As a cord cutter speaking... don't make the coverage any better. Keep putting up a fight to try to convince cord cutters to come back. I'd bet more people will ditch you than will come back. In fact I'd bet more people access your online videos without paying for cable or satellite because the typical viewer can't figure it out or be hassled with the hoops they need to jump through.
So maintain course, make no compromises, and hasten your own demise. Good riddance.
I have not had the opportunity, but is voice disabled by default and the user can selectively turn it on? I don't mean is the checkbox checked to turn it off... is it actually off and not phoning home?
You're missing the fact that most people don't pay any money (directly) for Vista. A new PC comes with Vista, and the cost of Vista is camouflaged. You need to compare the cost of simply using what the machine came with versus loading up a new OS (something most people rarely do... if ever).
Also, many manufacturers are pushing more expensive hardware for anything other than Vista. I can't imagine what adoption rates would be if you could (for instance) go to Dell.com and see an option to select Ubuntu to save $50 (or whatever it is; let's face it... Dell doesn't pay $200 or $400 per copy of Vista).
I can see a network provider temporarily blocking traffic of specific kinds while the network is upgraded (or situation resolved) to handle the loads.
If they simply don't want tremendous amounts of traffic... they can raise the prices of their service to individuals. The people that don't like the higher rates can go to a competitor. A spot of regulation would have to go into effect to ensure they aren't simply raising prices where there are no competitors... but this isn't rocket science.
Either dump customers that aren't profitable, or make them profitable. Don't jerk them around.
I put the notion (people would like Linux...) to the test when I gave my father-in-law a laptop with Ubuntu loaded. I asked him what he needed (e-mail, internet, and word processor), and dumped an icon for each on the desktop. He was patently thrilled when I hooked it up to their DSL and migrated his old Outlook info to it. He is impressed with the update features, still is shocked it's free, and even took to his own by looking up a problem he ran into.
Don't get me wrong.. he's a very smart guy. But people ready for retirement don't suddenly learn a new OS and start fixing their own problems when they're uncomfortable. He got DSL a month before I gave him the laptop (upgraded from a dial-up 10 hours/month plan). Ubuntu actually adds a layer of "I don't need to know what's going on under the hood" as a Mac would.
I say don't presume we're sitting in an ivory tower - give people a chance to choose. There are options which do not require backflips.
My company has both ends of the spectrum. At our biggest data centers, there are mountains of paperwork and ridiculous costs of internal billing you'll have to wade through to do anything.
Then at the site I work at, we have almost zero costs to anything, production servers not in the secured server room ("administrators" circumvent the system by claiming it's in development... but they haven't "developed" anything since it was built and it runs live data), and the server room is filled with desktops-made-servers because some are too cheap to go out and buy real servers.
Then we have guys walking around the server room and turning on circuits because they need additional power... where they proceed to plug a monitor into the new circuit while they daisy-chain 4 power strips off of one circuit. Never mind you can just walk up to the maintenance guys and have them do things correctly and help you figure out how many amps you're drawing on a single line (and they don't even need a ticket... just walk in and talk to them). Why bother? Just do it yourself.
At my site things can get done quickly. At the main data centers nothing gets done... but nothing goes wrong, either. Pick your poison... carefully.
For all the things companies do poorly, I've found my own company does IT pretty well... or, at least the portions you mentioned.
The proxy really only blocks things you truly shouldn't be viewing while at work. They tried keyword filtering, but when it failed it was backed off and progress kept moving forward.
Security patches and such are handled decently (if you're on the corporate domain). If you're not on the corporate domain, see next item.
A/V is really the only thing that ever crops up and "interferes" with normal (legitimate) work. If you have an active virus, the networking group disables your network port until things are cleared up. Typically people get the virus in the first place because they don't have their machine patched. If you become a problem it goes to your management (either because someone picks up the phone and calls your manager, or more likely you can't get your work done and your manager finds out you've been wasting your time setting up your own domain and goofing around doing irrelevant things).
Schedule a day (or a few) where all computers will be shut off. No, really - you'd be amazed at how cooperative some companies would be with a Disaster Recovery Drill. If they're not willing to go that far, you probably shouldn't have to go any further.
Drum out the costs of not having organized IT or key computer systems: rampant viruses, spyware, and incompatabilities.
But if that won't fly, start calculating how much time would be lost by not having things fixed or working properly. Take a stroll through your helpdesk logs and/or remind your people to jot down things like, "My computer has been taking 15 minutes to boot for the past two weeks," or, "I've spent an hour trying to figure this out," and estimate how much longer they would have put up with it if not for IT.
I don't consider myself a hardcore fan, but I am fairly avid. Suffice to say I've never understood how the show hasn't continued or been picked up again... I liked it enough to think it should, but wasn't dedicated enough to go looking it up.
I take movie adaptations for what they are... typically minor modifications made to better appeal to the masses. I took the changes in stride and they really didn't bother me. I suppose anyone seriously bugged by the changes is also peeved that Chung re-did the animated show in a DVD set to reflect what he originally wanted... and took out MTV's adaptations. It's his show - his prerogative to do with it as he pleases - but in paticular I think it's good he went back and made things as he originally intended. George Lucas, on the other hand, changed characters to pander to the masses.
Anyway, I was originally hyped to see AF. Before going, I read some reviews which didn't contain plot spoilers... by far most were negative. So I kept my hopes in check, and was pleasantly surprised at how good it was.
The movie was a wonderful extention of the show. It takes place between two episodes - giving a little more detail to the animated show. Trevor appears to have been split into two people... which I thought was necessary if the movie was to appeal to anyone who wasn't familiar with the show. The animated Trevor was a rather complicated individual. The movie also did a wonderful job of explaining part of the relationship between AF and Trevor.
I've found skills have far more to do with continuing education... be it formal or informal. I have worked with guys with limited education that run circles around guys who went to college early in life and got degrees - solely because the guys with degrees stopped learning once they got their degree.
Rarely do I find people add very much money to their salary... all else being equal. I've found people making more money tend to move outside the immediate area and expand their salary base by shuffling over to a higher cost of living (or vastly increasing their commute).
To be fair, people starting out in a field will likely start with a higher salary becaus they have a degree. After you have a few years of experience under your belt, the salaries even out. I've been told by employers my experience has trumped those with a degree because I actually knew how to get things done and knew how the business world actually works.
More to the point of the article itself... the value of a degree should be measured as to what it did for you. Unless a place is hiring based solely on whether a person has a degree (I've been there... bad boss to work for), I don't see how they give you more opportunities.
One thing you can do is simply not upgrade right away. I've never been a big fan of Symantec, but one thing I've learned from them is to not jump on the latest software upgrade. I don't have to deal with them any more, but one customer was 1/2 way through an upgrade to the newest version of A/V when their A/V guy quit. I was handed his job and simply stopped rolling out the newest version. The manager asked me why. A few sample cases where the previous guy had problems rolling it out (taking down servers and billable users) immediately had him backing me up.
Another thing you can do is set up a better testing environment. If you have one... it needs help (be it better methods, better training, better people, or more people). If you don't have one - here's your case for one.
It depends on a lot of different things, but I'm amazed how many people skipped over education completely.
I'll start off with an hour (usually ends up two) with the person - get a feel for what they do and what level of user you're dealing with. You might sit down, have them show you the problem, and be gone in 15 minutes. They're likely going to have a host of problems with their machine, at which point I either make a mental list or actually write it down (1/2 because I can't remember squat, 1/2 because as the list grows the impression begins to take form on the user). Take the things that are hardest to explain and do it for them (there are usually a few of these). If you can take out their biggest complaints, you can usually count on a favor or nice meal.
The rest of the problems are up to them. I'll send them e-mails with information on how to do it themselves - sometimes long and gory, some you can send links with brief descriptions about what's behind the link; it's something you learn through experience as to which works best on which users. Recommend them to free A/V, Firewall, spyware-removal, etc. as needed. It's something to keep their interest (free), but it usually makes the point that things aren't as simple as they seem. In a lot of cases you can drop the words, "... Or I can do it for you for $s/hour," if that's your goal. There are enough posts about the dangers of taking money - I don't need to repeat them.
But any further "free" work is "... as I have spare time." I make it a point to not have much "spare time". If anyone is really insistent about it, you can politely remind them that they wouldn't expect a plumber/electrician/accountant to do free work... especially because someone wants it "now". It's a difficult thing to say, but when done properly usually ends up with an apologetic user.
There are still a few traps left. Late-night phone calls are met with a tired-sounding voice. Repeat offenders are told that after a certain time, I don't accept phone calls about computer problems - I've worked on them all day, and I need some time alone with my spouse: contrary to popular opinion, I do have a life (even if it is playing games:) If they keep calling, I let my wife answer the phone and have her say something like I'm not home ("from work" typically turns them instantly apologetic... especially at 10 PM), and that it's late to be receiving phone calls about something that can wait and is done for free.
The last bit of advice I can lend aside from always be professional? Find someone interested in learning and make them your first level helpdesk. I show my dad progressively harder and harder things and give him preferential treatment when he calls (overlook a late call, take a look at a problem he has a little faster, etc.). He takes quite a few calls from family and friends, but to him it's a challenge he can overcome. It may seem strange, but if you can find someone who has a clue about something, use them to filter those kinds of problems. They're all giddy because they know something about computers (and usually it pushes them to do more), and as long as you train them about knowing when they're in over their head... it's a good parasitic relationship;)
Oh, and for heaven's sake... if you're going to act like a professional technician, at least try to look like one. Learn how to type, and spend an hour looking up shortcut keys. It drives me up a wall at how many well-paid techs still hunt-n-peck or never learned there are other (better) ways to cut and paste without the little scissor and clipboard icons. Spend a week not using a mouse at all, and you'll laugh at how inept you once were.
A few folks have touched on this, but it seems nobody really wants to say it.
Whenever you take a collection of small applications and try to turn them into wide-spread, useful tools, you need to change the small applications so they conform to standards and can be used by the masses.
Everything needs to look the same, everything needs to act the same, and everything needs to be done graphically. Yes, the elite know you can hop out to a prompt and do certain things with certain apps, but the regular users don't, and assume the program doesn't do it if there's nothing graphical (and obvious).
Does anyone remember what VB apps looked like with VB3? Everyone was doing their own thing: some programmers used certain tools, others used only basic tools, some programmers used the Form_Load event as their Sub_Main (and basically turned it into a non-graphical program)... it was a mess! Since that time the average ability of users has gone DOWN, and Open Source and free software have fragmented much like the VB3 apps.
Don't get me wrong - standards are boring. They take all the fun out of everything (unless you consider standardization fun). But they're a necessary boring.
We need more people. We need more people. We need more managers. We need more people. This doesn't apply to us.
Change people to resources, and you'd have a home in Senior Management.
Seriously, it isn't really that you need more people. What you really need is to get the programmers to sit down with the people you mention and have them hash everything out.
As in most scientific experiments that defy logic, I would call into question the controls used in this experiment:
Were the coins used for testing weighted on one half or the other? Even a sample of 10,000 coins assumes that a perfect coin (or the average coin) is weighted perfectly. With different designs on either half, one half has an advantage of landing down (or up).
Flipping slugs (a coin before an impression is made) would be better, although most coins today are composites, and not one type of metal (again, throwing off the weight).
The other day/week NPR ran a simlar story regarding a device which would always allow the coin to land heads or tails (and they discovered the same thing - about a 51% chance; in fact, this might be the same guy). This seemed absolutely absurd, as the scientist basically went about the hard way to measure exactly how hard a coin is flipped, the calculate the exact distance to make sure the coin landed the same way, every time.
I fail to see any relationship between technology and stress when some users don't get any stress from technology. I use myself as an example - as a Sys Admin people are always coming to me with their problems.
I don't stress over their problems, and I don't stress over my own tech-related problems. Sometimes an app does something annoying and doesn't make sense - but I figure I can sit there and stress about it, or I can figure out why it does it (and change it if I don't like it).
The user is worried about having to reboot. They freak out because the mail server goes down. They worry their hard drive is crashing (which, of course, they haven't backed up... ever). They don't know how to use an application and a deadline is fast approaching.
That has nothing to do with technology - except that maybe the user never bothered to learn about the technology (both it's features and it's limits).
Maybe thier boss (teacher/parent) has a hand in the situation, but typically I find the boss understands that things happen. I also find that the boss knows the user is the one who waited until the last possible second, never backed up, and didn't complete their training.
As an alternate train of thought - have you ever seen a mechanic stressed out over getting an engine back together? I haven't; but I sure have seen people stressed because their car isn't working.
If I were into music and had a system worth more than, say, $500, would I really download horrible-quality music, burn it to CD, and play it? If I were playing the music on my alarm clock ($40) or some 1980's junker I bought from a yard sale - maybe.
If I were into playing really low-quality music, I'd use a cheap microphone, a radio, and my computer to copy what I wanted (which brings up a really funny point about CDs that don't play on computers).
A 50% increase in pay may not be worth an extra 20 hours a week.
While I can't say your company is up-front and honest with you (they should have given you decent raises the moment they found out you were worth keeping), I will at least remind you (and anyone else reading this) that some companies offer more than just money. Fifty percent sounds like a tremendous jump, but they may not find that jump so preposterous, depending on what kind of other perks they offer.
Strongly consider what you actually *do* for you job, and what you'll be expected to do somewhere else. If you find yourself with enough time to build your resume and poke around looking for jobs on company time, maybe you shouldn't be.
... but this actually *does* happen - quite often - where I work.
We got a batch of bad drives (Fujitsu, 40Gb, comes with IBM 300PLs 6565 and 6566), and now have two or three "spare" PCs built and ready to go. Downtime is down to about an hour. We've managed to "engineer" some recoveries, but not everyone is so lucky.
More to the point, users don't learn, even when real problems happen. There are a handful who have learned and back up whenever they hear about a HD crash (hopefully you see the flaw in that logic).
They don't have to be overly complicated. Some of my favorites have been to take short sayings from games I'm playing (Zub_Zug from WCII, for example), and combinations of abbreviations of games I'm paying. Take the game Thief (I played this some time ago). Shorten the entire title to TtDP (Thief, the Dark Project), and append another game's title: TtDP_98_MaMIV (Theif, 1998, Might and Magic 6).
I'd shoot for a fingerprint identifier ($100) and/or retinal scanner. This tells people outright they need to buy equipment to do this, because your company is dead-set on protecting their privacy. Use that as a selling point.
The way this is set up to begin with is a pain in the ass. Why not just send e-mails to each other? Why even hassle with the online stuff? If you digitally sign e-mail, it isn't THAT insecure. Heck, digitally sign it AND encrypt it.
In the event you won't simplify things and make life easy, two logins are a good idea. Unfortunately, you need to remember both, in the right order, to be identified. It's a bit of a strech to assume each person can handle doing this on their own, especially when you throw in that they possibly need to remember their login to the Internet and login to e-mail system. You need four pieces of identification to ask your doctor if he got the test results back!
What's worse: MS being a bully and forcing everyone to upgrade, some new guy becoming bully and forcing people to upgrade, or no one being bully and no one upgrading?
Scenario 1: MS really is a 1200 lb. gorilla.
Possibility 1: They get broken into two 600 lb gorillas. Nice move.
Possibility 2: Stockholders delay the breakup for so long, the breakup is moot. Class-action lawsuits, anyone?
Possibility 3: MS is broken into applications and OS development. The cost of OSes goes up (to support all the programmers on 50-million lines of code), and likely goes bankrupt (because other OSes are relatively so much cheaper). Applications maintains their monopoly, and gets bigger. See sceanrio 2, possibility 2 for more info.
Scenario 2: MS isn't the gorilla we all think they are.
Possibility 1: They get broken up and fizzle without each other. Both go bankrupt and stockholders call a class-action suit.
Possibility 2: They get broken up and because a dominant easy-to-use-OS no longer exists, the home user market goes stagnant. Home users sit on their Windows 98 machines.
Scenario 3: MS appeals the court's decision. Somewhere around 2003 or 2005, a decision is made, but who cares?
Scenario 4: MS is free to go, no hard feelings.
Possibility 1: MS actually gets a little nicer, realizing another suit can be brought against them. Hey, it's already happened a little bit.
Possibility 2: MS gets nasty, and all the PC companies start supporting other OSes. Wait, this is happening now, too.
Possibility 3: MS continues to lose some people to other OSes, but maintains its market-leader advantage.
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As a cord cutter speaking ... don't make the coverage any better. Keep putting up a fight to try to convince cord cutters to come back. I'd bet more people will ditch you than will come back. In fact I'd bet more people access your online videos without paying for cable or satellite because the typical viewer can't figure it out or be hassled with the hoops they need to jump through.
So maintain course, make no compromises, and hasten your own demise. Good riddance.
I have not had the opportunity, but is voice disabled by default and the user can selectively turn it on? I don't mean is the checkbox checked to turn it off ... is it actually off and not phoning home?
I mean, you *could* build one out of stone ... but where's the fun in that?
You're missing the fact that most people don't pay any money (directly) for Vista. A new PC comes with Vista, and the cost of Vista is camouflaged. You need to compare the cost of simply using what the machine came with versus loading up a new OS (something most people rarely do ... if ever).
... Dell doesn't pay $200 or $400 per copy of Vista).
Also, many manufacturers are pushing more expensive hardware for anything other than Vista. I can't imagine what adoption rates would be if you could (for instance) go to Dell.com and see an option to select Ubuntu to save $50 (or whatever it is; let's face it
I can see a network provider temporarily blocking traffic of specific kinds while the network is upgraded (or situation resolved) to handle the loads.
... they can raise the prices of their service to individuals. The people that don't like the higher rates can go to a competitor. A spot of regulation would have to go into effect to ensure they aren't simply raising prices where there are no competitors ... but this isn't rocket science.
If they simply don't want tremendous amounts of traffic
Either dump customers that aren't profitable, or make them profitable. Don't jerk them around.
I put the notion (people would like Linux ...) to the test when I gave my father-in-law a laptop with Ubuntu loaded. I asked him what he needed (e-mail, internet, and word processor), and dumped an icon for each on the desktop. He was patently thrilled when I hooked it up to their DSL and migrated his old Outlook info to it. He is impressed with the update features, still is shocked it's free, and even took to his own by looking up a problem he ran into.
.. he's a very smart guy. But people ready for retirement don't suddenly learn a new OS and start fixing their own problems when they're uncomfortable. He got DSL a month before I gave him the laptop (upgraded from a dial-up 10 hours/month plan). Ubuntu actually adds a layer of "I don't need to know what's going on under the hood" as a Mac would.
Don't get me wrong
I say don't presume we're sitting in an ivory tower - give people a chance to choose. There are options which do not require backflips.
And Windows does NOT work for MANY people.
My company has both ends of the spectrum. At our biggest data centers, there are mountains of paperwork and ridiculous costs of internal billing you'll have to wade through to do anything.
... but they haven't "developed" anything since it was built and it runs live data), and the server room is filled with desktops-made-servers because some are too cheap to go out and buy real servers.
... where they proceed to plug a monitor into the new circuit while they daisy-chain 4 power strips off of one circuit. Never mind you can just walk up to the maintenance guys and have them do things correctly and help you figure out how many amps you're drawing on a single line (and they don't even need a ticket ... just walk in and talk to them). Why bother? Just do it yourself.
... but nothing goes wrong, either. Pick your poison ... carefully.
Then at the site I work at, we have almost zero costs to anything, production servers not in the secured server room ("administrators" circumvent the system by claiming it's in development
Then we have guys walking around the server room and turning on circuits because they need additional power
At my site things can get done quickly. At the main data centers nothing gets done
For all the things companies do poorly, I've found my own company does IT pretty well ... or, at least the portions you mentioned.
The proxy really only blocks things you truly shouldn't be viewing while at work. They tried keyword filtering, but when it failed it was backed off and progress kept moving forward.
Security patches and such are handled decently (if you're on the corporate domain). If you're not on the corporate domain, see next item.
A/V is really the only thing that ever crops up and "interferes" with normal (legitimate) work. If you have an active virus, the networking group disables your network port until things are cleared up. Typically people get the virus in the first place because they don't have their machine patched. If you become a problem it goes to your management (either because someone picks up the phone and calls your manager, or more likely you can't get your work done and your manager finds out you've been wasting your time setting up your own domain and goofing around doing irrelevant things).
Schedule a day (or a few) where all computers will be shut off. No, really - you'd be amazed at how cooperative some companies would be with a Disaster Recovery Drill. If they're not willing to go that far, you probably shouldn't have to go any further.
Drum out the costs of not having organized IT or key computer systems: rampant viruses, spyware, and incompatabilities.
But if that won't fly, start calculating how much time would be lost by not having things fixed or working properly. Take a stroll through your helpdesk logs and/or remind your people to jot down things like, "My computer has been taking 15 minutes to boot for the past two weeks," or, "I've spent an hour trying to figure this out," and estimate how much longer they would have put up with it if not for IT.
I don't consider myself a hardcore fan, but I am fairly avid. Suffice to say I've never understood how the show hasn't continued or been picked up again ... I liked it enough to think it should, but wasn't dedicated enough to go looking it up.
... typically minor modifications made to better appeal to the masses. I took the changes in stride and they really didn't bother me. I suppose anyone seriously bugged by the changes is also peeved that Chung re-did the animated show in a DVD set to reflect what he originally wanted ... and took out MTV's adaptations. It's his show - his prerogative to do with it as he pleases - but in paticular I think it's good he went back and made things as he originally intended. George Lucas, on the other hand, changed characters to pander to the masses.
... by far most were negative. So I kept my hopes in check, and was pleasantly surprised at how good it was.
... which I thought was necessary if the movie was to appeal to anyone who wasn't familiar with the show. The animated Trevor was a rather complicated individual. The movie also did a wonderful job of explaining part of the relationship between AF and Trevor.
I take movie adaptations for what they are
Anyway, I was originally hyped to see AF. Before going, I read some reviews which didn't contain plot spoilers
The movie was a wonderful extention of the show. It takes place between two episodes - giving a little more detail to the animated show. Trevor appears to have been split into two people
I've found skills have far more to do with continuing education ... be it formal or informal. I have worked with guys with limited education that run circles around guys who went to college early in life and got degrees - solely because the guys with degrees stopped learning once they got their degree.
... all else being equal. I've found people making more money tend to move outside the immediate area and expand their salary base by shuffling over to a higher cost of living (or vastly increasing their commute).
... the value of a degree should be measured as to what it did for you. Unless a place is hiring based solely on whether a person has a degree (I've been there ... bad boss to work for), I don't see how they give you more opportunities.
Rarely do I find people add very much money to their salary
To be fair, people starting out in a field will likely start with a higher salary becaus they have a degree. After you have a few years of experience under your belt, the salaries even out. I've been told by employers my experience has trumped those with a degree because I actually knew how to get things done and knew how the business world actually works.
More to the point of the article itself
One thing you can do is simply not upgrade right away. I've never been a big fan of Symantec, but one thing I've learned from them is to not jump on the latest software upgrade. I don't have to deal with them any more, but one customer was 1/2 way through an upgrade to the newest version of A/V when their A/V guy quit. I was handed his job and simply stopped rolling out the newest version. The manager asked me why. A few sample cases where the previous guy had problems rolling it out (taking down servers and billable users) immediately had him backing me up.
... it needs help (be it better methods, better training, better people, or more people). If you don't have one - here's your case for one.
Another thing you can do is set up a better testing environment. If you have one
It depends on a lot of different things, but I'm amazed how many people skipped over education completely.
... especially because someone wants it "now". It's a difficult thing to say, but when done properly usually ends up with an apologetic user.
:) If they keep calling, I let my wife answer the phone and have her say something like I'm not home ("from work" typically turns them instantly apologetic ... especially at 10 PM), and that it's late to be receiving phone calls about something that can wait and is done for free.
... it's a good parasitic relationship ;)
... if you're going to act like a professional technician, at least try to look like one. Learn how to type, and spend an hour looking up shortcut keys. It drives me up a wall at how many well-paid techs still hunt-n-peck or never learned there are other (better) ways to cut and paste without the little scissor and clipboard icons. Spend a week not using a mouse at all, and you'll laugh at how inept you once were.
I'll start off with an hour (usually ends up two) with the person - get a feel for what they do and what level of user you're dealing with. You might sit down, have them show you the problem, and be gone in 15 minutes. They're likely going to have a host of problems with their machine, at which point I either make a mental list or actually write it down (1/2 because I can't remember squat, 1/2 because as the list grows the impression begins to take form on the user). Take the things that are hardest to explain and do it for them (there are usually a few of these). If you can take out their biggest complaints, you can usually count on a favor or nice meal.
The rest of the problems are up to them. I'll send them e-mails with information on how to do it themselves - sometimes long and gory, some you can send links with brief descriptions about what's behind the link; it's something you learn through experience as to which works best on which users. Recommend them to free A/V, Firewall, spyware-removal, etc. as needed. It's something to keep their interest (free), but it usually makes the point that things aren't as simple as they seem. In a lot of cases you can drop the words, "... Or I can do it for you for $s/hour," if that's your goal. There are enough posts about the dangers of taking money - I don't need to repeat them.
But any further "free" work is "... as I have spare time." I make it a point to not have much "spare time". If anyone is really insistent about it, you can politely remind them that they wouldn't expect a plumber/electrician/accountant to do free work
There are still a few traps left. Late-night phone calls are met with a tired-sounding voice. Repeat offenders are told that after a certain time, I don't accept phone calls about computer problems - I've worked on them all day, and I need some time alone with my spouse: contrary to popular opinion, I do have a life (even if it is playing games
The last bit of advice I can lend aside from always be professional? Find someone interested in learning and make them your first level helpdesk. I show my dad progressively harder and harder things and give him preferential treatment when he calls (overlook a late call, take a look at a problem he has a little faster, etc.). He takes quite a few calls from family and friends, but to him it's a challenge he can overcome. It may seem strange, but if you can find someone who has a clue about something, use them to filter those kinds of problems. They're all giddy because they know something about computers (and usually it pushes them to do more), and as long as you train them about knowing when they're in over their head
Oh, and for heaven's sake
A few folks have touched on this, but it seems nobody really wants to say it.
... it was a mess! Since that time the average ability of users has gone DOWN, and Open Source and free software have fragmented much like the VB3 apps.
Whenever you take a collection of small applications and try to turn them into wide-spread, useful tools, you need to change the small applications so they conform to standards and can be used by the masses.
Everything needs to look the same, everything needs to act the same, and everything needs to be done graphically. Yes, the elite know you can hop out to a prompt and do certain things with certain apps, but the regular users don't, and assume the program doesn't do it if there's nothing graphical (and obvious).
Does anyone remember what VB apps looked like with VB3? Everyone was doing their own thing: some programmers used certain tools, others used only basic tools, some programmers used the Form_Load event as their Sub_Main (and basically turned it into a non-graphical program)
Don't get me wrong - standards are boring. They take all the fun out of everything (unless you consider standardization fun). But they're a necessary boring.
We need more people.
We need more people.
We need more managers.
We need more people.
This doesn't apply to us.
Change people to resources, and you'd have a home in Senior Management.
Seriously, it isn't really that you need more people. What you really need is to get the programmers to sit down with the people you mention and have them hash everything out.
As in most scientific experiments that defy logic, I would call into question the controls used in this experiment:
Were the coins used for testing weighted on one half or the other? Even a sample of 10,000 coins assumes that a perfect coin (or the average coin) is weighted perfectly. With different designs on either half, one half has an advantage of landing down (or up).
Flipping slugs (a coin before an impression is made) would be better, although most coins today are composites, and not one type of metal (again, throwing off the weight).
The other day/week NPR ran a simlar story regarding a device which would always allow the coin to land heads or tails (and they discovered the same thing - about a 51% chance; in fact, this might be the same guy). This seemed absolutely absurd, as the scientist basically went about the hard way to measure exactly how hard a coin is flipped, the calculate the exact distance to make sure the coin landed the same way, every time.
I fail to see any relationship between technology and stress when some users don't get any stress from technology. I use myself as an example - as a Sys Admin people are always coming to me with their problems.
... ever). They don't know how to use an application and a deadline is fast approaching.
I don't stress over their problems, and I don't stress over my own tech-related problems. Sometimes an app does something annoying and doesn't make sense - but I figure I can sit there and stress about it, or I can figure out why it does it (and change it if I don't like it).
The user is worried about having to reboot. They freak out because the mail server goes down. They worry their hard drive is crashing (which, of course, they haven't backed up
That has nothing to do with technology - except that maybe the user never bothered to learn about the technology (both it's features and it's limits).
Maybe thier boss (teacher/parent) has a hand in the situation, but typically I find the boss understands that things happen. I also find that the boss knows the user is the one who waited until the last possible second, never backed up, and didn't complete their training.
As an alternate train of thought - have you ever seen a mechanic stressed out over getting an engine back together? I haven't; but I sure have seen people stressed because their car isn't working.
"Unbreakable encryption" doesn't exist, and never can.
Afterall, if you cannot decrypt something, it does no one any good - including the individual that saved/created/modified it.
If I were into music and had a system worth more than, say, $500, would I really download horrible-quality music, burn it to CD, and play it? If I were playing the music on my alarm clock ($40) or some 1980's junker I bought from a yard sale - maybe.
If I were into playing really low-quality music, I'd use a cheap microphone, a radio, and my computer to copy what I wanted (which brings up a really funny point about CDs that don't play on computers).
A 50% increase in pay may not be worth an extra 20 hours a week.
While I can't say your company is up-front and honest with you (they should have given you decent raises the moment they found out you were worth keeping), I will at least remind you (and anyone else reading this) that some companies offer more than just money. Fifty percent sounds like a tremendous jump, but they may not find that jump so preposterous, depending on what kind of other perks they offer.
Strongly consider what you actually *do* for you job, and what you'll be expected to do somewhere else. If you find yourself with enough time to build your resume and poke around looking for jobs on company time, maybe you shouldn't be.
... but this actually *does* happen - quite often - where I work.
We got a batch of bad drives (Fujitsu, 40Gb, comes with IBM 300PLs 6565 and 6566), and now have two or three "spare" PCs built and ready to go. Downtime is down to about an hour. We've managed to "engineer" some recoveries, but not everyone is so lucky.
More to the point, users don't learn, even when real problems happen. There are a handful who have learned and back up whenever they hear about a HD crash (hopefully you see the flaw in that logic).
So you can't play it on your PC. Wah.
Get an old, standalone CD player, splice the speaker wires, and run to the Line In or Mic port on your soundcard. Record, and convert to MP3.
They don't have to be overly complicated. Some of my favorites have been to take short sayings from games I'm playing (Zub_Zug from WCII, for example), and combinations of abbreviations of games I'm paying. Take the game Thief (I played this some time ago). Shorten the entire title to TtDP (Thief, the Dark Project), and append another game's title: TtDP_98_MaMIV (Theif, 1998, Might and Magic 6).
-Doug
I'd shoot for a fingerprint identifier ($100) and/or retinal scanner. This tells people outright they need to buy equipment to do this, because your company is dead-set on protecting their privacy. Use that as a selling point.
The way this is set up to begin with is a pain in the ass. Why not just send e-mails to each other? Why even hassle with the online stuff? If you digitally sign e-mail, it isn't THAT insecure. Heck, digitally sign it AND encrypt it.
In the event you won't simplify things and make life easy, two logins are a good idea. Unfortunately, you need to remember both, in the right order, to be identified. It's a bit of a strech to assume each person can handle doing this on their own, especially when you throw in that they possibly need to remember their login to the Internet and login to e-mail system. You need four pieces of identification to ask your doctor if he got the test results back!
-Doug
What's worse: MS being a bully and forcing everyone to upgrade, some new guy becoming bully and forcing people to upgrade, or no one being bully and no one upgrading?
Scenario 1: MS really is a 1200 lb. gorilla.
Possibility 1: They get broken into two 600 lb gorillas. Nice move.
Possibility 2: Stockholders delay the breakup for so long, the breakup is moot. Class-action lawsuits, anyone?
Possibility 3: MS is broken into applications and OS development. The cost of OSes goes up (to support all the programmers on 50-million lines of code), and likely goes bankrupt (because other OSes are relatively so much cheaper). Applications maintains their monopoly, and gets bigger. See sceanrio 2, possibility 2 for more info.
Scenario 2: MS isn't the gorilla we all think they are.
Possibility 1: They get broken up and fizzle without each other. Both go bankrupt and stockholders call a class-action suit.
Possibility 2: They get broken up and because a dominant easy-to-use-OS no longer exists, the home user market goes stagnant. Home users sit on their Windows 98 machines.
Scenario 3: MS appeals the court's decision. Somewhere around 2003 or 2005, a decision is made, but who cares?
Scenario 4: MS is free to go, no hard feelings.
Possibility 1: MS actually gets a little nicer, realizing another suit can be brought against them. Hey, it's already happened a little bit.
Possibility 2: MS gets nasty, and all the PC companies start supporting other OSes. Wait, this is happening now, too.
Possibility 3: MS continues to lose some people to other OSes, but maintains its market-leader advantage.