What difference does it make? Just download the updates as you want/need them. OS X is really just Public Preview version 2 at this point anyway... There is a LOT of stuff that doesn't work right, and a lot of issues that need addressed, and I think Apple is doing a good job with fixing them as soon as possible. Keep in mind the scope of this project. They've written an ENTIRELY new OS, so there are BOUND to be issues. I'm STILL waiting for SP2 for Win2k. Where is it??? I'd be happy if they fixed SOME of the issues along the way, releasing minor updates instead of me having to wait for them to lump them all together and release SP2. I'm GLAD Apple is releasing every little patch and fix they do, as they do them. If you don't want to update so frequently, don't.
As a former technical support department manager for a certain company in the peripheral business, I can tell you there are certainly two sides to every story. First of all, when you buy a couch, what are you going to call and ask for help on? The correct sitting position? Seriously...
The problem with tech support is that customers abuse it. Yes, thats right, they abuse it. I can't tell you how many calls we took from customers who were simply too lazy to read the manual. They didn't even bother to try and read the instructions. A lot of these people get the product, open the manual to the page with the support phone number, and immediately call for installation guidance. If these people would only make an ATTEMPT at installing it by themself, our company wouldn't have been wasting so much of our time and money helping these people. If we spend more than 30-60 minutes with a customer, then we've just eaten up the profit we've made on the sale to the distributor. Its simply not cost effective to support these people. I routinely instructed my support reps that if a call was going over 30-45 minutes and you weren't getting anywhere, you were to recommend the customer return the product and purchase something else. Maybe thats a bad attitude, but otherwise we were losing money. Its just not worth it. Consumers need to take some responsibility for themselves. Attempt to figure it out yourself first. Don't buy a product that you obviously haven't the faintest clue about. If you're not sure what it does, you don't need it.
So... there are two sides to every story, and you have to understand the great expense that tech support brings to an organization.
If you have signed an employee agreement giving them rights to your IP, you're probably screwed. If not, taking a vacation and finishing up the project might not be such a bad idea. Its kind of hard to negotiate with an unfinished body of work. Once its finished, offer to sell it to the company. Maybe in lieu of a fixed amount payment for it, you could cut yourself in on the GP they will make from the customer. If its something that can be sold to more than one customer, then you could negotiate a portion of the GP on all sales of this product. In any case, you really should speak with a lawyer about this for the best advice.
There is no practical reason that the entire country can't have cheap broadband - the providers just need a little encouragement.
The "practical reason" is the cost of deployment. Do you have ANY idea what deployment costs are in rural areas for things like cable and DSL? The simple fact is, there aren't enough paying customers in all areas to justify the enormous expense of deploying broadband. If they priced it based on the number of subscribers they'd have, then citizens in rural areas could be paying as much as a T1 for simple DSL. Thankfully, in some states, such as here in Arizona, the government is getting involved and funding network rollouts in the rural areas. Otherwise, there are many areas here that wouldn't even have decent phone networks, much less any sort of broadband access. The company I work for just did a project recently where we brought a T1 in to one of the reservations for the school district. You would not believe the hurdles and great expense it took to get a T1 dropped in. Dealing with the ancient local telephone company out there, then dealing with US Worst/Qworst in Phoenix.... a total nightmare.
Until its more profitable, or subsidized by the government, we're just not going to see widespread broadband deployment.
obviously you have something conflicting with the software. I've installed QuickTime on more systems than I could possibly remember, Windows, and Mac, and have never had a single problem on any of them.
I've been thinking the same thing, for a very long time. As a teen I began thinking this way. I was an exchange student in high school to Switzerland and that really made me want to leave the US. Not a day goes by that I don't think about leaving, and if I had the proper oppurtunity I would be out of here the same day.
The current trends towards privacy violation and the general culture in the US just gets worse and worse every day. 1984 isn't too far away I'm afraid, and most of us either don't care, or don't know what to do about it. I'm not even so sure there is any way to stop the trend towards complete corporate rule of America anymore. A very large number of my friends are from outside of the US, and most of them do not think the US is the greatest place in the world. Even my friends from "less developed" countries think they were better off at home, both socially, and financially. I also get the consensus that America is far from the most free country on earth. A look towards the social scenes of northern Europe can confirm this.
I'm sure I'll get flamed for my "anti-American" opinion, but I challenge all of you to wake up, look around a little bit, and do some comparisons. Is America REALLY that great, or has years of cultural brainwashing just convinced you so? Is there something we can do about it, or should those of us who value our freedom and privacy start relocating?
We have Exchange in our office for mail. Not a day goes by we don't curse it for some reason. Constant crashes, hiccups, misc errors... problems connecting to our webserver. Once it was down for almost a week. We finally had to bring in an outside consultant at some insane fee to help us fix it. We're currently trying to convince our Systems Admin and management staff that a simple sendmail box is the way to go.
If you already have a working sendmail solution, don't even think about leaving it!
Maybe if they paid tech support people a decent wage for these types of jobs they would have more competent people.
Also, I can tell that you and the rest of the people complaining about tech support have never worked a tech support job. The reason companies tell their employees to assume the problem is on the customers end is because 99% of the time IT IS! I've worked support for different companies, and the overall average of people calling in because they are just plain stupid is at least 90%. Besides doing telemarketing tech support has to be one of the worst jobs on the planet.
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What difference does it make? Just download the updates as you want/need them. OS X is really just Public Preview version 2 at this point anyway... There is a LOT of stuff that doesn't work right, and a lot of issues that need addressed, and I think Apple is doing a good job with fixing them as soon as possible. Keep in mind the scope of this project. They've written an ENTIRELY new OS, so there are BOUND to be issues. I'm STILL waiting for SP2 for Win2k. Where is it??? I'd be happy if they fixed SOME of the issues along the way, releasing minor updates instead of me having to wait for them to lump them all together and release SP2. I'm GLAD Apple is releasing every little patch and fix they do, as they do them. If you don't want to update so frequently, don't.
As a former technical support department manager for a certain company in the peripheral business, I can tell you there are certainly two sides to every story. First of all, when you buy a couch, what are you going to call and ask for help on? The correct sitting position? Seriously...
The problem with tech support is that customers abuse it. Yes, thats right, they abuse it. I can't tell you how many calls we took from customers who were simply too lazy to read the manual. They didn't even bother to try and read the instructions. A lot of these people get the product, open the manual to the page with the support phone number, and immediately call for installation guidance. If these people would only make an ATTEMPT at installing it by themself, our company wouldn't have been wasting so much of our time and money helping these people. If we spend more than 30-60 minutes with a customer, then we've just eaten up the profit we've made on the sale to the distributor. Its simply not cost effective to support these people. I routinely instructed my support reps that if a call was going over 30-45 minutes and you weren't getting anywhere, you were to recommend the customer return the product and purchase something else. Maybe thats a bad attitude, but otherwise we were losing money. Its just not worth it. Consumers need to take some responsibility for themselves. Attempt to figure it out yourself first. Don't buy a product that you obviously haven't the faintest clue about. If you're not sure what it does, you don't need it.
So... there are two sides to every story, and you have to understand the great expense that tech support brings to an organization.
If you have signed an employee agreement giving them rights to your IP, you're probably screwed. If not, taking a vacation and finishing up the project might not be such a bad idea. Its kind of hard to negotiate with an unfinished body of work. Once its finished, offer to sell it to the company. Maybe in lieu of a fixed amount payment for it, you could cut yourself in on the GP they will make from the customer. If its something that can be sold to more than one customer, then you could negotiate a portion of the GP on all sales of this product. In any case, you really should speak with a lawyer about this for the best advice.
The "practical reason" is the cost of deployment. Do you have ANY idea what deployment costs are in rural areas for things like cable and DSL? The simple fact is, there aren't enough paying customers in all areas to justify the enormous expense of deploying broadband. If they priced it based on the number of subscribers they'd have, then citizens in rural areas could be paying as much as a T1 for simple DSL. Thankfully, in some states, such as here in Arizona, the government is getting involved and funding network rollouts in the rural areas. Otherwise, there are many areas here that wouldn't even have decent phone networks, much less any sort of broadband access. The company I work for just did a project recently where we brought a T1 in to one of the reservations for the school district. You would not believe the hurdles and great expense it took to get a T1 dropped in. Dealing with the ancient local telephone company out there, then dealing with US Worst/Qworst in Phoenix.... a total nightmare.
Until its more profitable, or subsidized by the government, we're just not going to see widespread broadband deployment.
obviously you have something conflicting with the software. I've installed QuickTime on more systems than I could possibly remember, Windows, and Mac, and have never had a single problem on any of them.
I've been thinking the same thing, for a very long time. As a teen I began thinking this way. I was an exchange student in high school to Switzerland and that really made me want to leave the US. Not a day goes by that I don't think about leaving, and if I had the proper oppurtunity I would be out of here the same day.
The current trends towards privacy violation and the general culture in the US just gets worse and worse every day. 1984 isn't too far away I'm afraid, and most of us either don't care, or don't know what to do about it. I'm not even so sure there is any way to stop the trend towards complete corporate rule of America anymore. A very large number of my friends are from outside of the US, and most of them do not think the US is the greatest place in the world. Even my friends from "less developed" countries think they were better off at home, both socially, and financially. I also get the consensus that America is far from the most free country on earth. A look towards the social scenes of northern Europe can confirm this.
I'm sure I'll get flamed for my "anti-American" opinion, but I challenge all of you to wake up, look around a little bit, and do some comparisons. Is America REALLY that great, or has years of cultural brainwashing just convinced you so? Is there something we can do about it, or should those of us who value our freedom and privacy start relocating?
We have Exchange in our office for mail. Not a day goes by we don't curse it for some reason. Constant crashes, hiccups, misc errors... problems connecting to our webserver. Once it was down for almost a week. We finally had to bring in an outside consultant at some insane fee to help us fix it. We're currently trying to convince our Systems Admin and management staff that a simple sendmail box is the way to go. If you already have a working sendmail solution, don't even think about leaving it!
Maybe if they paid tech support people a decent wage for these types of jobs they would have more competent people. Also, I can tell that you and the rest of the people complaining about tech support have never worked a tech support job. The reason companies tell their employees to assume the problem is on the customers end is because 99% of the time IT IS! I've worked support for different companies, and the overall average of people calling in because they are just plain stupid is at least 90%. Besides doing telemarketing tech support has to be one of the worst jobs on the planet.