corollary

Entry #223

Listening to:

Brahms, piano concerto #2 in B flat major, op. 83.

Engaged in a random bout of phone-commerce last night, I was asked to provide a password, and the very quickly spoken (I guess she was being paid by the number of calls made) woman said, ``Can you tell me where you were born, you know something what is unique to you for security purposes?'' Oh yes, I was born in a one-baby town.

And then there is the frequently heard claim, when put on hold, that ``Your custom is very important to us; we've put you into a priority queue.'' A classic case of technical terms being adopted willy-nilly in an attempt to sound impressive. In fact, a priority queue is one that is constantly sorted so that the first item out is the member with the highest priority, where priority is assessed to be something other than ``has been waiting longest''.

Something I'd love to see in an on hold system, but haven't yet, is counts of numbers of people ahead of you in the queue, repeated every 20 or 30 seconds. That would make waiting much easier because it would give you a chance to assess the speed of service.

A nice example of geographic illiteracy. Recently Ariel Sharon likened Israel's position to that of Czechoslovakia before WW2. It now looks as if Israel's too late; Switzerland has beaten them to it.