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Messages - Zaphod99

Pages: [1] 2 3 4 ... 82
1
Ancestral Family Tree DNA Testing / Re: My Heritage & whole genome testing.
« on: Tuesday 03 March 26 19:39 GMT (UK)  »
Biggles, I don't pay a lot of attention to ethnicity results, as it's not really of interest, but I have always understood that they relate to 500 to a thousand years ago. That's a lot more remote than the dates that you give, 225 to 250 years ago.

Your ancestors from 500 to a thousand years ago may have come from different places, compared to your own research of the last 200 to 250 years.

Zaph

2
The Common Room / Re: Ancestry family trees full of lazy errors
« on: Thursday 26 February 26 12:38 GMT (UK)  »
Only if you've given them editor rights.

Zaph

3
The Common Room / Re: Ancestry family trees full of lazy errors
« on: Wednesday 25 February 26 15:44 GMT (UK)  »
6 weeks was not a recommendation, it was a requirement, that births were registered within 42 days.  It didn't always happen though as I'm sure we've all found out.

Zaph

4
Technical Help / Re: "Database Error" message
« on: Wednesday 25 February 26 12:18 GMT (UK)  »
I'm long retired, but whoever wrote software that provided a facility to generate an error message as unhelpful as DATABASE ERROR, should not work on aeroplanes.

Zaph

5
Ancestral Family Tree DNA Testing / Re: My Heritage & whole genome testing.
« on: Wednesday 25 February 26 12:16 GMT (UK)  »
After enthusiastically waiting for mine for six or 8 weeks or so it was a bit of an anti-climax, because it gave me the same matches, in a slightly different order apart from one that disappeared and one new one was added. Maybe when the CRAM file becomes available this might change.

ZAPH

6
The Common Room / Re: A major new AI capability
« on: Wednesday 25 February 26 12:14 GMT (UK)  »
It's a tool that's here to stay and the sooner we all get used to it, the more confident we will become. People moaned about registering births, people moaned about fingerprints, people said that anyone travelling on a train at more than 20 miles an hour would die.

Zaph

7
The Common Room / Re: A major new AI capability
« on: Wednesday 25 February 26 11:28 GMT (UK)  »
I am a big fan of artificial intelligence services and tools, but so many people don't even bother giving a prompt, they just state what their problem is. We'll have to wait until 2030 for that.  Artificial intelligence is like a hammer or a screwdriver, they are designed for specific tasks, and yes, you can open a tin with a hammer, and you can bang things in with a screwdriver but there are better ways of doing things.

However, I will recount a recent disaster with artificial intelligence. In a news article I saw a small excerpt or extract from a painting, and I uploaded that image to two different AI sites, asking for information about the source painting. Not only did they both get it wrong, they took me through several iterations of trying to tell me where in the suggested painting the extract actually appeared, and like a fool, I was zooming in where they were telling me to look, different in both cases, before finally I decided that I was being told a load of rubbish.

Zaph

8
The Common Room / Re: British Newspaper Archive PAYG Option
« on: Wednesday 25 February 26 11:20 GMT (UK)  »
FAQ is an atrocious way of providing customer service. Why should I have to read through 100 problems that other people have had, on the off chance that I will find a solution to my particular problem. One day soon companies will realize this, and start saying we don't have an faq page we do proper customer service. Furthermore, I'm a big fan of artificial intelligence, if people use it properly, and actually give some prompts rather than just chucking their question at it. However, companies are relying on it as a way of getting rid of staff. It's going to be like those offshore customer service desks of 10 years ago. Everybody runs to them, until they find they don't work. And worst of all are of those so-called chatbots, where you ask them a question and they answer a different one. The very worst of all are the telephone ones, where you have to say, in a few words what you're calling about. Aren't they abysmal? Don't chief executive officers ever try them?

Rant over

Zaph

9
Family History Beginners Board / Re: Ancestry Messenger
« on: Monday 23 February 26 13:22 GMT (UK)  »
Absolutely wrong.  Keep trying but always politely.  It's so easy to miss one or be busy,   A temporary crisis at home always comes first.  I've had replies after 4-5 tries

Zaph


Quote from: rosie17 on Monday 23 February 26 11:14 GMT (UK)
Agree with Jebber about people ignoring them in that case I wouldn't send any more messages  ;)

Rosie

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