarbejder ved PostDK, har været tæt på at foranledige både monetært tab for os, og, endnu værre, negativ omtale af et firma, som faktisk har gjort mere, bedre, end man burde kunne forvente

Hvad er pointen så?

Jo, hvis post-”etaten” var statsligt drevet, så ville staten gerne kunne diktere, hvad der skal eller ikke skal stå på befolkningens postkasser, eftersom det ville sortere direkte under den.

Hvis postservice alene var et spørgsmål om privat virksomhed, så ville staten stadig kunne kræve, at udbyderne levede op til visse krav.

Problemet er, at PostDK er tilpas privat til, at staten ikke kan stille krav, men tilpas vigtig til, at de kan få staten til at stille krav til borgerne, for at gøre brug af deres service.

Jeg har ingen anelse om, hvordan jeg bedre skulle kunne beskrive en rotterede for aspirerende skrankepaver…

Political musings of a Danish, former, farm-boy

By Fjodor on Mar. 19, 2012.

I’m not entirely sure if I even have a following on this blog (if you are there, do say hi), but that is not really my intent either. I moved my opinion content here as a combination of avoiding doing markup by hand on the (minimalistic) main page, and seeing what it would be like to use blog-oriented CMS such as WordPress and in the mean time firing off a few cheap (but important) shots at Microsoft.

This post is not about them!

I don’t think that I have ever given much information about my background, as I have not deemed it important, but the following details are relevant to this post:

I have lived my entire life in Denmark and grew up in a small village near the German border. A few months before my 7th birthday, my family moved to a small farm that my parents (and my sister and I) would spend a whole lot of time restoring to livable conditions, as well as doing actual farm work despite the fact that both my parents had normal jobs on the side.

Now, what could possibly be relevant to you, my dear, accidental, reader regarding that, one might ask, going on to ask what it has to do with politics?

Well, apart from the local grocery store being mugged last year, making national news for the record-breaking 3 minutes that it took for the robber to be apprehended, my home town is, and should be, relatively unknown to the general populace.

There is, however, the 3 times over the past 10 years when it has been reported that a pig transport fell over for unknown reasons in a local roundabout, and numerous other incidents of this nature abound here in Denmark, the land of pork.

Worth noting is, that this almost never seemed to happen anywhere until:

Danish television, some 10 years ago or some-such, reported on long-haul transportation of pigs for slaughter, to countries where slaughter was cheaper, and made a specific point of showing how the pigs where fixated in the trailers. Now, long-haul of animals is generally cruel in nature, and it is my understanding that the EU has, or is in the process of banning that practice. Score 1 for animal welfare (until slaughter).

The Danish media, however, made a specific and misguided point of showing how the pigs where fixated in the trailers, leading to general consumer uproar and a demand on politicians to forbid said fixture.

Now, I do not know, dear reader, if you have ever happened to stand upright on a moving bus, but if you have, you will grant me that it is of the utmost importance to be able to grab on to something – an ability that pigs simply do not possess…

Thus, to satisfy voter demand, a law was passed to forbid fixation on animal transports, which seemed to satisfy all relevant parties, except for the drivers of said transports and, most notably, the pigs in question, since it should be obvious to anyone who has traveled by bus in the aforementioned manner, that they are now doomed to be thrown around in the trailer, frequently offsetting the balance of the trailer itself to such a degree that both truck and trailer topples, generally killing the cargo and seriously injuring the driver, which is an outcome that any 15-year old farm-hand could have told the politicians without even thinking.

Now, one can derive a number of lessons from this, and surely a lot more than this, but the principal one should be that politicians, as politics are done today, are not only willing to cater to the demands of a vocal part of the public – without giving thoughts to the possible implications of doing so – as long as this, vocal, part, and the media, seem to make an issue of it.

Secondly, I said that “any 15-year old farm-hand” would know this to be a bad idea is important. It means that anyone who actually works in these conditions would know this to be moronic, but since most don’t, that is what’s called “expert knowledge”.

The assignment I give to you, dear reader, is to analyse the situation, adapt it to the workings and dealings of programming, internet use, copyright restrictions and some-such, and go forth to use this very down-to-earth (and real) analogy on your various members of your various parliaments, and please report back and/or discuss in the comment section of this post!

On religion and its significance

By Fjodor on Feb. 29, 2012.

It may not have been entirely clear to you, my very limited audience, that I live in a country that, while insignificant in size, does both differ and adhere to more general, international, standards in general, and raise questions about others specifically.

What I refer to here, is a discussion that I have been having in Facebook, regarding the US’ separation of church and state (or lack thereof), and what I think that I have learned from engaging in such conversations.

First of all, I shall state that I am not a US citizen, but since the US, in general, seems to be very keen on promoting its ideas abroad, and since my own country, while small, is generally praised as a valuable ally in more respects than just the normal, military, sense of the word, I do tend to take an interest in US politics. In this regard, I am a huge fan of the, seemingly constitutional, separation of church and state, but it would seem that at least some of my American acquaintances oppose this quite fervently.

Apart from stating that however you, US citizen, look at the constitutional separation from a purely “this piece of paper says this” stance, there is this neat little thing called the Supreme Court, which has consistently ruled that Church and State are, indeed, entities that should be separated in any and all respects as a matter of law. To advertise for divergence from this would not only be to undermine the authority of the courts, but also, and thus, to undermine any aspiration to adhere to the normal standards for a democracy.

I shall contrast this with the situation here in Denmark. We have a state church, to which every newborn child is automatically a member, until their parent or guardian says otherwise, or until the person, at a legal age, says otherwise. While member of the state church, one pays a 1% income tax in addition to the highest tax rate that I know of.

It is permitted, of course, to adhere to other belief systems than the state one, and you can be exempt from paying the church tax by “opting out”, but the state church still gets some of the tax money through other arrangements.

I am a very staunch atheist myself, but of any of you, who have religious beliefs, I ask if you would be comfortable having a bona fide State Church, that even if you were religious, but just didn’t subscribe to that specific branch, had a privileged position, set down in a constitution, that is actually involved in all aspects of registering child births and name giving.

As always, see things from the other perspective before you hold yourself righteously privileged…

Doing something regarding ACTA

By Fjodor on Jan. 29, 2012.

I sent four nearly identical mails today, one each to MEPs Bendt Bendtsen, Anne E. Jensen, Morten Løkkegaard, and Jens Rohde at their respective europarl.europa.eu email addresses.

I chose these four, since they are listed as the 4 Danish MEPs who voted against certain amendments to ACTA (mentioned by Marietje Schaake on Reddit) in 2010 according to votewatch.eu here (please adjust the search criteria to match those relevant to you).

Below is the text of the mail to Bendt Bendtsen, wherein I identify myself as a Danish Conservative voter (the three others are from an allied party, where I identify my political stance with are more general term), but also as a somewhat tech savvy internet user, thus wanting an explanation for the past negative vote, clarification on their current stance on ACTA ratification, and offering assistance in understanding (and hopefully, eventually, agreeing with) the huge public opposition. If I get the time later, I will translate into English in the comments – if someone else wants to do so for me, they shall be most welcome

Subject: Tidligere afstemning om ændringer til ACTA

Kære Hr. Bendtsen,

I henhold til http://www.votewatch.eu/cx_vote_details.php?id_act=1189&euro_vot_valoare=-&euro_vot_rol_euro_grup=&euro_vot_rol_euro_tara=&vers=2&order_by=euro_parlamentar_nume&order=ASC&last_order_by=euro_parlamentar_nume&limit=0&offset=0&nextorder=ASC&euro_tara_id=17&euro_grup_id=&euro_vot_valoare=-&euro_vot_rol_euro_grup= ser jeg, at De stemte imod ændringsforslag til ACTA d. 24.11.2010.

Som konservativ vælger, men også som moderne internetbruger med omfattende teknologisk viden, vil jeg gerne udbede mig en forklaring på dette, samt sikre mig, at De ikke er fejlinformeret, såfremt De påregner at stemme for at ratificere ACTA i sin nuværende form.

Skulle dette være tilfældet, står jeg gerne til rådighed med henblik på at påvise, hvorfor ACTA i sin nuværende form, som den forholder sig til spørgsmål af elektronisk karakter, er aldeles uacceptabel, samt hvorfor dens udfærdigelse og ratificering har været, er og vil være et groft uanstændigt anslag mod både demokratiske grundprincipper og basale frihedsrettigheder.

Alvorligst,

Sune Mølgaard
Risskov, Århus

N.B.: Being in a hurry, I opened the message body of the mail to Anne E. Jensen with “Kære Hr. Bendtsen,”, instead of personalising the opening to her. I sent a follow-up email apologising for this, but requesting her answer none the less.

Idea for a SOPA/PIPA protest by Google

By Fjodor on Jan. 19, 2012.

Let me start by stating that I don’t know if Google enjoy any Common Carrier (or other, similar) protections, but if not, it shouldn’t be all too hard for them to block access by IP addresses from known SOPA/PIPA proponents, plus, if they want to play hardball, any US Administration addresses as well.

Same goes for all other protesters.

As an additional nugget of legislative gold, I would assume that if they blocked the Administration, said Administration would need to institute and document a way of circumventing said blockade in order to get anything meaningful business done, which could be an interesting subject for a DMCA complaint, since SOPA/PIPA seem to assume that DNS filtering constitutes an effective means of restricting access…

I am not a US citizen, and thus, even if I was a lawyer, my expertise would not be in US law, but comments are more than welcome!

Æret være Kresten Philipsens minde

By Fjodor on Jul. 17, 2011.

Dear international readers: Please excuse another Danish post, but a formidable Danish politician, whom I had the fortune to meet on a few occasions, has sadly passed away. This is an admittedly sorry excuse for an obituary for a man whom I admired greatly.

Jeg følger ikke synderligt meget med i politik længere, og ej heller, når det kommer til stykket, danske nyheder generelt. Dermed er det først i dag gået op for mig, at Kresten Philipsen er død. For min egen part er jeg ked af, at jeg ikke har haft anledning til at møde ham i efterhånden mange år, idet jeg gerne ville have haft fortalt ham, at han har foranlediget en større forståelse hos mig for det saglige arguments magt, samt for vigtigheden af respekt for politiske modstandere, end han sikkert selv har været klar over, særligt da jeg næppe antager, at han ville kunne huske mig, medmindre han blev mindet om det, og så nok næppe som andet end en typisk gymnasiast, der ikke havde bedre begreb om politik end de fleste andre af mine studentikose aldersfæller, men hvad jeg senere er blevet opmærksom på, ud fra hans måde at agere på i de få, korte situationer er, at skulle man gøre sig forhåbninger om at vinde hans respekt på det politiske plan, så skulle man kunne redegøre for sin holdning – både hvad angår baggrund, argumenter for, og særligt imod.

Denne blog læses af ganske få, og således har jeg postet et mindeord på JV’s dertil indrettede side her, som jeg dog også vil gengive nedenfor:

Det er med sorg, at jeg har erfaret dette gode menneskes alt for tidlige død. I min gymnasietid var jeg, som det sig hør og bør for gymnasiaster, politisk engageret, og dertil enig med Hr. Philipsen angående mange politiske spørgsmål, men naturligvis også uenig hvad angår andre. De få gange, hvor jeg mødte ham personligt, og dertil talte politik, slog det mig, at han, høfligt, veltalende og alvorligt, var mere interesseret i at få mig til argumentere sagligt, end han egentlig (og med rette) var i at blive talt efter munden, eller det modsatte, af en ung gymnasiast, der endnu ikke havde haft tid til at forstå større perspektiver, end hvad han (altså jeg) nu engang alligevel følte, var rigtigt, uden yderligere forklaring.

Hvad jeg husker bedst, er dog hans engagement i forbindelse med Danmarks indtræden i Schengen-samarbejdet, der mødte en uanstændigt højlydt modstand fra et lille, omend skræmmende, mindretal i det sønderjyske, der tog en form af, hvad den traditionelle opfattelse af terrorisme sagtens kan beskrive, og det er således med lige dele beklagelse og vikariøs skam, at jeg må konstatere, at noget af det sidste, som han oplevede, var at det, som han dengang, med store personlige omkostninger, kæmpede for, desværre blev slået i stykker af hans tidligere partis uheldige afhængighed af, og resulterende leflen for, et parti der, mere eller mindre, er talerør for det mindretals misforståelse af, at national stolthed er ensbetydende med de mest afstumpede former for den slags nationalisme, der kun kan omtales negativt.

Kresten ville sikkert have søgt en anden løsning end min “langen ud efter” et politisk parti, men således kan jeg kun afslutte med, hvad jeg ønsker at sige med det forudgående, nemlig at Kresten var en stor mand og en stor politiker, som jeg altid vil se op til, uagtet at han desværre ikke er blandt os længere.

Det gør mig ondt på Danmarks, og særligt på Sønderjyllands, vegne, at Kresten ikke længere er her, men mest gør det mig ondt for hans familie, som jeg håber vil se denne nekrolog, såfremt de finder frem til den, som en hyldest til en mand, som de kan være stolte af!

Swatikas, common sense, and the lack hereof…

By Fjodor on Jun. 6, 2011.

While this might not be the most visited blogs of all times (especially since some of my previous posts were in Danish), I do happen to think that if I have reached just one person with any one post, it’s worth it, so here goes;

The swastika has been around as a cultural piece of imagery for something like 5,000 years or so, and has been seen across a multitude of locales during that period. For a short while – my memory is not one I would buy if offered, the German Nazi party made it’s headway in 1935 and convinced a nation that I still believe – and believe you me that they are now, weren’t aware that they were enabling a raging dictator.

However, the misappropriation of an ancient symbol was our collective fault, inasmuch as we let it be their coat of arms. For all the different uses that the proper swastika has served for so many years, they are but dust.

Hence, my suggestion is to front neo-nazis by regaining the swastika, as it, by all means, is just a way of wishing another person good luck…

Do you think that the neo-nazis could hold on to the swastika, if we took its old meaning back?

En undervisningspolitisk strøtanke

By Fjodor on May. 9, 2011.

Under en diskussion på Facebook gik det op for mig, eller det blev mere klart for mig, at når jeg kritiserer kreationister for, bevidst eller ubevidst, at misforstå det videnskabelige begreb “en teori” (se evt. her angående det), så tillægger jeg dem måske skumle bagtanker, som slet ikke er deres skyld – i hvert fald læg-kreationisterne…

Bemeldte diskussion var sådan set affødt af det, efterhånden berømte, fejlcitat af Martin Luther King Jr. om ikke at glædes ved selv en fjendes dødsfald, og jeg kom ind i den, idet den herre, der havde sat citatet som status, blandt andet har markeret sig ved at tale negativt om de mange vrøvlere indenfor ernæring og sundhed, og en kommentator brugte, efter min mening fejlagtigt, lejligheden til at kritisere ham for at være meget kritisk overfor sådanne vrøvlere.

Nuvel, jeg gjorde, på vanlig udiplomatisk vis, opmærksom på, at jeg fandt den implicite sammenligning upassende, men der udfoldede sig så en videre diskussion, hvor jeg redegjorde for min opfattelse af, at medierne har udvandet begrebet “ekspert”, idet de synes at bruge det i betydningen “én, der har noget at sige om et emne, som journalisten ikke har begreb skabt om”, og det var her, at det gik op for mig, at tilhængere af diverse mere eller mindre vanvittige ernæringsråd, alternativ medicin og kreationisme muligvis har det tilfælles, at de sidestiller evidensbaseret videnskab med alle de andre ting som “blot teorier”.

Dermed gik det også op for mig, at det egentlig er ganske forfejlet, at det først er som studerende på en naturvidenskabelig uddannelse ved et universitet, at man bliver præsenteret for kurset “videnskabsteori”, idet vi dermed er et fåtal, der faktisk får indblik i, hvorledes en videnskabelig teori adskiller sig fra hverdagsbetydningen af ordet.

Dette fik mig yderligere til at tænke på, at selvom folkeskolerne underviser i matematik (eller i hvert fald regning), samt fysik/kemi på de senere klassetrin, så mindes jeg ikke selv, at jeg fik nogen undervisning i, hvad videnskab, formelt set er. Jeg fik så alt rigeligt af kristendomskundskab, som jeg skal skynde mig at sige, at jeg ikke foreslår at afskaffe fuldstændigt, omend jeg længe har ønsket at lade det være en del af en generel religionsundervisning, men her er min strøtanke så endelig:

Kunne man ikke forestille sig, at kristendomskundskab/religion i folkeskolen føres med over i et bredere fag, der passende kunne kaldes “Tro og Viden“?

Hvad synes du?

A very bad idea

By Fjodor on Mar. 22, 2011.

This might be one of the worst ideas I’ve ever heard of.

Basically, it’s a system to measure the stress level in the voice of whomever happens to call for help – in the present case case for military emergency response but with the possibility to expand into civil emergency services, to determine which calls should get priority if there is a back-log.

Now, for a military purpose, I can almost be persuaded to believe that military training for stressful situations might make this a useful metric, but for civil use, not so much.

I have had the distinct displeasure of calling ambulances for others a number of times, and as I have been taught that speaking calmly and responding to questions about details in a coherent manner, I usually make it a point to do just that – stay calm, leveled and objective, not letting the specific “badness” of the situation interfere with my attempt to convey the precise scope and nature of the emergency.

Now, the article says that the system has a very low error margin when tested on previous calls, where the prioritization of the operator in question is known. I take that to mean that it would make the same choice that the operator did. What is not mentioned is if said operator relied more on the apparent stress level of the caller or on the specifics of what was reported to make the choice of priority for the dispatch. I could, given data, easily be persuaded that the operator used the same metric as the system, and that said metric might not be the best.

A case would be an incident that took place when my oldest younger sister worked as a tourist guide in Turkey and I was there to visit. During the pick-up for departure, and elderly lady had a heart attack, and some other people in the bus stated that they were proficient in CPR, so we agreed that my sister would keep the other guests calm and alert her colleagues to the fact that the bus might be delayed, so they would have a chance to inform the airport of a number of delayed passengers, they would administer CPR, and I would call for an ambulance.

In the case of a heart attack, immediate first aid, in the form of CPR is paramount, so I had to work out this division of tasks quickly and then go on with my own. I found a local who could give me a number for the nearest hospital, called them, explained the situation and had the local describe where we were.

During all this, I made a conscious effort to keep as calm as possible, in order to understand and be understood by the local and the hospital. Furthermore, I had delegated the actual act of CPR to others who said that they were proficient in it (sadly, it turned out that they were not), so to my own mind, I think I came off as rather collected and coherent to both the local and the hospital – hardly with any significant stress level apparent, since I didn’t know the woman, but was aware that it was serious, so I should stay calm.

If a system as the one mentioned had been in place, and if the priority of the call would be set by the stress level, I rather doubt that it would have been given a sufficient level of priority, whereas a hysterical parent to a child with a minor cut on a finger or some such would probably score much higher.

In summary, I might be able to understand an argument that this could be useful in military situations, where one would expect every caller to have at least some experience and/or training in/for emergency situations, but for the civil populace, this idea is about as bad as they come…