As IT manager for a small non-profit, I can say that even we are still running mostly proprietary software.
The biggest hurdle is the users, I tried letting people have a go with a Linux distro, OpenOffice etc and the first thing they said was "Where's publisher?" and "How do I use this digital camera (with locked drivers for Windows)" etc etc. Far too many problems. Plus we have a fair few Access databases.
For those who only needed Word, Excel and a few other things I tried giving them OpenOffice but they just moaned and asked for the "Standard Microsoft" products.
For a while we've been using Mozilla Thunderbird, but as more and more people are needing access to their email remotely, and IMAP is far from brilliant in said client (folders refusing to delete properly and other such niggles) I think Exchange and Outlook are not far off the horizon. Simply because, dare I say it on Slashdot, Micrsoft software is generally the easiest to use in the eyes of the non-computer-literate. [With the exception of Office 2007 beta as it stands, that's bloody awful to use]
I'd love to go OSS and I'm sure in an organisation with slightly more intelligent staff it wouldn't be a problem. But this lot at my place are *very* easily confused. A shining example would be one guy today, who panicked that his box was "going beebeebeebeebeebeebeep". I went to his desk and found a ring binder sat on the keyboard. Another one, a little while ago but still there, was desparately trying to shove a floppy in a Zip drive. These are the kind of people I have to deal with, so any less-than-minor change would have them baffled for months. Trying to tell them how to do all the various workarounds and procedures usually needed in OSS software to do various things that are point-and-click in Windows is out of the question really.
The only OSS app which *has* gone down well is Firefox, perhaps because it's got a very familiar/intuitive interface for ex-IE users, it's feature-complete (I've seen so many OSS alternatives that can only be described as half-finished) and generally very well written. The staff love not having to deal with malware, popups and self-installers, even if it does take an age to load in comparison with IE.
Who knows, maybe the situation will improve eventually... but right now the demand is for "Standard Microsoft" software and giving them alternatives just tends to upset them.
I hold my hand up - I've used my fair share of software that fell off the back of the internet. Let's leave the generic legal/moral arguments for another day. But there are two major things which convinced me to do the Right Thing when Tiger came out:
* Fair pricing. If you're fair with me, I'm fair with you. If you charge me the full extortionate price 5 times for being a loyal and legal customer and legally upgrading all 5 of my family PCs, let's just say I'll be a little miffed...
* Trust. It's a two-way process. It's like, if someone puts out a cookie jar for someone else and says "I know you want to steal one of those cookies, but I'll make you suffer the consequences, and I'll be watching so DON'T DO IT" - the first thing a lot of people will do is try to think of a way to steal a cookie. It's the human instinct to push boundaries and see what you can get away with, and chances are because they were so snotty with you and treated you like dirt, you lost all respect for them. On the other hand, if they said "I'd like you give you one of these, but I can't. I kindly ask that you do not take any" - as an adult at least, I'm much more willing to comply. Yes I know, at the end of the day an illegal act is an illegal act, end of.... but people *will* do wrong. And I think if you treat them like an adult and not like a criminal or a child or both, then you're more likely to combat piracy than any digital protection.
why are so many search strings complete (or non working) http adresses?
Less than intelligent computer users, normally. Such as those where I work, where I've observed this kind of behaviour....
The issue is that most browsers launch up in their default search page - MSN for IE, Google for Firefox and no doubt AOL for AOL. And as I've observed, most "Joe Schmoe" computer users in the office etc simply don't know the difference between an address bar and a search box. I know a few people in this office who have never used the address bar in their lives, they just type "www.example.com" into MSN Search and then click through to the result. They don't know any different.
Of course, these are most the same people who don't know the difference between a computer monitor and a television or a box/unit/tower/whatever with a "hard drive". I had one friend who is normally quite intelligent (except around computers) asking how to remotely access a hard drive that had been thrown away after the PC was destroyed...
I don't know why people turn thick the moment they're sat in front of a PC. I guess they just disengage brain and expect the processor to do it all!
Agreed. Sometimes a customer wastes so many man-hours and returned items that they're just not worth the hassle - just politely point out your competitors (assuming you're the manager or otherwise have authority to do so) and suggest they go there. Sure they'll huff and puff and go "WELL! How rude!" but contrary to popular consumer opinion they don't have a god given right to even be in your shop, let alone have their feet kissed by the staff. Sure, it's one person who will probably give your place a bad name given the chance.... but as long as you have lots of happy customers, 1 noisy unhappy one won't make any difference. Nowhere has 100% happy customers with no complaints.
And you get to hurt your competitor too - now they have waste time and money dealing with with the arrogant customer, and those types are generally never happy no matter where they go.
Of course it does depend on the nature of your business - you wouldn't get rid of a customer if there's only one a year.
Well, that serves me right for relying on IMAP. My logic at the time was this:
The charity I work for are too tight to buy an external backup hard drive no matter how much I stress to the management team that ALL of their crucual data could be lost in the blink of an eye. I'm not going to buy one myself, as I've already donated my old PC as a server. So I'd rather rely on the ISP to back up all the emails. After all, they're a service provider right? All service providers have the sense to make backups?
Fair to say I'll be switching to another provider as soon as humanly possible. Plus.net are a disgrace. I'd sooner be on AOL.
No no no. You still guide the character to that point. It's a lot deeper than just watching a movie, instead of being the onlooker you *are* that person. In a well-immersive game anyway.
The Final Fantasy series has made me shed tears (however mildly) on a number of occasions. I am a 24 year old male.
It's difficult to pinpoint what it is, until you turn the sound off. It's the music. I can watch (FF7+10 spoilers) Aerith die and Cloud's reaction, Tidus fading away as Yuna tries to hug him and falls through (end spoilers) without the sound on and barely batter an eyelid. Put the sad music in there and I'm blubbing like a girl. The emotions are there with or without, but the music is like a magnifying glass.
What I find most interesting about Dell, is that unlike other companies, even their *sales* department is run by a call centre in India.
The comparison ends there, with Dell. In my experience they are helpful to a fault and bend over backwards to help you out. They are the true model of how Indian Call Centres should be: helpful to the economy but most importantly, helpful to the customer and so incredibly friendly they would do *anything* for you if their English ws good enough. As this article suggests, YMMV.
Certainly not here in the UK, and I should imagine the laws are the same in America.
Write a letter with your full address on it, stating clearly and in no uncertain terms that you "are writing to cancel the account". Not that you would "like to" cancel, not "please can you cancel" - "I am writing to cancel". Sign it, date it, send it Recorded Delivery for proof of receipt.
IANAL, but from my understanding they are legally bound to cancel if you request it in writing, as long as you haven't signed some agreement that binds you to x months. Because you sent it recorded, they have absolutely no excuse and can't use the infamous "we haven't received a letter off you" excuse.
I've cancelled a few Singlepoint 4u contracts this way with no problem or delay, and they're well known for being awkward and clingy.
I guess it was getting on a bit, still it's sad to see it go.
Why EA do this I don't know, but they're renowned for acquiring online games and shutting them down (sure to happen with this) - too much competition for them perhaps?
* Insert baseless rumour about Apple wanting to get into gaming * Insert whacky theory of "Apple might buy Acme Corp" * Insert weird hardware combination (or speculation that they're going to drop hardware altogether) * Insert speculation that This Will Be the Event that Magically Gives Apple Victory over Microsoft * Mention Dvorak somewhere * Obfuscate and try to make it sound like it's fact rather than wild random speculation * Sex it up / turn it into a "thesun.co.uk" sensasionalist type story * Post it to slashdot
(???, Profit)
*yawn*
I'm an Apple fan, and even I'm getting tired to death of these headlines - I dread to think what it's like for people who really couldn't give a stuff about Apple.
Putting a re-design to a vote of Slashdot readers would be the ultimate example of design-by-committee, and would therefore result in the ultimate in useless, unreadable, un-navigable websites.
It's a bit like voting - sometimes it seems a waste of time, but if everyone had that attitude then you'd end up with a dictatorship (IE, in this case).
I guess in some areas it's less important than others, such as a personal blog site or whatever.
But I work for a non-profit who are there to help people who are disadvantaged (socially, mentally or physically etc) and there's no doubt that a large part of the audience for our website have disabilities. W3C compliance is just the first (important, and really not that difficult) step in ensuring that your site is accessible to all audiences and complies to Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. Not only is it the law under the Disability Discrimination Act (UK) to make sure that a company website is accessible to disabled people (to approx WCAG level 2), it's just the responsible thing to do when you're providing such a service.
Even though we're small, I've had a few emails now from visitors from the council and other such places saying they've visited the site and are impressed that it complies with accessibility standards and not many like us display the consideration of making that kind of effort. IMO that alone makes it worthwhile.
"Maybe 2006 is not the year that Linux ends up on your desktops."
At the risk of sounding troll-ish I love how variations (is / is not) of this phrase have been going on since KDE 1.0 was released in 1998. It's taken at least 8 years of "Maybe Linux will be ready for the desktop this year" for someone to finally say "Actually, maybe it won't"!
I sincerely hope it *does* end up on the common 'desktop' one day, but it's not looking too likely at this rate:)
Back on topic, aren't even Microsoft opening their Word format now? I remember whisperings about them using XML, which sounds promising. Digging their own grave, got to love them for it!
Maybe now people can hold back on the old "Macs are nothing special, especially now that they're Intel, they're just pretty (expensive)" bullshit for a little while?
It ought to work, but be warned it will be *slow*. I run it on a Powerbook 1.33 which is slightly better (IIRC the Mini is essentially an iBook) and it's barely usable. Power Mac or PC is the way to go with SL at the moment - and make sure it has an NVidia card, not ATI!
Heh heh heh.... getting a Mac does not necessarily free you from Toshiba's shit quality *looks at the dead Toshiba 2.5" drive he painstakingly extracted from his Powerbook with the help of pbfixit.com*
Works great on Opera (styled and unstyled) which is a definite good sign.
Kudos to Slashdot for finally embracing the type of web design that puts the *user* first instead of the webmaster. Sure, it can be a little fiddly to get things looking right with CSS especially if you try to mimic tables with it (which you have to do if you want to validate to Strict, IIRC) but in the long term it makes the site a *lot* easier to maintain and more user friendly.
For those unsure of the benefits of using either HTML4.01 Strict or xHTML1.0 Strict (better) some of them I can think of are:
- The data is separate from the presentation. This means that disabled users, people with screen readers etc are happier as they can view the site in a way that's accessible to them instead of the way the author dictates. It also means benefits for non-disabled users who can view the site in reduced functionality web browsers, PDAs etc just by overriding the CSS template, or design their own "skins" etc.
- It makes updates (e.g. adding a link) far easier as there is *no* style code in the HTML - it's generally just a matter of adding another LI or DIV tag with the appropriate class and the CSS will do the "make it pretty" bit.
- Nicer on bandwidth
- If you validate to both (which I hope gets done) then you have a very good chance of the site working and looking the same on all decent web browsers including IE.
- You show that you care about your users. Providing you validate it and run it through webxact as well.
This is why the Beeb quite simply 'rock' and why the license fee is worth every penny.
Imagine if the RIAA or MPAA were in their shoes. "RAWWWWRRR!! SUE!!!! DIE!!!111!1one" - but the Beeb are different. They actually listen and take a pro-active approach. Instead of shouting at people for... ahem... "pirating" their show they ask themselves why and what they can do to *persuade* people not to or to do something even better that prevents people from needing to in the first place.
Heck, they even have a show (Points of View) where they allow people to blantantly and openly slag them off and read out the letters on air. Okay if someone's being a numpty then they'll just turn around and say "don't be silly." But often someone comes up with a valid point, and the appointed representative holds his hands up and says "yes you're right. Here's our apology and here's what we're going to do to prevent it happening in future"
You don't get that from many companies. One that actually listens to its customers is so worth it...
Of course they also get bonus points for inventing the BBC Micro... and BBC News Online which everyone around the world like to read... and embracing open source... and...
Slashdot Mirror
plus.net learned that one quite recently when they deleted 700GB of customer emails and didn't have any form of backup other than RAID.
I am no longer a customer.
As IT manager for a small non-profit, I can say that even we are still running mostly proprietary software.
The biggest hurdle is the users, I tried letting people have a go with a Linux distro, OpenOffice etc and the first thing they said was "Where's publisher?" and "How do I use this digital camera (with locked drivers for Windows)" etc etc. Far too many problems. Plus we have a fair few Access databases.
For those who only needed Word, Excel and a few other things I tried giving them OpenOffice but they just moaned and asked for the "Standard Microsoft" products.
For a while we've been using Mozilla Thunderbird, but as more and more people are needing access to their email remotely, and IMAP is far from brilliant in said client (folders refusing to delete properly and other such niggles) I think Exchange and Outlook are not far off the horizon. Simply because, dare I say it on Slashdot, Micrsoft software is generally the easiest to use in the eyes of the non-computer-literate. [With the exception of Office 2007 beta as it stands, that's bloody awful to use]
I'd love to go OSS and I'm sure in an organisation with slightly more intelligent staff it wouldn't be a problem. But this lot at my place are *very* easily confused. A shining example would be one guy today, who panicked that his box was "going beebeebeebeebeebeebeep". I went to his desk and found a ring binder sat on the keyboard. Another one, a little while ago but still there, was desparately trying to shove a floppy in a Zip drive. These are the kind of people I have to deal with, so any less-than-minor change would have them baffled for months. Trying to tell them how to do all the various workarounds and procedures usually needed in OSS software to do various things that are point-and-click in Windows is out of the question really.
The only OSS app which *has* gone down well is Firefox, perhaps because it's got a very familiar/intuitive interface for ex-IE users, it's feature-complete (I've seen so many OSS alternatives that can only be described as half-finished) and generally very well written. The staff love not having to deal with malware, popups and self-installers, even if it does take an age to load in comparison with IE.
Who knows, maybe the situation will improve eventually... but right now the demand is for "Standard Microsoft" software and giving them alternatives just tends to upset them.
I think you'd be surprised.
I hold my hand up - I've used my fair share of software that fell off the back of the internet. Let's leave the generic legal/moral arguments for another day. But there are two major things which convinced me to do the Right Thing when Tiger came out:
* Fair pricing. If you're fair with me, I'm fair with you. If you charge me the full extortionate price 5 times for being a loyal and legal customer and legally upgrading all 5 of my family PCs, let's just say I'll be a little miffed...
* Trust. It's a two-way process. It's like, if someone puts out a cookie jar for someone else and says "I know you want to steal one of those cookies, but I'll make you suffer the consequences, and I'll be watching so DON'T DO IT" - the first thing a lot of people will do is try to think of a way to steal a cookie. It's the human instinct to push boundaries and see what you can get away with, and chances are because they were so snotty with you and treated you like dirt, you lost all respect for them. On the other hand, if they said "I'd like you give you one of these, but I can't. I kindly ask that you do not take any" - as an adult at least, I'm much more willing to comply. Yes I know, at the end of the day an illegal act is an illegal act, end of.... but people *will* do wrong. And I think if you treat them like an adult and not like a criminal or a child or both, then you're more likely to combat piracy than any digital protection.
why are so many search strings complete (or non working) http adresses?
Less than intelligent computer users, normally. Such as those where I work, where I've observed this kind of behaviour....
The issue is that most browsers launch up in their default search page - MSN for IE, Google for Firefox and no doubt AOL for AOL. And as I've observed, most "Joe Schmoe" computer users in the office etc simply don't know the difference between an address bar and a search box. I know a few people in this office who have never used the address bar in their lives, they just type "www.example.com" into MSN Search and then click through to the result. They don't know any different.
Of course, these are most the same people who don't know the difference between a computer monitor and a television or a box/unit/tower/whatever with a "hard drive". I had one friend who is normally quite intelligent (except around computers) asking how to remotely access a hard drive that had been thrown away after the PC was destroyed...
I don't know why people turn thick the moment they're sat in front of a PC. I guess they just disengage brain and expect the processor to do it all!
Agreed. Sometimes a customer wastes so many man-hours and returned items that they're just not worth the hassle - just politely point out your competitors (assuming you're the manager or otherwise have authority to do so) and suggest they go there. Sure they'll huff and puff and go "WELL! How rude!" but contrary to popular consumer opinion they don't have a god given right to even be in your shop, let alone have their feet kissed by the staff. Sure, it's one person who will probably give your place a bad name given the chance.... but as long as you have lots of happy customers, 1 noisy unhappy one won't make any difference. Nowhere has 100% happy customers with no complaints.
And you get to hurt your competitor too - now they have waste time and money dealing with with the arrogant customer, and those types are generally never happy no matter where they go.
Of course it does depend on the nature of your business - you wouldn't get rid of a customer if there's only one a year.
Well, that serves me right for relying on IMAP. My logic at the time was this:
The charity I work for are too tight to buy an external backup hard drive no matter how much I stress to the management team that ALL of their crucual data could be lost in the blink of an eye. I'm not going to buy one myself, as I've already donated my old PC as a server. So I'd rather rely on the ISP to back up all the emails. After all, they're a service provider right? All service providers have the sense to make backups?
Fair to say I'll be switching to another provider as soon as humanly possible. Plus.net are a disgrace. I'd sooner be on AOL.
No no no. You still guide the character to that point. It's a lot deeper than just watching a movie, instead of being the onlooker you *are* that person. In a well-immersive game anyway.
The Final Fantasy series has made me shed tears (however mildly) on a number of occasions. I am a 24 year old male.
It's difficult to pinpoint what it is, until you turn the sound off. It's the music. I can watch (FF7+10 spoilers) Aerith die and Cloud's reaction, Tidus fading away as Yuna tries to hug him and falls through (end spoilers) without the sound on and barely batter an eyelid. Put the sad music in there and I'm blubbing like a girl. The emotions are there with or without, but the music is like a magnifying glass.
Guess I'm too late to reply to this, but my Canadian girlfriend has never suffixed a sentence with "eh" in the whole 6 months I've known her =P
What I find most interesting about Dell, is that unlike other companies, even their *sales* department is run by a call centre in India.
The comparison ends there, with Dell. In my experience they are helpful to a fault and bend over backwards to help you out. They are the true model of how Indian Call Centres should be: helpful to the economy but most importantly, helpful to the customer and so incredibly friendly they would do *anything* for you if their English ws good enough. As this article suggests, YMMV.
Certainly not here in the UK, and I should imagine the laws are the same in America.
Write a letter with your full address on it, stating clearly and in no uncertain terms that you "are writing to cancel the account". Not that you would "like to" cancel, not "please can you cancel" - "I am writing to cancel". Sign it, date it, send it Recorded Delivery for proof of receipt.
IANAL, but from my understanding they are legally bound to cancel if you request it in writing, as long as you haven't signed some agreement that binds you to x months. Because you sent it recorded, they have absolutely no excuse and can't use the infamous "we haven't received a letter off you" excuse.
I've cancelled a few Singlepoint 4u contracts this way with no problem or delay, and they're well known for being awkward and clingy.
Ahh a shiny thing!
Why didn't he say so in the first place? Silly humans.
I guess it was getting on a bit, still it's sad to see it go.
Why EA do this I don't know, but they're renowned for acquiring online games and shutting them down (sure to happen with this) - too much competition for them perhaps?
"So what *is* it?"
Apart from making you look like a twat, I'm still non the wiser as to what this thing actually does!
* Insert baseless rumour about Apple wanting to get into gaming
* Insert whacky theory of "Apple might buy Acme Corp"
* Insert weird hardware combination (or speculation that they're going to drop hardware altogether)
* Insert speculation that This Will Be the Event that Magically Gives Apple Victory over Microsoft
* Mention Dvorak somewhere
* Obfuscate and try to make it sound like it's fact rather than wild random speculation
* Sex it up / turn it into a "thesun.co.uk" sensasionalist type story
* Post it to slashdot
(???, Profit)
*yawn*
I'm an Apple fan, and even I'm getting tired to death of these headlines - I dread to think what it's like for people who really couldn't give a stuff about Apple.
Does this one allow porn?
Putting a re-design to a vote of Slashdot readers would be the ultimate example of design-by-committee, and would therefore result in the ultimate in useless, unreadable, un-navigable websites.
That explains Linux, then. *
* I'm joking, I'm joking. Easy on the pitchforks!
It's a bit like voting - sometimes it seems a waste of time, but if everyone had that attitude then you'd end up with a dictatorship (IE, in this case).
I guess in some areas it's less important than others, such as a personal blog site or whatever.
But I work for a non-profit who are there to help people who are disadvantaged (socially, mentally or physically etc) and there's no doubt that a large part of the audience for our website have disabilities. W3C compliance is just the first (important, and really not that difficult) step in ensuring that your site is accessible to all audiences and complies to Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. Not only is it the law under the Disability Discrimination Act (UK) to make sure that a company website is accessible to disabled people (to approx WCAG level 2), it's just the responsible thing to do when you're providing such a service.
Even though we're small, I've had a few emails now from visitors from the council and other such places saying they've visited the site and are impressed that it complies with accessibility standards and not many like us display the consideration of making that kind of effort. IMO that alone makes it worthwhile.
"Maybe 2006 is not the year that Linux ends up on your desktops."
:)
At the risk of sounding troll-ish I love how variations (is / is not) of this phrase have been going on since KDE 1.0 was released in 1998. It's taken at least 8 years of "Maybe Linux will be ready for the desktop this year" for someone to finally say "Actually, maybe it won't"!
I sincerely hope it *does* end up on the common 'desktop' one day, but it's not looking too likely at this rate
Back on topic, aren't even Microsoft opening their Word format now? I remember whisperings about them using XML, which sounds promising. Digging their own grave, got to love them for it!
Maybe now people can hold back on the old "Macs are nothing special, especially now that they're Intel, they're just pretty (expensive)" bullshit for a little while?
It ought to work, but be warned it will be *slow*. I run it on a Powerbook 1.33 which is slightly better (IIRC the Mini is essentially an iBook) and it's barely usable. Power Mac or PC is the way to go with SL at the moment - and make sure it has an NVidia card, not ATI!
Heh heh heh.... getting a Mac does not necessarily free you from Toshiba's shit quality *looks at the dead Toshiba 2.5" drive he painstakingly extracted from his Powerbook with the help of pbfixit.com*
Works great on Opera (styled and unstyled) which is a definite good sign.
Kudos to Slashdot for finally embracing the type of web design that puts the *user* first instead of the webmaster. Sure, it can be a little fiddly to get things looking right with CSS especially if you try to mimic tables with it (which you have to do if you want to validate to Strict, IIRC) but in the long term it makes the site a *lot* easier to maintain and more user friendly.
For those unsure of the benefits of using either HTML4.01 Strict or xHTML1.0 Strict (better) some of them I can think of are:
- The data is separate from the presentation. This means that disabled users, people with screen readers etc are happier as they can view the site in a way that's accessible to them instead of the way the author dictates. It also means benefits for non-disabled users who can view the site in reduced functionality web browsers, PDAs etc just by overriding the CSS template, or design their own "skins" etc.
- It makes updates (e.g. adding a link) far easier as there is *no* style code in the HTML - it's generally just a matter of adding another LI or DIV tag with the appropriate class and the CSS will do the "make it pretty" bit.
- Nicer on bandwidth
- If you validate to both (which I hope gets done) then you have a very good chance of the site working and looking the same on all decent web browsers including IE.
- You show that you care about your users. Providing you validate it and run it through webxact as well.
... you get Douglas Adams to write Doctor Who.
This is why the Beeb quite simply 'rock' and why the license fee is worth every penny.
Imagine if the RIAA or MPAA were in their shoes. "RAWWWWRRR!! SUE!!!! DIE!!!111!1one" - but the Beeb are different. They actually listen and take a pro-active approach. Instead of shouting at people for... ahem... "pirating" their show they ask themselves why and what they can do to *persuade* people not to or to do something even better that prevents people from needing to in the first place.
Heck, they even have a show (Points of View) where they allow people to blantantly and openly slag them off and read out the letters on air. Okay if someone's being a numpty then they'll just turn around and say "don't be silly." But often someone comes up with a valid point, and the appointed representative holds his hands up and says "yes you're right. Here's our apology and here's what we're going to do to prevent it happening in future"
You don't get that from many companies. One that actually listens to its customers is so worth it...
Of course they also get bonus points for inventing the BBC Micro... and BBC News Online which everyone around the world like to read... and embracing open source... and...