Notes in the Margin

There's a lot of sport on TV at the moment so I've decided to get involved. My 'sport' is armchair based and it's called "The QVC Turing Test".
A Turing test is something conceived by Alan Turing, and it's supposed to be a way of detecting intelligence. The way it goes is that the test subject is in a room and you communicate with it via a keyboard and screen. You ask it questions and, depending on the responses, you can work out if the subject is an warm, intelligent, living human being or a cold, programmed, machine.

We were avoiding soaps and sport today and flicked the TV on to QVC, where they were having a 'sound and vision event'. We've always enjoyed using the net to find out just how pricey the QVC 'slashed' prices really are, and to have a smug laugh at the expense of QVC customers. This time we saw a glaring typo in the details for a set of wireless speakers. They were described as "2.4Hz" instead of "2.4GHz". A simple error, I know, but an opening for a bit of fun.
Logging on to the QVC UK website we started a live chat with agent 'LisaK'. You should try it. There are clearly a set of 'stock responses' which the agents can choose, and it's equally clear that the agents are not well versed in the detail of the products on sale. After a few attempts to determine what the 2.4Hz meant in the product name (initial answer "2.4 Hertz" - thanks. Very helpful.) we finally got LisaK to explain that "2.4 is how powerful the frequency is". In response to our suggestion that this probably isn't what it means we received "It is the frequency power".
So, we didn't find out what 2.4Hz meant, but thanks to Alan Turing we have ample evidence to support the view that LisaK is in fact a Sinclair ZX80.

I know it isn't very nice. But it is fun. QVC baiting - try it for yourself.