New subject: Off-list 6/8-6/21

8 Jun 1998

...
 Having creative thoughts is not something (IMHO) that
can be taught.  Some 
...
 people just suddenly think 'Wouldn't it be neat
if...' or 'We can do it 
like this...'. Of course having a good understanding of the subject,  and 
...
 know what's been done before help a lot here. And
that's were classic 
computers come in (to bring this back on topic!) I thought this was on topic
anyway...

...
 > <faultfinding/repair can be done by almost
anybody. Well, having done 
> <both, I personally find them equally difficult. Perhaps that means  I'm

...
 > <no good at it, but...
> 
> Troubleshooting is a very complex process that I've never been able  to 
...
 > teach to anyone but those that naturally could. 
For me  troubleshooting
...

The point is, in the UK at least, designers tend to get much better  pay, 
...
 and are more highly regarded than repairmen. This I
think is wrong, but  this
...
 list is not the place for that rant. In general,
I've found that things like TVs are almost never repaired,
at least in the US. Back in the USSR, we repaired everything,
including alarm clocks destroyed by trashy batteries that leaked.
...
 I'm not good at troubleshooting, and I could never
(for example) repair 
TV sets for money. But I've never yet let a fault beat me. It may take  me 
...
 weeks to solve it, but I'll spend those weeks to
sort out a machine. Do you mean you've never left a problem unsolved or never
left a
machine broken?
...
 > But working with field circus underscored that
thinking is not  something 
...
 > you can mandate. Isn't there some kind
of qualification these guys have to pass? Still,
I can imagine a 20-year old pizza-eating moron who takes a job like
this just to tell his girlfriend, "Hey! I'm a COMPUTER SERVICE
TECHNICIAN!"...
...

-tony

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