Ok we have all these hackers out there with nothing better to do then put them in prison. We have all these tech support people in other countries that are difficult to understand sometimes so why not use prisoners that are responsible for computer crimes be the tech support people? I mean it isn't like they would be any worse than current tech support. Heck half the computer problems would probably be from their viruses so why not put them to work. My idea would have all computer criminals be required a certain quota of tech support per week and if they aren't succesful at it then they'd have their monitored internet access cut down. The internet access would be their in prison payment and they would have it monitored so they cannot hack. The better techies would have more privlages and so on. Sort of like a community service policy, however hackers that are more severe would be punished with pop up adds 24 hours a day 7 days a week. Another problem I find with tech support is no matter how much you convince them that you know what the problem is they always insist you do the ridiculous steps and the most ridiculous of them all "did you try to restart the computer". I think I would have already restarted the computer by now while waiting on hold for 3 hours. I also find it stupid that if you tell all the things you have tried to trouble shoot the tech support people still insist you do their steps. I also think that grumpy white collar prisoner-hacker-tech supporters would just give up on the completly helpless such as the infamous man who called a tech support line during a power outage wondering why his computer didn't start, only to be discovered by the tech support operator when the man couldn't see because the lights didn't work due to the power outage.

True or not, it is just an example of the insaneness of some tech support systems. Not to offend anyone, i do realize that it isn't the tech supporters fault, for the most part they have to follow ridiculous guidlines established by their companies. Another advantage to the prisoner system tech support is that when you call the tech support for your pc the first thing they try to do is refer you to another company and blame it on another 3rd party component. Such as if you cannot disable your firewall they'll blame it on the router and the router people will blame it on your ISP and your ISP will blame it on your PC manufacturer and they'll all end up blaming it on Microsoft in the long run. With the prisoner system tech support they wouldn't refer you to anyone since all hackers probably know more about computers than anyone should know.
-- JoeLounsbury, Nov 10 2003

Jargon File http://catb.org/~es...gon/html/index.html
aka hackers' dictionary [benjamin, Oct 04 2004]

... Please note that all calls are recorded for quality assurance. No talk about files guns or escapes is allowed. ... Good idea, those who cannot answer the phone can sort recycling trash.
-- kbecker, Nov 10 2003


I dunno.. they could get hostile...

"Okay, what you need to do to get rid of the virus is go to Start->Run and type 'format c colon slash y.'" (lolololzorzzz!... I pwn taht l0z0r n00b!!!11!!1)
-- jivetalkinrobot, Nov 13 2003


"Yes, I was speaking with uhh "Snake" ... he was helping me troubleshoot my router ..."
-- Letsbuildafort, Nov 13 2003


Learn the difference between a hacker and a cracker. Read The Jargon File.
-- benjamin, Nov 17 2003



random, halfbakery