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How To Deploy a Game Console In the Office?
SkydiverFL writes "Does anyone have an idea for a good solution for using a game console (Xbox 360, PS3, etc.) with a laptop and / or external monitor? I am planning to set up each of my developers at the office with a shiny new Xbox 360, surround headphones, and Gold memberships. The only catch is that I have to do it 'gracefully.' I would be grateful for any input on the technical setup and politics (how to get it in and how to work through the politics)."
Read on for further details on the situation.
SkydiverFL continues, "Long story short, I am the MIS Manager / Lead Architect for a blue collar non-tech company. My team needs to be happy, but the folks in the rest of the office do not really understand what that means for the types of personalities that exist in our department. Even though my team is tucked away in a different part of the building, we do have clients and employees come back here from time to time. I cannot set a monitor on their desk. The console can be here, but it needs to be not so 'in your face.' Each developer currently has a maxed out Dell Latitude D830 laptop, docking station, and a wide screen 20" LCD. The LCD has a dual-input configuration — one for SVGA and one for DVI. The DVI port is in use by the laptop. It would be preferable not to feed the console directly into the monitor. We have employee monitoring software in use and need to track the usage of the console. So, it seems best to use a capture card along with some type of viewer utility. This would allow us to have a record of when and how long the console was used, in case anyone else in management ever has a problem.
Please :)
...it's the only way to be sure.
> Richard Gear's house
Names have been changed to protect the innocent... I swear it wasn't a misspelling. (Yeah, that's the ticket)
Some people can actually ignore distractions when required and do their work.
The rest of us post on Slashdot!
This from a guy posting on slashdot with a username of "toomuchtodo" There's irony afoot at the Circle K.
It's a conspiracy!
Richard Gear Solid: Gerbils of Revolution
You keep your shares in your bed?
If one dies, are you going to be spending time and money to send it in for warrantly repairs?
No, if one dies you just give his console to someone else.
This comment is for entertainment purposes only. Any similarity to real insight or information is purely coincidental.
Outside a few core developers there's very little work done at Google. It's all about meetings and impressing visitors.
No sig today...
Okay; I think your comment is completely legitimate in the modern office environment and I don't want to criticise at all, so please see this as directed at the designers of open plan offices everywhere and not yourself. They, after all, are the architects who should be able to study historical buildings and explain the concepts I put below to you.
There are these things called interior "walls". Invented in the stone age, but recently forgotten by office designers (except at Google and Fog Creek Software), they are difficult to explain, but they consisted of an solid object which filled an entire vertical plane between two areas (called "rooms") which divided up what we might, today, call an "open plan space". By consisting of vibration absorbing material they could entirely intersect noise and reduce it in such a way that nobody outside the "room" would be able to hear the activity inside. If you placed your ping pong table in a "separate room" as it used to be called, you could then use it without any influence on other users of the (now divided) "open plan space".
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
Keep an eye on 'Ask Slashdot'. In the immediate future you may see an entry along the lines of "My subordinate has spent his budget on games consoles; now none of *his* subordinates ever do any work; What flavour of punishment would be most suitable?"
Requiem for the American Dream