here's the issue i see with your argument. yes, some viruses come from hole in windows. windows does have an autoupdate feature that will automatically install the updates for you. it now has a firewall (a pretty good one too) and a popup blocker (also a pretty good one). there's still the problem of the user... the user must turn on the autoupdate feature (i actually like this policy because microsoft still leaves the decision up to the user, although i suspect in the future this will change and i think it has with SP2). the user must interact with the firewall when it warns you that some program is trying to access the internet (most users i know will blindly click "always allow" to prevent future "annoyances"). the user must interact with the popup blocker... if you visit a page that opens a popup window that you want, you must allow it. this annoys users and they simply turn off the blocker rather than allow it. the average computer user isn't very bright... they're more interested in just doing what they want and not seeing any of this stuff. but becuase of this, they know nothing about security and honestly don't care about keeping their computer secure. occasionally i get a user who wants to learn how to prevent it in the future, and regardless of the fact that we have actually sent out emails to all the students explaining this, they ignore it. we can put it in big red letters on their walls in the dorms, and they'd cover it up. they just don't care.
symantec cropped up because of viruses that didn't necessarily prey on flaws in windows, but rather flaws in users. i remember having to virus check floppy discs for viruses that could erase your hard drive... taht doesn't happen anymore. they're just dumb annoying things. a lot of them are because people are dumb enough to click a suspicious looking link (my girlfriend did it thinking it was for class since it came from a classmate), or opening a file in an obviously suspicious email. then there's spyware... the majority of it is not because of flaws in windows or other MS software, but rather the fact that people want free stuff and don't read EULA's (and i don't blame them, they're long and boring). half of them don't mention the spyware. nowhere in AIM's does it mention installing viewpoint media player (which is not true spyware, but i consider it to be so since it's installed without my knowledge, but i don't use AIM anymore). instead of making the additional software opt-in, they make it opt-out. and AOL is packaging more and more with AIM. it's annoying. people want free music, so they install kazaa and grokster and get bombarded with crap that downloads more crap and it's an endless cycle that they don't realize is going on until they porn icons on the desktop or their computer is so sluggish they can't use it (i've used 386's that run faster than some of these P4 2.5's with a gig of ram). how is this MS's fault? the user installed the software in the first place, and then clicked "allow" when the firewall warned them, and then didn't renew their subscription with symantec or mcafee... microsoft is only one tiny piece of the problem. and if they choose to release free anti-spyware and anti-virus software, that's their choice. as long as it's not bundled with windows or included as a windows update, they're not forcing it on anybody. i was surprised to find out that the anti-spyware thing was not in windows update, but if they did, they'd be under even more scrutiny...
your point is moot. their software isn't capable of doing exactly what everyone wants it to do. nevermind, as someone already said, their boilerplate has already been tested in court and won. besides... how many pieces of software come with a guarantee that it will work perfectly 100% of the time for every application of it?
microsoft is already in the anti-spyware game, and their product is one of the best free anti-spyware programs. yes, FREE. is this causing a monopoly? i don't think so. they still continue to patch their software when security holes are found. do they include their anti-spyware software with windows? no. it's not even available as a download through windows update. will they include their anti-virus software if they ever make it? probably not. they're smarter than that. but if they develop it and make it free, that's their choice, and if people choose to download it, again, that's a choice. no forced monopoly, like with media player or internet explorer.
the biggest issue with microsoft's software is the users, not the software itself. users are dumb, plain and simple. they click on things that say "you're the 23452354th visitor, you've won!" and think they actually won something... yep, a nice fat spyware infection. people are gullible, that's what spyware and viruses thrive on. "oh, i got an email from my email administrator that says i have to open this zip file and use this password to do it." instant virus infection. why? because people don't want to pay for a yearly subscription for their anti-virus software, so they assume they can go without it and not worry about it. trust me, i know... i remove viruses and spyware for a living. i've heard it all... "oh, that popup window said i had problems with windows and told me to click there to fix them, so i did". "my friend sent me an IM that had a link to pictures, so i clicked it". people are inherently stupid when it comes to computer security. they just don't know. and then they get annoyed because their security software keeps popping up with messages, and they're annoying so they just ignore them. like those little ones that say "click here to install important updates for windows" in the system tray. microsoft is making an effort, but people don't follow it until they've come to see someone like me... and even then they don't learn. why? because computers are disposable now for many people... oh, it's filled with viruses, here's a new one. but people here find it easy to blame microsoft. sure, a lot of it is poor programming, but even still, a bigger portion of it is the user.
i work in a college. need i say more? i use IM all the time to chat with my student employees. it's usually easier to get them on IM than phone or email.
and i used it to chat with my girlfriend who is living about 300 miles away now for grad school...
AND it's reasonably priced at $11.99... i haven't seen that in a long time... i remember when phish used to sell their single disc albums on their website for like $12 and their double discs for $18. you can't go to a record store (at least not a major one) and buy a CD for less than $15...
this is exactly why i left the engineering program. i had math and chemistry TA's who had told me "please help me with the language, i don't speak english very well." how is someone like that supposed to teach us? the books i had to buy for the intro engineering classes were pointless, they were photocopies of stuff from other books and papers compiled by one of the professors at the school and cost $70 for a paperback that we never opened, not even for homework assignments. and best part was that you couldn't sell them back at the end of the year because he compiled different photocopies each year. the professors couldn't teach the concepts if their life depended on it (except one guy i had). the math professors told us what to do, but never explained anything. they spent the class doing problems for us on the board. in chemistry, the "professor" (only had a masters degree, yet she wasn't a grad student) wrote the book and never explained much, yet she came up with these ridiculous problems for the exams that made us put together concepts we had never put together in class so it was extremely confusing. there was the physics class (which wasn't even engineering physics) that a 30% was a C... or my friend's engineering physics class where a 15% was an A. what's the point of that? it shows that you can't teach, nothing more.
so i became an ecology/evolution major where the professors actually cared and actually explained everything in full during class. and now i work in IT where only one person in the department has a computer science degree and i'm working on an MBA with a concentration in IT.
nah... it's more like the power to make you laugh... DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS *sweat falls from armpits* DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS *marches around like an ape*
while i do agree with you... i have to play devil's advocate here...
how do you define "extra-marital"? i think of it as outside of marriage, meaning not only outside of your own marriage (assuming you're married), but also outside of any marriage. this means that in order to have an extra-marital affair, neither party needs to be in a marriage. at least that would be the literal meaning of the prefix "extra". and marital doesn't have to mean a current marriage...
Incidentally, I don't know if this is the same elsewhere, but in the UK gmail.com redirects you to mail.google.com, so it's clear they're already avoiding the gmail name here...
it's done this in the US for quite some time (as long as i've known about it at least, which is also quite some time, shortly after it came out)... and they aren't avoiding the gmail name because the service is still called "GMail" and your email address is still _____@gmail.com and you can still get there by going to www.gmail.com.
my manager is actually quite technically savvy. and his boss, the VP for IT, while not tech savvy asks a lot of questions so she knows what's going on and what we're doing and she even picks up a few tech skills here and there. in a college where a lot of the people we support think computers are these strange things that should jsut work, it's nice to have a non-technical boss who wants to learn and isn't afraid. needless to say, our department is run very efficiently and there are very few personnel issues. and we all have a good time doing what we do because we do all get along...
upgrading a desktop doesn't happen as often as it used to. most computer users now do not have their computer upgraded when it gets old. not to mention that you can get a lot more life out of a computer now than you used to be able to. new technologies for "normal use" computers aren't emerging as fast as they had been (cpu speed increases, etc).
i do agree with you in that students in middle school and even high school don't really need a laptop (especially middle school). rather, the family can have a family computer (which also helps to teach safe computing since the parents can be the administrators of the computer) that the student can use when necessary. i know someone in high school who has her own laptop. she doesn't need it, plain and simple. her family has a household computer and she only has one younger sibling. he doesn't use the computer more often than she does, unless it's just to fool around... and there's your lesson in sharing as well.:)
i realize this. and i have a feeling that MS wouldn't care so much if the guy was making $30k with them and going to google since he probably wouldn't have so much knowledge that could hurt MS. i have a feeling it will get appealed.
also... there's nothing saying that anyone could not get another job for a year. sure it might be "below" you, but you could work for walmart or a grocery store or anything else to make ends meet until your contract that you WILLINGLY signed says you can. if you don't like the terms of your contract you should not sign it. no one is holding a gun to your head saying that you have to sign it. but on the other hand... you should keep a close watch on teh company too. if they don't keep up their end of the contract, then you can get out of it quite easily.
the main point is that this guy WILLINGLY signed this contract and was KNOWINGLY breaking it. you won't win a case in court when you are signing a contract that you are not forced to sign.
hardly slavery when this guy can easily survive for a year on the $1,000,000 he made last year. after that year is up, he can easily have $500,000 leftover and go to work for google.
the word incompatiblities are fewer now, at least with the later versions. but it is a good point to bring up.
people definitely don't give a crap about the politics and why free/oss is better than proprietary software (try telling any graphic designer that there's a f/oss thing that's better than the adobe products).
your grandparent mentioned firefox. start there. talk about extensions. talk about spyware and popups and how it's mainly for IE. mention the ieview extension. show other cool extensions and cool features of firefox that IE lacks... because being a computer tech for an office generally means you are their spyware remover... show them how to avoid it with firefox. i think that'll get their attention and make it a bit more interesting.
hmmm... good thought. the computers are hanging from the desks in the labs in this little strappy thing, so everytime someone knocks it with a chair or something it moves and pulls on the cables.
thanks for the input, i'll make sure i pass this on to our lab guy...
by your reasoning, microsoft should have sued the individual in question and not google. that individual left microsoft and violated the contract, google did not.
he never said to try to sneak it in... as a prospective employee, you have every right to negotiate your contract, and that seems pretty fair considering they are telling you that you are required by your contract to be unemployed for a year after leaving the company. that's a pretty unreasonable requirement in my opinion.
funny thing is... i worked for a school as a student that had student admins and student lab admins. our resnet dhcp server was originally completely run by students. our registration system was written by students. our lab image was created and maintained by students.
training costs aren't that high if the students already know what they're doing (there are a lot who do know, and they're generally not comp sci kids either).
yes, there is an issue with student scheduling because they have such set class schedules that they can't just skip class to do their job. but occasionally, you'll find a good student who knows how to balance the job and classes and can do quite a bit of work for you. i wish we had more space to hire intelligent students for more admin/programming tasks and a way to pay them more money for this (max at the school i now work at is $8 for students).
but the kicker is that you don't hire a student to do your labs or your admin work who can't work for you during the summer. the summer is when all the big stuff gets done, the rest is just minor maintenance (re-imaging a lab machine gone bad, making minor changes to the servers, etc). the lab kid has all summer to work on and get a good working lab image made that does what you want it to do. and you take the last few weeks of summer to roll the image out to all the labs and test them.
most of the kids that i've worked with were not comp sci. they were either business, some other engineering (ME, EE, etc), bio (my major), or something else. there were a few comp sci people, but they seemed to be comp sci just so they could learn to use computers... the others did the computer stuff as a hobby... hobbiests are usually the best ones to hire.
this is one of the reasons we upgrade our systems as well. but before i started working here, they wanted to upgrade them once a year. and they're nothing to scoff at... they're P4 2.4ghz, 512 ram, 40 gig hard drive with dvd/cd-rw combo drives. they're all white box machines from a local retailer. what they want them upgraded to is P4 3.2's with dvd-rw's. they've got great video cards too... awesome gaming machines.:)
what those of us who know the value of a dollar want them upgraded with is these small form factor machines that the guy sells... they're celeron 2.8's with 512 and on-board video. no need for anything special with the graphics or a high end processor to run word. and we can afford to upgrade a bit more often.
but yes, we run into dead floppies (which we're thinking about doing away with in the labs and forcing kids to use their network drives or usb drives), cd-roms, and a common thing, which is weird, is dead agp slots, not video cards.
college's update their comptuers every 2 years for a couple reasons (i work in a college, trying to get them on a 3 year rotation, so they spend less money on new machines and more on spare parts).
first reasons is advertising... telling prospective students that you have top of the line machines in your labs (matters little since almost every kid comes in with a brand new machine anywyas).
second reason is that these machines generally go to other departments. at least here, they send old lab machines out to replace older staff machines (for some reason the students get the best machines).
however... i worked in a different school as a students (a larger school) and it had multiple IT departments with multiple computer purchasers. we replaced the lab machines on a 3 year rotation (different labs during different years) and i think the old lab machines just went to university surplus rather than actual use. that was several years ago and it might be different now.
the fact remains though... any computer purchased in the past 3 years is not obsolete. it'll run windows xp as long as it has enough ram and it'll handle word and internet browsing just fine. the only people who might have a slight issue is those doing graphics or serious coding. but for 85% of the users in a college (this figure might be low), any computer within 3 years of age is just fine.
oh, dell still sends an actual OS cd. that's the only plus to buying from dell that i see...
and you should've questioned that sales guy... saying something like "what's the benefit if i can download the latest security updates for free?"
the fact does remain that many people have enough money laying around that computers are disposable now since they're so cheap...
it's been long known that in the world of slashdot, you take anything that's said (even in some of the articles that are linked to) with a grain of salt, no more, no less.
i agree that the title was a bit over the top, but half of slashdot is over the top.
you still aren't getting the fact that just because a title on a slashdot article says something, it doesn't mean it's true.
i agree that you can't touch a true guitar master like jerry or trey with a machine (since it can only play pre-programmed songs).
do pianists still play even though the player piano was invented?
and as for it being computerized music... it's not. it's just a machine playing a song on guitar, someone still has to write the song, computers can't do that.
actually, i see no problem with embedding something into the windows kernel to check if it's a legal copy. you can't get security patches for XP unless you have a legal copy, so what's the point of having it if you're susceptible to most of that crap that's floating around?
while MS wouldn't pay that much to stop them from harassing people, they would pay that much to get the code to the software to make their anti-spyware solution the best. they would also pay that much to get the data that claria has collected in order to make their own web stuff better. think about all the browsing habits claria has collected from people (the average person, in fact). they could easily use that data to help push them ahead of google.
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here's the issue i see with your argument. yes, some viruses come from hole in windows. windows does have an autoupdate feature that will automatically install the updates for you. it now has a firewall (a pretty good one too) and a popup blocker (also a pretty good one). there's still the problem of the user... the user must turn on the autoupdate feature (i actually like this policy because microsoft still leaves the decision up to the user, although i suspect in the future this will change and i think it has with SP2). the user must interact with the firewall when it warns you that some program is trying to access the internet (most users i know will blindly click "always allow" to prevent future "annoyances"). the user must interact with the popup blocker... if you visit a page that opens a popup window that you want, you must allow it. this annoys users and they simply turn off the blocker rather than allow it. the average computer user isn't very bright... they're more interested in just doing what they want and not seeing any of this stuff. but becuase of this, they know nothing about security and honestly don't care about keeping their computer secure. occasionally i get a user who wants to learn how to prevent it in the future, and regardless of the fact that we have actually sent out emails to all the students explaining this, they ignore it. we can put it in big red letters on their walls in the dorms, and they'd cover it up. they just don't care.
symantec cropped up because of viruses that didn't necessarily prey on flaws in windows, but rather flaws in users. i remember having to virus check floppy discs for viruses that could erase your hard drive... taht doesn't happen anymore. they're just dumb annoying things. a lot of them are because people are dumb enough to click a suspicious looking link (my girlfriend did it thinking it was for class since it came from a classmate), or opening a file in an obviously suspicious email. then there's spyware... the majority of it is not because of flaws in windows or other MS software, but rather the fact that people want free stuff and don't read EULA's (and i don't blame them, they're long and boring). half of them don't mention the spyware. nowhere in AIM's does it mention installing viewpoint media player (which is not true spyware, but i consider it to be so since it's installed without my knowledge, but i don't use AIM anymore). instead of making the additional software opt-in, they make it opt-out. and AOL is packaging more and more with AIM. it's annoying. people want free music, so they install kazaa and grokster and get bombarded with crap that downloads more crap and it's an endless cycle that they don't realize is going on until they porn icons on the desktop or their computer is so sluggish they can't use it (i've used 386's that run faster than some of these P4 2.5's with a gig of ram). how is this MS's fault? the user installed the software in the first place, and then clicked "allow" when the firewall warned them, and then didn't renew their subscription with symantec or mcafee... microsoft is only one tiny piece of the problem. and if they choose to release free anti-spyware and anti-virus software, that's their choice. as long as it's not bundled with windows or included as a windows update, they're not forcing it on anybody. i was surprised to find out that the anti-spyware thing was not in windows update, but if they did, they'd be under even more scrutiny...
your point is moot. their software isn't capable of doing exactly what everyone wants it to do. nevermind, as someone already said, their boilerplate has already been tested in court and won. besides... how many pieces of software come with a guarantee that it will work perfectly 100% of the time for every application of it?
microsoft is already in the anti-spyware game, and their product is one of the best free anti-spyware programs. yes, FREE. is this causing a monopoly? i don't think so. they still continue to patch their software when security holes are found. do they include their anti-spyware software with windows? no. it's not even available as a download through windows update. will they include their anti-virus software if they ever make it? probably not. they're smarter than that. but if they develop it and make it free, that's their choice, and if people choose to download it, again, that's a choice. no forced monopoly, like with media player or internet explorer.
the biggest issue with microsoft's software is the users, not the software itself. users are dumb, plain and simple. they click on things that say "you're the 23452354th visitor, you've won!" and think they actually won something... yep, a nice fat spyware infection. people are gullible, that's what spyware and viruses thrive on. "oh, i got an email from my email administrator that says i have to open this zip file and use this password to do it." instant virus infection. why? because people don't want to pay for a yearly subscription for their anti-virus software, so they assume they can go without it and not worry about it. trust me, i know... i remove viruses and spyware for a living. i've heard it all... "oh, that popup window said i had problems with windows and told me to click there to fix them, so i did". "my friend sent me an IM that had a link to pictures, so i clicked it". people are inherently stupid when it comes to computer security. they just don't know. and then they get annoyed because their security software keeps popping up with messages, and they're annoying so they just ignore them. like those little ones that say "click here to install important updates for windows" in the system tray. microsoft is making an effort, but people don't follow it until they've come to see someone like me... and even then they don't learn. why? because computers are disposable now for many people... oh, it's filled with viruses, here's a new one. but people here find it easy to blame microsoft. sure, a lot of it is poor programming, but even still, a bigger portion of it is the user.
i work in a college. need i say more? i use IM all the time to chat with my student employees. it's usually easier to get them on IM than phone or email.
and i used it to chat with my girlfriend who is living about 300 miles away now for grad school...
he's a moral conservative. he plays to the religious right and they buy it. unfortunately, the religious right in this country is huge.
AND it's reasonably priced at $11.99... i haven't seen that in a long time... i remember when phish used to sell their single disc albums on their website for like $12 and their double discs for $18. you can't go to a record store (at least not a major one) and buy a CD for less than $15...
this is exactly why i left the engineering program. i had math and chemistry TA's who had told me "please help me with the language, i don't speak english very well." how is someone like that supposed to teach us? the books i had to buy for the intro engineering classes were pointless, they were photocopies of stuff from other books and papers compiled by one of the professors at the school and cost $70 for a paperback that we never opened, not even for homework assignments. and best part was that you couldn't sell them back at the end of the year because he compiled different photocopies each year. the professors couldn't teach the concepts if their life depended on it (except one guy i had). the math professors told us what to do, but never explained anything. they spent the class doing problems for us on the board. in chemistry, the "professor" (only had a masters degree, yet she wasn't a grad student) wrote the book and never explained much, yet she came up with these ridiculous problems for the exams that made us put together concepts we had never put together in class so it was extremely confusing. there was the physics class (which wasn't even engineering physics) that a 30% was a C... or my friend's engineering physics class where a 15% was an A. what's the point of that? it shows that you can't teach, nothing more.
so i became an ecology/evolution major where the professors actually cared and actually explained everything in full during class. and now i work in IT where only one person in the department has a computer science degree and i'm working on an MBA with a concentration in IT.
nah... it's more like the power to make you laugh... DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS *sweat falls from armpits* DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS *marches around like an ape*
while i do agree with you... i have to play devil's advocate here...
how do you define "extra-marital"? i think of it as outside of marriage, meaning not only outside of your own marriage (assuming you're married), but also outside of any marriage. this means that in order to have an extra-marital affair, neither party needs to be in a marriage. at least that would be the literal meaning of the prefix "extra". and marital doesn't have to mean a current marriage...
Incidentally, I don't know if this is the same elsewhere, but in the UK gmail.com redirects you to mail.google.com, so it's clear they're already avoiding the gmail name here...
it's done this in the US for quite some time (as long as i've known about it at least, which is also quite some time, shortly after it came out)... and they aren't avoiding the gmail name because the service is still called "GMail" and your email address is still _____@gmail.com and you can still get there by going to www.gmail.com.
my manager is actually quite technically savvy. and his boss, the VP for IT, while not tech savvy asks a lot of questions so she knows what's going on and what we're doing and she even picks up a few tech skills here and there. in a college where a lot of the people we support think computers are these strange things that should jsut work, it's nice to have a non-technical boss who wants to learn and isn't afraid. needless to say, our department is run very efficiently and there are very few personnel issues. and we all have a good time doing what we do because we do all get along...
upgrading a desktop doesn't happen as often as it used to. most computer users now do not have their computer upgraded when it gets old. not to mention that you can get a lot more life out of a computer now than you used to be able to. new technologies for "normal use" computers aren't emerging as fast as they had been (cpu speed increases, etc).
:)
i do agree with you in that students in middle school and even high school don't really need a laptop (especially middle school). rather, the family can have a family computer (which also helps to teach safe computing since the parents can be the administrators of the computer) that the student can use when necessary. i know someone in high school who has her own laptop. she doesn't need it, plain and simple. her family has a household computer and she only has one younger sibling. he doesn't use the computer more often than she does, unless it's just to fool around... and there's your lesson in sharing as well.
i realize this. and i have a feeling that MS wouldn't care so much if the guy was making $30k with them and going to google since he probably wouldn't have so much knowledge that could hurt MS. i have a feeling it will get appealed.
also... there's nothing saying that anyone could not get another job for a year. sure it might be "below" you, but you could work for walmart or a grocery store or anything else to make ends meet until your contract that you WILLINGLY signed says you can. if you don't like the terms of your contract you should not sign it. no one is holding a gun to your head saying that you have to sign it. but on the other hand... you should keep a close watch on teh company too. if they don't keep up their end of the contract, then you can get out of it quite easily.
the main point is that this guy WILLINGLY signed this contract and was KNOWINGLY breaking it. you won't win a case in court when you are signing a contract that you are not forced to sign.
hardly slavery when this guy can easily survive for a year on the $1,000,000 he made last year. after that year is up, he can easily have $500,000 leftover and go to work for google.
the word incompatiblities are fewer now, at least with the later versions. but it is a good point to bring up.
people definitely don't give a crap about the politics and why free/oss is better than proprietary software (try telling any graphic designer that there's a f/oss thing that's better than the adobe products).
your grandparent mentioned firefox. start there. talk about extensions. talk about spyware and popups and how it's mainly for IE. mention the ieview extension. show other cool extensions and cool features of firefox that IE lacks... because being a computer tech for an office generally means you are their spyware remover... show them how to avoid it with firefox. i think that'll get their attention and make it a bit more interesting.
hmmm... good thought. the computers are hanging from the desks in the labs in this little strappy thing, so everytime someone knocks it with a chair or something it moves and pulls on the cables.
thanks for the input, i'll make sure i pass this on to our lab guy...
by your reasoning, microsoft should have sued the individual in question and not google. that individual left microsoft and violated the contract, google did not.
he never said to try to sneak it in... as a prospective employee, you have every right to negotiate your contract, and that seems pretty fair considering they are telling you that you are required by your contract to be unemployed for a year after leaving the company. that's a pretty unreasonable requirement in my opinion.
funny thing is... i worked for a school as a student that had student admins and student lab admins. our resnet dhcp server was originally completely run by students. our registration system was written by students. our lab image was created and maintained by students.
training costs aren't that high if the students already know what they're doing (there are a lot who do know, and they're generally not comp sci kids either).
yes, there is an issue with student scheduling because they have such set class schedules that they can't just skip class to do their job. but occasionally, you'll find a good student who knows how to balance the job and classes and can do quite a bit of work for you. i wish we had more space to hire intelligent students for more admin/programming tasks and a way to pay them more money for this (max at the school i now work at is $8 for students).
but the kicker is that you don't hire a student to do your labs or your admin work who can't work for you during the summer. the summer is when all the big stuff gets done, the rest is just minor maintenance (re-imaging a lab machine gone bad, making minor changes to the servers, etc). the lab kid has all summer to work on and get a good working lab image made that does what you want it to do. and you take the last few weeks of summer to roll the image out to all the labs and test them.
most of the kids that i've worked with were not comp sci. they were either business, some other engineering (ME, EE, etc), bio (my major), or something else. there were a few comp sci people, but they seemed to be comp sci just so they could learn to use computers... the others did the computer stuff as a hobby... hobbiests are usually the best ones to hire.
this is one of the reasons we upgrade our systems as well. but before i started working here, they wanted to upgrade them once a year. and they're nothing to scoff at... they're P4 2.4ghz, 512 ram, 40 gig hard drive with dvd/cd-rw combo drives. they're all white box machines from a local retailer. what they want them upgraded to is P4 3.2's with dvd-rw's. they've got great video cards too... awesome gaming machines. :)
what those of us who know the value of a dollar want them upgraded with is these small form factor machines that the guy sells... they're celeron 2.8's with 512 and on-board video. no need for anything special with the graphics or a high end processor to run word. and we can afford to upgrade a bit more often.
but yes, we run into dead floppies (which we're thinking about doing away with in the labs and forcing kids to use their network drives or usb drives), cd-roms, and a common thing, which is weird, is dead agp slots, not video cards.
college's update their comptuers every 2 years for a couple reasons (i work in a college, trying to get them on a 3 year rotation, so they spend less money on new machines and more on spare parts).
first reasons is advertising... telling prospective students that you have top of the line machines in your labs (matters little since almost every kid comes in with a brand new machine anywyas).
second reason is that these machines generally go to other departments. at least here, they send old lab machines out to replace older staff machines (for some reason the students get the best machines).
however... i worked in a different school as a students (a larger school) and it had multiple IT departments with multiple computer purchasers. we replaced the lab machines on a 3 year rotation (different labs during different years) and i think the old lab machines just went to university surplus rather than actual use. that was several years ago and it might be different now.
the fact remains though... any computer purchased in the past 3 years is not obsolete. it'll run windows xp as long as it has enough ram and it'll handle word and internet browsing just fine. the only people who might have a slight issue is those doing graphics or serious coding. but for 85% of the users in a college (this figure might be low), any computer within 3 years of age is just fine.
oh, dell still sends an actual OS cd. that's the only plus to buying from dell that i see...
and you should've questioned that sales guy... saying something like "what's the benefit if i can download the latest security updates for free?"
the fact does remain that many people have enough money laying around that computers are disposable now since they're so cheap...
conservative? right... notice the 3 digits at the end of my username? also, try doing a search for where my sig came from... :)
hint... it involves music.
easter bunny? yes
iraqi WMD? no
it's been long known that in the world of slashdot, you take anything that's said (even in some of the articles that are linked to) with a grain of salt, no more, no less.
i agree that the title was a bit over the top, but half of slashdot is over the top.
you still aren't getting the fact that just because a title on a slashdot article says something, it doesn't mean it's true.
i agree that you can't touch a true guitar master like jerry or trey with a machine (since it can only play pre-programmed songs).
do pianists still play even though the player piano was invented?
and as for it being computerized music... it's not. it's just a machine playing a song on guitar, someone still has to write the song, computers can't do that.
alumnus... alumnuses
Yeah, I get it now... That makes complete sense.
And for the record, "Latin" has a capital "L."
actually, i see no problem with embedding something into the windows kernel to check if it's a legal copy. you can't get security patches for XP unless you have a legal copy, so what's the point of having it if you're susceptible to most of that crap that's floating around?
while MS wouldn't pay that much to stop them from harassing people, they would pay that much to get the code to the software to make their anti-spyware solution the best. they would also pay that much to get the data that claria has collected in order to make their own web stuff better. think about all the browsing habits claria has collected from people (the average person, in fact). they could easily use that data to help push them ahead of google.