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New Scientist, easily our favorite science magazine, has a fascinating piece on how scientists at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have come up with a genius new way of building circuits. While still built from the same old materials (plastic and silicone), these new circuits can both stretch and bend (it’s like your motherboard on yoga!). In fact, they can even be folded around coins. Of course, why the scientists chose to bend them up against coins, the article refuses to reveal. What the piece does suggest, however, is how these new circuits will affect your future. Apparently, the stretchy circuits will play into more elastic-like gadgets, smarter clothes (wearing your computer on your sleeve), and it promises the development of PC’s that will be implanted into the body- or more specifically, the brain. It all sounds pretty crazy. In any case, you can read more for yourself here at New Scientist.
Comments (2)
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I am in Customer Service (Box Office Rep for a Shakespeare Theatre in VA) while I’m finishing my graduate degree, and, while I sympathize (nee, empathize), with many tales of Customer Service woe. I think that the other side of the story is just as valid, sometimes. I have been screamed at, threatened, accused, and berated for doing my job.
No refunds means no refunds, everyone. It says so on the material, and we make very few exceptions (accidents, deaths, hospitalizations). In cases of downright rudeness, the customer is in the right, but there are times when the confusion on the part of the representative is genuine, when getting you what you want could cost them their job, and when they honestly have no ability/permission to help you with a particular problem.
Remember, the person on the other side of the phone is just that, another person, probably making minimum wage, trying to make ends meet, and dealing with rude customer service people (esp. student loan reps) of their own. There’s no excuse for rudeness, but don’t automatically assume that they don’t want to help you.
Thank you.
posted by Christina on 3-28-2008 at 11:01 am
Bah! Posted in the wrong thing!
Sorry to everyone interested in stretchy circuits!
posted by Christina on 3-28-2008 at 11:05 am