I Fear the Generation Raised by the Internet

[Jay 2K Winger]

Arga always puts them down.
Fearing for their generation.
Just because they act like clowns.
Fearing for their generation.

Things they do look awful duh-dumb.
Fearing for their generation.
I hope they die, those awful scum.
Fearing for their generation.

[Cat Herder]

Google is ... just a tool.

It often find myself saying that about it.

[Cat Herder]

In fact, we've actually tried to alert them to this issue before, but nothing ever happens ...

Surely you lie, sir! Everybody knows that Google has an excellent 24/7 customer service department staffed by competent, intelligent, and courteous people who always go out of their way to resolve within an hour any problem that has been brought to their attention. Why, they even send flowers and cookies afterwards as a way of saying "We regret any inconvenience you experienced." Oh, and it takes them no more than two seconds to answer the phone or respond to an e-mail.

[KatherineB]

Surely you lie, sir! Everybody knows that Google has an excellent 24/7 customer service department staffed by competent, intelligent, and courteous people who always go out of their way to resolve within an hour any problem that has been brought to their attention. Why, they even send flowers and cookies afterwards as a way of saying "We regret any inconvenience you experienced." Oh, and it takes them no more than two seconds to answer the phone or respond to an e-mail.

And you read that on Google's website, so it MUST be true!

[PepperElf]

So glad I wasn't the only one who thought this the minute they saw "google is not an infallible oracle, it's a tool"

Exactly. It took over a year, but google finally decided that yes, <Minor Highway> near me really DOES connect to <Big Highway>south of us. I'll even accept that google gave it a number when <Minor Highway> signs only give us the name.

[Sapphire Silk]

"I'm not good at, like, taking information and stuff" you say?

This does not bode well for his career as a college student.

Is it just me who is frightened by the thought that all Argabarga's customers are regularly in control of a vehicle, all by themselves?

Terrifies me. Makes me glad I don't live in the same state.

O_o

This one is just..so...I just. Google is not an infallible oracle; it's just a tool.

As was the suckstomer.

[QUOTE=IT Grunt;1100610]Reminds me of the recent State Farm commercial.

Woman: "Oh here's my date, I met him on the internet. He's a french model!"
Ugly Fat Dude with Glasses and a badly groomed BeardDate: "Uhhhh... bonjour!" [\quote]

Fixed it for you

I wouldn't be surprised if he Googled it on his phone while he was standing there with the number right in front of him.

That was the overall impression I got.

Exactly. It took over a year, but google finally decided that yes, <Minor Highway> near me really DOES connect to <Big Highway>south of us. I'll even accept that google gave it a number when <Minor Highway> signs only give us the name.

Humph. I'll be happy when Google Maps stops showing a road that turns on to the road leading to my Mom's old place on the turn by turn directions. That "road" has been overgrown and pothole ridden for a couple of decades and is completely undrivable (you can't even turn onto it from one end anymore). It's a private road, not maintained by the county and the people who live on it a) don't care, and b) don't like other people using their road as a short cut out of the neighborhood which is probably why they let it go to rot.

[Kristev]

Have people forgotten that there is still such a thing as ...

The Phone Book?

[Kereminde]

Have people forgotten that there is still such a thing as ...

The Phone Book?

That may be so but speaking for my local area there are no less than two (it used to be three, then I moved to another suburb) different Yellow Pages which don't share entries and apparently have no rhyme or reason to how they're listed per book.

And despite Google having it listed wrong . . . how about Yellowpages.com? There are alternate sources of information available . . . that's what the Internet is for. Depositing conflicting information in three different parts of it and claiming all are absolutely true, trust us.

. . . I miss the days when I wasn't permitted to cite online sources for my research papers in high school / college. My College Composition teacher explained it succinctly:

"On the Internet, anyone with money to pay a hosting fee can put information up and is not necessarily required to fact-check. On the other side, anyone who puts out a published book and has knowingly made an error . . . probably is not going to have that book in circulation very long, or a career in writing after it is discovered. Oh, and always check your facts with three sources, minimal. The potential for all three to be wrong is much slimmer than merely relying on one."

[Shalom]

I'll even accept that google gave it a number when <Minor Highway> signs only give us the name.

You mean like the highway near here which Grgle Maps calls "NJ State Highway 444", which everyone else in the known universe calls "the Garden State Parkway"?

Heck, now I'm wondering how come they don't call the Belt Parkway "NY State Highway 907c".

(For the benefit of the non-roadgeeks here, if any, these are "reference route" numbers, not actual signed highway numbers. See here.)

That "road" has been overgrown and pothole ridden for a couple of decades and is completely undrivable (you can't even turn onto it from one end anymore). It's a private road, not maintained by the county and the people who live on it a) don't care, and b) don't like other people using their road as a short cut out of the neighborhood which is probably why they let it go to rot.

Sounds like Clark Rd north out of Eldred NY. The maps all show it's there; even the current print maps have it. But there's no road anymore, just a sort of longitudinal clearing through the trees. You can take a look at it on the satellite view, and if not for the line on the map you would never know there had ever been a road there.

Many years back, say about 1988, before GPSen or Google Maps existed, my parents tried to drive this non-road up to visit my sister in summer camp, this being the most direct route I could find. (I was the one with the map collection, so I navigated.) The road gets narrower and narrower, eventually we find a sign "Road Closed". So what, the Connecticut Turnpike always had "Road Closed - Proceed At Your Own Risk" signs up during construction, so we figured it was just the local road department CYAing. Keep proceeding north. Pavement goes. Then the dirt road goes too. Nothing but two ruts with a huge hump in between, overgrown with grass. My dad was driving with one wheel on the hump and the other in the forest, and you could have gotten under the car and changed the oil. I was actually walking in front of them with a long stick to poke into the various ponds that covered the right-of-way from time to time, disturbing frogs etc. just in case the thing was deep enough to swallow the car. Finally we get to the end of the abandoned stretch, and whaddaya know, there's an old wooden bridge... Thank G_d it was still strong enough to hold the car.

We get to the camp, and I tell one of the staff there how we'd come. He looks at my mother's car, a 1986 Chevy Celebrity with about three inches ground clearance, and he says "You took that over the Blind Pond Turnpike? You're nuts."

A few weeks later, we had the car in for service, and the mechanic wants to know how come the bottom of the chassis is full of grass. My mother told him "We got lost in the woods." About six years later, when I'd finally gotten a 4x4 with higher clearance and shield plates, I went back up there and drove the road again, this time at about five times the speed: 15mph rather than 3....