unfortunately the real issue here isn't the distraction of music. the real issue meets at a point between management (those with the power of change) not understanding the full process and job of their subordinates and the lack of trust that MUST be placed in those that work for you. by corporates pyramid structure's very nature, the further removed one is from another position in the tree, the less one will know and understand another's job and tasks (in form, function, execution, and importance). this is a fact that is hard to accept for most with power because it means giving up some of that power (or at least not wielding it) and trading it for trust. also, if they have hired you to perform a task, they have to trust that you're doing that task, methods and perceived distractions aside. if they feel that the music is distracting you from your peak performance, then the real issue is that you're not performing as well as they want and the music is their diagnosis of a symptom. treating the symptom is almost never the right answer. i would (and have) challenge them to take corrective action on the disease. if you are under performing, have them write you up for it. if they can't document the performance issue as a performance issue then they aren't eliminating distractions by killing off the headphones they are stabbing in the dark at an experiment. an experiment based on a guess which is based solely on someones personal feelings about how they personally work, performing completely dissimilar tasks that have a completely different method and expected outcome. when this became an issue for me in my work place i transitioned to a telecommuter position.
I think that it is a bit dangerous and irresponsible to evaluate the effectiveness of a tool based on its licensing. The real debate about its effectiveness should not be linked to how much it costs. Doing that changes the debate from how good something is to pricing, and open-source community support. There are many closed source tools that are better than open, but you cannot then derive that all closed source is better. Software ease of use and effectiveness debates should remain licensing neutral, and not a forum for open or closed source advocacy.
this is kind of true, you can't advertise below MAP (Minimum Advertised Price) it's part of the reseller agreement. if you do you are subject to contractually designated fines or loss of reseller status. you can sell them for what ever you want, for $1 if you want to, but you'd lose money. if you see anyone deviate by more than about 10-15% it's below cost (including "free" items, resellers still pay for those and it's a part of cost with few exceptions). it's the price of doing business with Apple.
i hope you're not a rep for a reseller, because your clients are going to get in a bit of trouble if they take your advice. the MSDN sub only gives them right to use the applications for testing and developement, except in the case of VStudio and Visio. also, MSDN is yearly and would be much more expensive and harder to administer since you have to claim all specific end users, not end user machines up front. yes Softmart was choosen to be the LAR but 9 times out of 10 all the LAR does is intoduce MS to the client and start the negociations. then they are out of it. the military could have said, "no we want Zones, or SoftChoice" or someone like that, but the end deal would be identicle. i would be willing to bet that Softmart is recieving a much lower commision rate on this one too. normaly it's about 2-3%, but i would think this one would be under 1%.
that's the whole point of an enterprise agreement, but keep in mind that is only covers the OS, office and core CALs and nothing else. also, as i mentioned, normaly it would cost 5 times more to anyone else.
i feel i need to clear a few things up for those of you who aren't in the resale industry. first off, the article says nothing about them buying the systems from Softmart. second, since this is a 6 year agreement and it says that Softmart get's a commision, this is not a resale it's an Enterprise Agreement. that kind of contract is handled direct only and Microsoft controls the pricing, but in order to make things fair for LARs (large account resellers) the deal has to be sponcered by a LAR. that reseller get's a kickback commision (like 2%), not a sale. in an Enterprise Agreement, they are agreeing to an accross the board standard to your desktops. if that $900 figure is correct then they got a great deal because that will cover the OS, Office, and all the core CALs for 6 years, including automatic upgrade rights for anything new that comes out (which given the upgrade cycle should be about 4 new versions of each). any normal company would have to pay about 5 times more for this. just try and name a company with a large install base that wouldn't jump at 4 OS's, 4 Office's and 4 of each CAL for $900. this news shows us two things in reality. one is that there is a helluva lot of markup in this product. and second is that the miltary made a good move (or MS a bad one) because they would have bought all this anyway, but at a much higher price over time. by the way, an Enterprise Agreement is not an upfront sale but a yearly payment with true-ups. FateCreatr, Out.
i feel i need to clear a few things up for those of you who aren't in the resale industry. first off, the article says nothing about them buying the systems from Softmart. second, since this is a 6 year agreement and it says that Softmart get's a commision, this is not a resale it's an Enterprise Agreement. that kind of contract is handled direct only and Microsoft controls the pricing, but in order to make things fair for LARs (large account resellers) the deal has to be sponcered by a LAR. that reseller get's a kickback commision (like 2%), not a sale. in an Enterprise Agreement, they are agreeing to an accross the board standard to your desktops. if that $900 figure is correct then they got a great deal because that will cover the OS, Office, and all the core CALs for 6 years, including automatic upgrade rights for anything new that comes out (which given the upgrade cycle should be about 4 new versions of each). any normal company would have to pay about 5 times more for this. just try and name a company with a large install base that wouldn't jump at 4 OS's, 4 Office's and 4 of each CAL for $900. this news shows us two things in reality. one is that there is a helluva lot of markup in this product. and second is that the miltary made a good move (or MS a bad one) because they would have bought all this anyway, but at a much higher price over time. by the way, an Enterprise Agreement is not an upfront sale but a yearly payment with true-ups.
Isn't it possible that people that have "difficulty with social association" just tend to retreat to the fictional world of gaming? I know i do, and it has caused me to have a "short temper." Plus these gaming companies are smart, they know their audience. I'm sure they engineer games to appeal to people with short attention spans or that have a natural "lack of concentration." This study would have been easier for them to document if they simply asked people that have concentration trouble and don't interact well socially if they play video games. If they yell back, "YES!!!" then you also have the answer about the temper thing too. And of course it's permanent, that's because of who we are, not what we play.
Slashdot Mirror
unfortunately the real issue here isn't the distraction of music. the real issue meets at a point between management (those with the power of change) not understanding the full process and job of their subordinates and the lack of trust that MUST be placed in those that work for you. by corporates pyramid structure's very nature, the further removed one is from another position in the tree, the less one will know and understand another's job and tasks (in form, function, execution, and importance). this is a fact that is hard to accept for most with power because it means giving up some of that power (or at least not wielding it) and trading it for trust. also, if they have hired you to perform a task, they have to trust that you're doing that task, methods and perceived distractions aside. if they feel that the music is distracting you from your peak performance, then the real issue is that you're not performing as well as they want and the music is their diagnosis of a symptom. treating the symptom is almost never the right answer. i would (and have) challenge them to take corrective action on the disease. if you are under performing, have them write you up for it. if they can't document the performance issue as a performance issue then they aren't eliminating distractions by killing off the headphones they are stabbing in the dark at an experiment. an experiment based on a guess which is based solely on someones personal feelings about how they personally work, performing completely dissimilar tasks that have a completely different method and expected outcome. when this became an issue for me in my work place i transitioned to a telecommuter position.
I think that it is a bit dangerous and irresponsible to evaluate the effectiveness of a tool based on its licensing. The real debate about its effectiveness should not be linked to how much it costs. Doing that changes the debate from how good something is to pricing, and open-source community support. There are many closed source tools that are better than open, but you cannot then derive that all closed source is better. Software ease of use and effectiveness debates should remain licensing neutral, and not a forum for open or closed source advocacy.
so P2P is down... are sales therefore up? that was the point right?
this is kind of true, you can't advertise below MAP (Minimum Advertised Price) it's part of the reseller agreement. if you do you are subject to contractually designated fines or loss of reseller status. you can sell them for what ever you want, for $1 if you want to, but you'd lose money. if you see anyone deviate by more than about 10-15% it's below cost (including "free" items, resellers still pay for those and it's a part of cost with few exceptions). it's the price of doing business with Apple.
i hope you're not a rep for a reseller, because your clients are going to get in a bit of trouble if they take your advice. the MSDN sub only gives them right to use the applications for testing and developement, except in the case of VStudio and Visio. also, MSDN is yearly and would be much more expensive and harder to administer since you have to claim all specific end users, not end user machines up front. yes Softmart was choosen to be the LAR but 9 times out of 10 all the LAR does is intoduce MS to the client and start the negociations. then they are out of it. the military could have said, "no we want Zones, or SoftChoice" or someone like that, but the end deal would be identicle. i would be willing to bet that Softmart is recieving a much lower commision rate on this one too. normaly it's about 2-3%, but i would think this one would be under 1%.
that's the whole point of an enterprise agreement, but keep in mind that is only covers the OS, office and core CALs and nothing else. also, as i mentioned, normaly it would cost 5 times more to anyone else.
i feel i need to clear a few things up for those of you who aren't in the resale industry. first off, the article says nothing about them buying the systems from Softmart. second, since this is a 6 year agreement and it says that Softmart get's a commision, this is not a resale it's an Enterprise Agreement. that kind of contract is handled direct only and Microsoft controls the pricing, but in order to make things fair for LARs (large account resellers) the deal has to be sponcered by a LAR. that reseller get's a kickback commision (like 2%), not a sale. in an Enterprise Agreement, they are agreeing to an accross the board standard to your desktops. if that $900 figure is correct then they got a great deal because that will cover the OS, Office, and all the core CALs for 6 years, including automatic upgrade rights for anything new that comes out (which given the upgrade cycle should be about 4 new versions of each). any normal company would have to pay about 5 times more for this. just try and name a company with a large install base that wouldn't jump at 4 OS's, 4 Office's and 4 of each CAL for $900. this news shows us two things in reality. one is that there is a helluva lot of markup in this product. and second is that the miltary made a good move (or MS a bad one) because they would have bought all this anyway, but at a much higher price over time. by the way, an Enterprise Agreement is not an upfront sale but a yearly payment with true-ups.
FateCreatr, Out.
i feel i need to clear a few things up for those of you who aren't in the resale industry. first off, the article says nothing about them buying the systems from Softmart. second, since this is a 6 year agreement and it says that Softmart get's a commision, this is not a resale it's an Enterprise Agreement. that kind of contract is handled direct only and Microsoft controls the pricing, but in order to make things fair for LARs (large account resellers) the deal has to be sponcered by a LAR. that reseller get's a kickback commision (like 2%), not a sale. in an Enterprise Agreement, they are agreeing to an accross the board standard to your desktops. if that $900 figure is correct then they got a great deal because that will cover the OS, Office, and all the core CALs for 6 years, including automatic upgrade rights for anything new that comes out (which given the upgrade cycle should be about 4 new versions of each). any normal company would have to pay about 5 times more for this. just try and name a company with a large install base that wouldn't jump at 4 OS's, 4 Office's and 4 of each CAL for $900. this news shows us two things in reality. one is that there is a helluva lot of markup in this product. and second is that the miltary made a good move (or MS a bad one) because they would have bought all this anyway, but at a much higher price over time. by the way, an Enterprise Agreement is not an upfront sale but a yearly payment with true-ups.
FateCreatr, Out.
Isn't it possible that people that have "difficulty with social association" just tend to retreat to the fictional world of gaming? I know i do, and it has caused me to have a "short temper." Plus these gaming companies are smart, they know their audience. I'm sure they engineer games to appeal to people with short attention spans or that have a natural "lack of concentration." This study would have been easier for them to document if they simply asked people that have concentration trouble and don't interact well socially if they play video games. If they yell back, "YES!!!" then you also have the answer about the temper thing too. And of course it's permanent, that's because of who we are, not what we play.