I think your question is spot on.
These days media players are built into TVs. Create a video with the content, copy it to a USB stick and set it on infinite loop.
Cheap and simple.
Of course, if they do not want cheap and simple, then tablets are fine... while they last...
So scanning it all in for a year and indexing it would take like half a day?
I just put everything in a box per year. When I need something, I spend a maximum of 10 minutes searching through that pile. Last year I spent a total of 15 minutes looking for stuff in that pile the two times I needed receipts for warranty repairs.
Scanning it all in is just bad ROI.
That is a valid point. If LibreOffice (or any other piece of software, free or not) consistently is better than the competition, then large corporations will indeed use it. The problem is how to get there. I have not seen a plan that will get them there before office suites are obsolete...
Those corporations who have money will have quite a poor future if they don't stop using inappropriate software, and deploy something that let their people be productive, and their data be secure.
Maybe they'll even stop being corporations who have money. That is, if the government doesn't interfere.
I think those that run billion dollar companies with offices in 100+ countries probably know more about running a business than you do. For some reason, the one I work for choose Microsoft. Not because they want, but because it currently is the best. Not because it is perfect or anything, but because it is best by a good margin. And because it improves productivity. We are still well below the average IT cost in the industry. Maybe those who run the company know something you do not?
That is slowly improving, as noted in the article, but one or two big corporations would really push it over the edge.
I just explained why big corporations are not pushing it over the edge. You had lots of reason why I was wrong. Still no big corporation has started paying for LibreOffice development. That must mean that I may closer to explaining how big corporations think than you are.
Changing from MS to FOSS on the desktop is a big issue in these corporations. It is a boardroom issue. Before you can get that kind of decision through the boardroom, you need to present something that works. Today. That is the chicken and egg situation here.
The problem is that LibreOffice is stuck as the cheap option.
The question is how can they get out of that position. The answer is: Money, and somebody with a vision. It seems both are currently lacking, and is there any plans to change it?
And just so there is no misunderstanding: There is nothing wrong with what you do. It is what many people do. Spreading it will put pressure on Microsoft, and judging by the profit of the Office division, they need it...
The problem is that those corporations who have money (I work in such a company) could not be bothered to use resources on development and doing extensive work on specifying improvements or changes. Those corporations who have money want something that works NOW, not something that (maybe) works in 2 - 3 - 4 years. And for those companies, the Office license is not a major expense that management will divert attention and resources to save.
Then add that those companies with money also will have the full Microsoft suite like Exchange, Sharepoint and Lync. Not having Office with those would be pretty stupid, as they work best together (yes, you may call it lockin, but I just tell it like it is).
The companies of any size who would want to save money, would do that by using LibreOffice or one of its cousins without paying.
Mess up his PCs DNS for some sites. It is really easy.
Find his most frequently used web sites. (I bet www.google.com is one of them, and you may enjoy including the DNS name for his mail provider as well...
Find the "hosts" file on his PC.
Enter the sites DNS names and let them point to 127.0.0.1
Where I live it would be a miracle to get hold of somebody from the local outlet on the phone. They do, however, have an updated inventory online. I guess technology is cheaper than people around here...
Actually, I recently needed a new TV. NOW.
So when I had decided what I wanted (based on online information and price checks in online stores), I checked the web pages of the main warehouses around here.
One of them showed that the item was in stock, and they got my business.
So for those retail chains who do not have this, it is not a technical issue, it is a choice they have made.
One additional nice thing is that some of the chains have an online price which is lower than the shop price. But if you order it online and then pick it up at the shop, you get the online price. Saved a little there as well...
Because the FAT licenses are actually quite cheap per unit at the level these companies are working, probably cheaper than supporting ext2 or whatever on Windows. According to available information, the cost is $0.25 per unit up to a maximum of $250K. Most likely they reached that years ago, so using FAT has no additional cost for them.
My new Samsung can record to a USB stick/disk, so it is already out there. All except their entry level TVs already has it. If you want to use it, add a $10 USB memory stick. So yes, I have it.
Of course I can plug in a USB stick with ripped movies, picture or music on it, so the DVD player replacement is already installed. Did I forget to mention that it will access the media content over the network as well...?
Because the new TVs are ideal for hanging on a wall (yes, my new 32" Samsung is on a wall - not even close to a table or a shelf or any other furiture), and then where do you put all the boxes?
If I did not need a box from my IPTV provide, I would need two cables to my TV: Power and network. No boxes.
I actually glued the IPTV box to the back of my TV to get it out of sight, and the TV has a media player built in, so I am actually getting quite close to the ideal TV...
Actually reading the linked article (pretty strange concept to read the article before posting, I agree, but sometimes we behave irrationally), reveals the sentence "Having spent two years testing the algorithm, McGuire and his team used about 7 million CPU hours ".
We find that a large part of the employees at our company has the new version at home long before they are migrated at work, so due to enterprises being slow adopters of new versions, the problem sort of solves itself.
The question is what management want from IT. Let them define what they want and need, then you can create metrics to show them to what degree you are providing it.
There is a pretty good chance that they will be clueless.
As a sidenote: measuring the performance of a 3 person team using the ticketing system sounds pretty stupid to me. There are just not enough numbers to provide it. Do you REALLY create tickets for everything you do?
And if it is of any comfort: In our 100K employee company with a pretty well structured IT support organization, most of the the metrics are still useless. This is proven by the fact that we are asked to do/not to do certain things "because they hurt our numbers", not because it makes sense from a productivity perspective.
And while we are at it: The simplest and most informative metrics I have see on a helpdesk (this was 1st line):
- Time to pick up phone (80% to be in less than 30 seconds)
- % of tickets resolved at 1st line (minimum 75 %)
- User satisfaction survey at certain numbers
I can tell you with absolute confidence that certain industries do need completely custom software to work properly - grocery stores, bookstores, and clothing stores all have different needs, different workflows, and different requirements.
But that does not mean that every grocery store, every book store and every clothing store need to write their own software?
I have never claimed that there should not be modification. If you read my post, I state that it should not be done in the source code.
The point is (as I also pointed out to the above reply) that customizations should be done using the tools provided in the product, not by changing the source code.
As far as I know, one main feature of all CRM/ERP systems is the ability to tailor the system to the business processes without changing the source code.
It is not about the product to be tailored up front. It is about the flexibility of the system.
And yes, it will need to be tailored. But that is a feature of the system. If you need to change the source code, you will be in trouble when the next release comes out. If you use the built in customization features, upgrading should be simple.
Compare it to Excel. If there is a missing feature, I can write a vbscript function to do it. That is a customization by using the built in features. When I upgrade, it will still work. Compare that to modifying the source code of Excel to achieve the same.
Yes, both is programming, but one is doing it the right way, the other is not.
In our company we would train the helpdesk staff to collect the information. If they are told what information to collect and what screenshots to make, they will do it. It is not even difficult. If the quality of the reports is not good, you have to retrain a handful of people instead of all the users. And if course, I fully agree that it does not hurt if the developers pick up the phone and follow up with the user. It is the best way to ensure that the user will continue reporting bugs.
So when the user fails to report a bug in the proper way because YOU failed to write the software in the proper way, it is the user who should take the blame?
No wonder the user does not care. Because that is what will happen.
I know from own experience that the user will only try so many times (between 0 and 2) to report a problem. If they do not get a positive response, they just stop caring.
It is NOT the users responsibility to get the bugs fixed. It is the developers responsibility. So if there is a problem in the communication between the developer and the user, it is the developers problem.
And how about that friendly call to the user(s)? The users will be ten times more helpful if the developers actually call them and talk to them instead of sending stupid emails all the time about how they should use the bug reporting system properly. May take less time as well.
Slashdot Mirror
I think your question is spot on.
These days media players are built into TVs. Create a video with the content, copy it to a USB stick and set it on infinite loop.
Cheap and simple.
Of course, if they do not want cheap and simple, then tablets are fine... while they last...
So scanning it all in for a year and indexing it would take like half a day?
I just put everything in a box per year. When I need something, I spend a maximum of 10 minutes searching through that pile. Last year I spent a total of 15 minutes looking for stuff in that pile the two times I needed receipts for warranty repairs.
Scanning it all in is just bad ROI.
That is a valid point. If LibreOffice (or any other piece of software, free or not) consistently is better than the competition, then large corporations will indeed use it. The problem is how to get there. I have not seen a plan that will get them there before office suites are obsolete...
Those corporations who have money will have quite a poor future if they don't stop using inappropriate software, and deploy something that let their people be productive, and their data be secure.
Maybe they'll even stop being corporations who have money. That is, if the government doesn't interfere.
I think those that run billion dollar companies with offices in 100+ countries probably know more about running a business than you do. For some reason, the one I work for choose Microsoft. Not because they want, but because it currently is the best. Not because it is perfect or anything, but because it is best by a good margin. And because it improves productivity. We are still well below the average IT cost in the industry. Maybe those who run the company know something you do not?
That is slowly improving, as noted in the article, but one or two big corporations would really push it over the edge.
I just explained why big corporations are not pushing it over the edge. You had lots of reason why I was wrong. Still no big corporation has started paying for LibreOffice development. That must mean that I may closer to explaining how big corporations think than you are.
Changing from MS to FOSS on the desktop is a big issue in these corporations. It is a boardroom issue. Before you can get that kind of decision through the boardroom, you need to present something that works. Today. That is the chicken and egg situation here.
The problem is that LibreOffice is stuck as the cheap option.
The question is how can they get out of that position. The answer is: Money, and somebody with a vision. It seems both are currently lacking, and is there any plans to change it?
And just so there is no misunderstanding: There is nothing wrong with what you do. It is what many people do. Spreading it will put pressure on Microsoft, and judging by the profit of the Office division, they need it...
The problem is that those corporations who have money (I work in such a company) could not be bothered to use resources on development and doing extensive work on specifying improvements or changes. Those corporations who have money want something that works NOW, not something that (maybe) works in 2 - 3 - 4 years.
And for those companies, the Office license is not a major expense that management will divert attention and resources to save.
Then add that those companies with money also will have the full Microsoft suite like Exchange, Sharepoint and Lync. Not having Office with those would be pretty stupid, as they work best together (yes, you may call it lockin, but I just tell it like it is).
The companies of any size who would want to save money, would do that by using LibreOffice or one of its cousins without paying.
Mess up his PCs DNS for some sites. It is really easy.
Find his most frequently used web sites. (I bet www.google.com is one of them, and you may enjoy including the DNS name for his mail provider as well...
Find the "hosts" file on his PC.
Enter the sites DNS names and let them point to 127.0.0.1
Now he knows what may happen.
Where I live it would be a miracle to get hold of somebody from the local outlet on the phone. They do, however, have an updated inventory online. I guess technology is cheaper than people around here...
Actually, I recently needed a new TV. NOW.
So when I had decided what I wanted (based on online information and price checks in online stores), I checked the web pages of the main warehouses around here.
One of them showed that the item was in stock, and they got my business.
So for those retail chains who do not have this, it is not a technical issue, it is a choice they have made.
One additional nice thing is that some of the chains have an online price which is lower than the shop price. But if you order it online and then pick it up at the shop, you get the online price. Saved a little there as well...
And no, this is not in the USA...
Because the FAT licenses are actually quite cheap per unit at the level these companies are working, probably cheaper than supporting ext2 or whatever on Windows.
According to available information, the cost is $0.25 per unit up to a maximum of $250K. Most likely they reached that years ago, so using FAT has no additional cost for them.
My new Samsung can record to a USB stick/disk, so it is already out there. All except their entry level TVs already has it. If you want to use it, add a $10 USB memory stick. So yes, I have it.
Of course I can plug in a USB stick with ripped movies, picture or music on it, so the DVD player replacement is already installed. Did I forget to mention that it will access the media content over the network as well...?
I'd much rather take a cheap dumb TV and get the smarts some other way.
How about a smart, cheap TV?
With the hardware itself costing less and less, adding the smart bits will cost next to nothing.
Why do manufacturers have to bundle shit?
Because the new TVs are ideal for hanging on a wall (yes, my new 32" Samsung is on a wall - not even close to a table or a shelf or any other furiture), and then where do you put all the boxes?
If I did not need a box from my IPTV provide, I would need two cables to my TV: Power and network. No boxes.
I actually glued the IPTV box to the back of my TV to get it out of sight, and the TV has a media player built in, so I am actually getting quite close to the ideal TV...
The high-end Samsung TVs come with a Galaxy Tab as a remote. Problem solved.
As for why you should not buy a media box? One word: Cables.
It has been for a while, but the manufacturers did not bother to tell you, because it doesn't matter.
I just got a new Samsung TV. It is running Linux and loads of other free software. well hidden, so it looks like a TV, and just works.
And with the built in media player, I can now let my Popcorn Hour box stay at the older non-networked TV.
Actually reading the linked article (pretty strange concept to read the article before posting, I agree, but sometimes we behave irrationally), reveals the sentence "Having spent two years testing the algorithm, McGuire and his team used about 7 million CPU hours ".
We find that a large part of the employees at our company has the new version at home long before they are migrated at work, so due to enterprises being slow adopters of new versions, the problem sort of solves itself.
So the fact that they were not able to provide a demonstration did not ring a few bells? LOUDLY?
I guess the company got what they deserved, then.
The question is what management want from IT. Let them define what they want and need, then you can create metrics to show them to what degree you are providing it.
There is a pretty good chance that they will be clueless.
As a sidenote: measuring the performance of a 3 person team using the ticketing system sounds pretty stupid to me. There are just not enough numbers to provide it. Do you REALLY create tickets for everything you do?
And if it is of any comfort: In our 100K employee company with a pretty well structured IT support organization, most of the the metrics are still useless. This is proven by the fact that we are asked to do/not to do certain things "because they hurt our numbers", not because it makes sense from a productivity perspective.
And while we are at it: The simplest and most informative metrics I have see on a helpdesk (this was 1st line):
- Time to pick up phone (80% to be in less than 30 seconds)
- % of tickets resolved at 1st line (minimum 75 %)
- User satisfaction survey at certain numbers
I can tell you with absolute confidence that certain industries do need completely custom software to work properly - grocery stores, bookstores, and clothing stores all have different needs, different workflows, and different requirements.
But that does not mean that every grocery store, every book store and every clothing store need to write their own software?
I have never claimed that there should not be modification. If you read my post, I state that it should not be done in the source code.
The point is (as I also pointed out to the above reply) that customizations should be done using the tools provided in the product, not by changing the source code.
As far as I know, one main feature of all CRM/ERP systems is the ability to tailor the system to the business processes without changing the source code.
It is not about the product to be tailored up front. It is about the flexibility of the system.
And yes, it will need to be tailored. But that is a feature of the system. If you need to change the source code, you will be in trouble when the next release comes out. If you use the built in customization features, upgrading should be simple.
Compare it to Excel. If there is a missing feature, I can write a vbscript function to do it. That is a customization by using the built in features. When I upgrade, it will still work. Compare that to modifying the source code of Excel to achieve the same.
Yes, both is programming, but one is doing it the right way, the other is not.
In our company we would train the helpdesk staff to collect the information. If they are told what information to collect and what screenshots to make, they will do it. It is not even difficult. If the quality of the reports is not good, you have to retrain a handful of people instead of all the users.
And if course, I fully agree that it does not hurt if the developers pick up the phone and follow up with the user. It is the best way to ensure that the user will continue reporting bugs.
So when the user fails to report a bug in the proper way because YOU failed to write the software in the proper way, it is the user who should take the blame?
No wonder the user does not care. Because that is what will happen.
I know from own experience that the user will only try so many times (between 0 and 2) to report a problem. If they do not get a positive response, they just stop caring.
It is NOT the users responsibility to get the bugs fixed. It is the developers responsibility. So if there is a problem in the communication between the developer and the user, it is the developers problem.
And how about that friendly call to the user(s)? The users will be ten times more helpful if the developers actually call them and talk to them instead of sending stupid emails all the time about how they should use the bug reporting system properly. May take less time as well.