thank you for finally saying this - I've been reading comments on this sort of thread for a while waiting for a reasonable person to explain this to the kiddies.
All technology aside, replacing the entire look'n'feel for our user base (office 2007 + Vista) would be a huge productivity killer for months, with no benefit whatsoever.
I'd like to have some better feature support, and I know that Vista has some sort of "corporate desktop theme", but the training overhead just kills me every time I think about it.
Now from a tech perspective - I can buy a brand new core 2 duo based desktop that will run XP at light speed, or stick them with a slow and bloated vista install... I'm personally inclined to skip vista and use what is "known" by our user base.
Does it bother me that we're rolling out new machines with an OS from 2001? yes. yes it does. but Vista isn't a solution in any way, shape, or form.
our local school district has some sort of deal worked out, where local parents can buy OEM software through a distributor and get really fantastic deals. Office 2003 was about $40; Acrobat was less, etc.
When my friends first asked me about it (I have no kids) I thought they had come across some sort of spam site selling pirated software- but it's fully legit, they just have an arrangement to channel all the sales to a particular vendor who gives a big discount on top of the educational pricing.
So any school district with a good # of kids is looking at some powerfully persuasive arguments to get good pricing for their students; and as a parent, having access to all this software for a fraction of the list price is pretty nice too...
(that being said, Office 2007 is a pain. I like how they have redesigned it, but I am LOATHING how much work I am going to have to do to get our users swithched...)
You know, I was totally floored when my 10th grade chemistry teacher laid this out on the line for me, and dispensed with any pretense about teaching me knowledge. It was quite the eye-opener.
Now, of course, it seems obvious. And it's kind of sad, really. Learning is fun, it's just a shame that it doesn't happen in the school system.
Yes, the whole "I'd kill them and dump the body for stealing from me" thing is kind of ridiculous- certainly if you were really going to do that, you wouldn't set a precedent by talking about it online!
But really, think out the consequences of that. Killing this person means harsh consequences for yourself, which are probably worse than having to deal with identify theft (jail time, prison rape, etc.) And it's not like you won't be picked up as a suspect, you know? it's pretty obvious you would be someone they might look at for the crime.
Yes, the thief is human trash, and it might be better off for society as a whole to have her gone. On the other hand, a trial and locking her up costs us all a bunch of money- I don't really know what the best solution is, but it's not just killing her nor is it giving her another round of probation. I don't think locking her up at the taxpayer's expense forever is a good thing either.
Somehow, a punishment/rehabilitation that forces this person to be broken and rebuild themselves from scratch is probably best- fixing them as a person, rather than keeping around a broken shell of a person that drags on us all. You could argue that eliminating them saves this problem too, but then we're no better than savage animals, and what's the point of doing anything then?
My car was broken in to the other day and it pissed me off something fierce- but the worst part was the expense of having windows replaced, not anything that was actually stolen. That's a lesson: the actual incident itself is much smaller than the collateral damage and cost that surrounds it. I would have just given them the contents of the car if they really needed it that badly. I was angry, then sad for who these people must be, then frustrated I couldn't do anything to fix the situation. I can get windows replaced, but these people have empty holes in their lives, and that's just not easy to fix no matter what you do.
I agree with you on the money thing- it's a bit crazy.
But once I figured out wtf "MTG" stood for, I have to say- that was a game for total, utter, complete nerds. Like the dungeons-and-dragons-in-mom's-basement kind of nerd, the one that works at the local gas station instead of going to uni and getting a degree, the kind that makes the rest of us geeks just look *BAD*.
I'm a big geek myself, so I'm not going to throw any more stones, but at least my hobbies take me out of the house and let me travel a bit:)
actually, it's a silly terminology from VAX days- (hence VAXen) so it's probably about the same age as you are...
that being said, using that same kind of application (boxen) went out of geek 'vogue' quite a few years ago. of course there are many who would say that using it in the first place was a badness, but the term originated with actual IT people, and not script kiddies, FWIW.
you're not missing much by not knowing all this nonsense:)
If you come work for a brokerage firm or a bank, and you pass the criminal background checks, the credit checks, the fingerprinting (and subsequent possible FBI check) and so on... but are then expecting to have wide open access to send/receive any sort of arbitrary data, you're absolutely delusional.
It's not about "Fascist company" but about "protecting YOUR money that you trust us to keep safe for you".
If you'd like your bank tellers to start browsing the internet unfiltered and unprotected from the same terminals they check your accounts with, that's your choice- but I'd prefer to keep the systems that hold my money slightly more restrictive, thanks.
I totally understand the need to use the internet as a wide-ranging contact system, research tool, promotional space, and everything else that we know and love. I couldn't do my job without it. But there's limitations on what you can allow people to do, particularly when sensitive data and money are involved.
Bad practices lead to lost money, lost customers, and lawsuits.
But really, in the financial world, if you need access to specific information you already probably have it via any number of trusted private information delivery systems, so the need to "surf the web" is a bit less. We pay big $$$ for realtime accurate data, so it's not like you need to go hit finance.yahoo.com all day long.
Something makes me think we work in very different environments. Where are you at? An ad agency? Marketing? I can see the need there for less filtering. But not from where I am standing.
For what it's worth, Dell doesn't build or engineer any of their own notebooks- they (like most other companies) farm out the design and build contracts to manufacturers like Compal, Quanta, etc.
The 5150, in fact, is well known for having a manufacturer's defect which Dell refuses to acknowledge, so the fact that yours is working is a good thing! They are relatively easy to disassemble, but that has nothing to do with Dell.
So one Inspiron model you buy might be from one Taiwanese manufacturer, but the next model in the line might be from a different manufacturer altogether, and might be vastly different internally.
My favorite notebooks were always the IBM Thinkpads, back when they were still IBM and not Lenovo. Lenovo has been taking a lot of the same steps as other large OEM companies, and outsourcing the laptop builds. It's disappointing, as I really do miss the quality of a good thinkpad. I'm sure someone can tell me their horror stories about a particular TP issue, but when you have a couple thousand of them they are remarkably well performing systems...
Outside of the financial services industries (which I work in) there aren't too many companies that have huge regulatory requirements applied to them for long-term document retention. (HIPPA, SOX, etc.)
However, many firms do have internal standards for document retention, for various business and legal reasons. It's very common to mandate that all email older than a given date be deleted, in accordance with a standardized policy. This policy is the big catch- it allows for the company to say to a potential litigator "Sorry, everything past XX date has been destroyed, according to our standard policy".
Deleting things to avoid the discovery process = bad. Deleting them constantly as part of a standard policy that allows you to avoid the discovery process = good.
There are some frustrating things that happen here, but the real intent is to delete those emails that shouldn't surface, and which might look really bad out of context in court. Or that secretary telling her boyfriend how her boss is cheating and stealing, whether it's true or not. all these things will be found during a long discovery process in a court case, and are better off being nuked if you can do so.
This is exactly why brokerage firms are required to keep all (and they mean ALL) customer correspondence for 7 years. We archive every fax, letter, check, email, instant message, and even post-it notes that come from customers/clients. that's a LOT of data, but it's the law.
Sarbanes-Oxley is making some changes in the way that public corporations are having to archive corporate email and messaging, but even in that case having an appropriate policy to destroy the documents after the retention period is a very wise one.
I don't mean to brag, I don't mean to boast, but I like hot butter on my breakfast toast.
Y'know, the old school kind.
I too would love to see better GIS on the Mac. GRASS is good, and the price is right, but when you need to get down and work sometimes you want what you paid for to run on your pretty workstation...
we don't do brick-level backups of mailboxes because it's too much overhead, so to restore a bunch of deleted contacts from a users mailbox I had to go back and restore the whole mailstore. conveniently, though, I was able to pop it on to the RSG on my new exchange 2003 box, which hurt much less than I thought it would.
I only wish the user had been on our new exchange 2003 box, which is backended onto a netapp filer- so far the snapshot backup/filer management for Exchange seems to work pretty well, and you can restore arbitrary mailboxes, emails, whatever, from any point in time that you have backups for.
Sometimes, though exchange just makes me want to start smoking again.
"Would you be more or less likely to vote for the current president in the upcoming election if you knew he was having young girls kidnapped so he could rape them?"
the high-end G5's (at least the FX's) run at over 80C just ticking along. that's pretty warm, which explains the giant heat sinks (and the required liquid cooling units on the 2.5 and 2.7's).
I know the dual 2.0 box under my desk is like a freaking space heater, and really pumps out a lot of heat even just idling. it's nice and quiet, which means I don't notice the sheer quantity of hot air it's pushing out with those giant fans!
Pointing out the worst case scenarios of things usually means you're actually thinking actions through, before acting on them. that's a good trait to have.
When you look at some of the other posters, you realize that quite a few of them are the sort that would start taking down servers and destroying data the minute they found out they lost their job. you kiddies need to learn to behave yourselves! it comes back to bite you in the ass when you do stupid stuff.
Ironically, I have a friend who worked at Enron, and oddly enough all the people committing massive fraud there have by and large escaped scott-free. go figure.
...Seriously. I can only speculate that something really bad happened to you, to be so fixated on that.
your advice about not intentionally pissing the guy off is very valid, but I do think that the best suggestion is to let the boss know in very calm terms that he is legally obligated to pay out the paycheck within (state-specific) time period of the pay date.
additionally, given that the US primarily operates under an "at will" employment model, if you feel like walking out you certainly can. it's not like the boss has to take your feelings into consideration if he decides to downsize you.
I think the best bet is to try to make it clear to the boss about how you're leaving, that you want things to go smoothly for everyone- but make sure he's aware that YOU are aware of your rights as laid down by law. Maybe he's the owner and whatnot but doesn't really know what the rules are? it might be good to make sure he knows the deal, and that quite a few actions on his part can really go against him in the long run.
the law is typically on your side as the employee; take advantage of it.
and I think you can probably disregard the possibility of being picked up on a warrant, unless you live in podunk, nebraska. when it gets "local" then the law is usually second to "kin". if that's the situation, then try moving to a larger city. really. we have better food and everything:)
ditto for me... I know all women aren't like that, but sometimes it feels that way. my wife will put her driver's license, atm card, and folding money into whatever pocket is convenient, or sometimes into whatever bag she's carrying at the time (!)
although that's changed for the better as the years go by, it still scares the crap out of me. I like to keep my wallet and keys in the same two places all the time, so I don't even have to think about where they are and if I have them or not. maybe that's just me...
As a PC user with an AMD64 and a brand spanking new 3.6 Ghz P4 in a shuttle 81P case, I was seriously dissapointed in the sheer amount of noise and heat that sucker generated. I mean, I KNEW it was going to be loud and hot, but seriously, it's just crazy.
my main surfing box is an old 1Ghz TiBook, but that still works pretty well for my needs. I picked up an apple mini when they came out to dink around with, and it's pretty nice and VERY small. It negated my need to build a nano-ITX based system, which I was pretty pleased about.
while it doesn't have the serious pixel-pushing power that my PC boxes have, those don't get used all that much. I don't need 54 dB of noise and massive power suckage just to look up recipes online, and the mini looks really nice on the kitchen countertop.
The only downside is my wife getting way too seriously into GarageBand - it's SCARY. I keep waking up to thumping bass and all sorts of odd noises that she's importing as loops. It's all fun, though.
Slashdot Mirror
thank you for finally saying this - I've been reading comments on this sort of thread for a while waiting for a reasonable person to explain this to the kiddies.
All technology aside, replacing the entire look'n'feel for our user base (office 2007 + Vista) would be a huge productivity killer for months, with no benefit whatsoever.
I'd like to have some better feature support, and I know that Vista has some sort of "corporate desktop theme", but the training overhead just kills me every time I think about it.
Now from a tech perspective - I can buy a brand new core 2 duo based desktop that will run XP at light speed, or stick them with a slow and bloated vista install... I'm personally inclined to skip vista and use what is "known" by our user base.
Does it bother me that we're rolling out new machines with an OS from 2001? yes. yes it does. but Vista isn't a solution in any way, shape, or form.
Are you disappointed or surprised when you go into Wal-Mart, and they don't have the kind of Gruyère that you're accustomed to?
:)
That is the funniest thing I have read in a long time. Thanks for making me laugh today
our local school district has some sort of deal worked out, where local parents can buy OEM software through a distributor and get really fantastic deals. Office 2003 was about $40; Acrobat was less, etc.
When my friends first asked me about it (I have no kids) I thought they had come across some sort of spam site selling pirated software- but it's fully legit, they just have an arrangement to channel all the sales to a particular vendor who gives a big discount on top of the educational pricing.
So any school district with a good # of kids is looking at some powerfully persuasive arguments to get good pricing for their students; and as a parent, having access to all this software for a fraction of the list price is pretty nice too...
(that being said, Office 2007 is a pain. I like how they have redesigned it, but I am LOATHING how much work I am going to have to do to get our users swithched...)
You know, I was totally floored when my 10th grade chemistry teacher laid this out on the line for me, and dispensed with any pretense about teaching me knowledge. It was quite the eye-opener.
Now, of course, it seems obvious. And it's kind of sad, really. Learning is fun, it's just a shame that it doesn't happen in the school system.
Yes, the whole "I'd kill them and dump the body for stealing from me" thing is kind of ridiculous- certainly if you were really going to do that, you wouldn't set a precedent by talking about it online!
But really, think out the consequences of that. Killing this person means harsh consequences for yourself, which are probably worse than having to deal with identify theft (jail time, prison rape, etc.) And it's not like you won't be picked up as a suspect, you know? it's pretty obvious you would be someone they might look at for the crime.
Yes, the thief is human trash, and it might be better off for society as a whole to have her gone. On the other hand, a trial and locking her up costs us all a bunch of money- I don't really know what the best solution is, but it's not just killing her nor is it giving her another round of probation. I don't think locking her up at the taxpayer's expense forever is a good thing either.
Somehow, a punishment/rehabilitation that forces this person to be broken and rebuild themselves from scratch is probably best- fixing them as a person, rather than keeping around a broken shell of a person that drags on us all. You could argue that eliminating them saves this problem too, but then we're no better than savage animals, and what's the point of doing anything then?
My car was broken in to the other day and it pissed me off something fierce- but the worst part was the expense of having windows replaced, not anything that was actually stolen. That's a lesson: the actual incident itself is much smaller than the collateral damage and cost that surrounds it. I would have just given them the contents of the car if they really needed it that badly. I was angry, then sad for who these people must be, then frustrated I couldn't do anything to fix the situation. I can get windows replaced, but these people have empty holes in their lives, and that's just not easy to fix no matter what you do.
Sorry for the rambling rant.
I agree with you on the money thing- it's a bit crazy.
:)
But once I figured out wtf "MTG" stood for, I have to say- that was a game for total, utter, complete nerds. Like the dungeons-and-dragons-in-mom's-basement kind of nerd, the one that works at the local gas station instead of going to uni and getting a degree, the kind that makes the rest of us geeks just look *BAD*.
I'm a big geek myself, so I'm not going to throw any more stones, but at least my hobbies take me out of the house and let me travel a bit
actually, it's a silly terminology from VAX days- (hence VAXen) so it's probably about the same age as you are...
:)
that being said, using that same kind of application (boxen) went out of geek 'vogue' quite a few years ago. of course there are many who would say that using it in the first place was a badness, but the term originated with actual IT people, and not script kiddies, FWIW.
you're not missing much by not knowing all this nonsense
If you come work for a brokerage firm or a bank, and you pass the criminal background checks, the credit checks, the fingerprinting (and subsequent possible FBI check) and so on... but are then expecting to have wide open access to send/receive any sort of arbitrary data, you're absolutely delusional.
It's not about "Fascist company" but about "protecting YOUR money that you trust us to keep safe for you".
If you'd like your bank tellers to start browsing the internet unfiltered and unprotected from the same terminals they check your accounts with, that's your choice- but I'd prefer to keep the systems that hold my money slightly more restrictive, thanks.
I totally understand the need to use the internet as a wide-ranging contact system, research tool, promotional space, and everything else that we know and love. I couldn't do my job without it. But there's limitations on what you can allow people to do, particularly when sensitive data and money are involved.
Bad practices lead to lost money, lost customers, and lawsuits.
But really, in the financial world, if you need access to specific information you already probably have it via any number of trusted private information delivery systems, so the need to "surf the web" is a bit less. We pay big $$$ for realtime accurate data, so it's not like you need to go hit finance.yahoo.com all day long.
Something makes me think we work in very different environments. Where are you at? An ad agency? Marketing? I can see the need there for less filtering. But not from where I am standing.
my 2 cents.
For what it's worth, Dell doesn't build or engineer any of their own notebooks- they (like most other companies) farm out the design and build contracts to manufacturers like Compal, Quanta, etc.
The 5150, in fact, is well known for having a manufacturer's defect which Dell refuses to acknowledge, so the fact that yours is working is a good thing! They are relatively easy to disassemble, but that has nothing to do with Dell.
So one Inspiron model you buy might be from one Taiwanese manufacturer, but the next model in the line might be from a different manufacturer altogether, and might be vastly different internally.
My favorite notebooks were always the IBM Thinkpads, back when they were still IBM and not Lenovo. Lenovo has been taking a lot of the same steps as other large OEM companies, and outsourcing the laptop builds. It's disappointing, as I really do miss the quality of a good thinkpad. I'm sure someone can tell me their horror stories about a particular TP issue, but when you have a couple thousand of them they are remarkably well performing systems...
Outside of the financial services industries (which I work in) there aren't too many companies that have huge regulatory requirements applied to them for long-term document retention. (HIPPA, SOX, etc.)
However, many firms do have internal standards for document retention, for various business and legal reasons. It's very common to mandate that all email older than a given date be deleted, in accordance with a standardized policy. This policy is the big catch- it allows for the company to say to a potential litigator "Sorry, everything past XX date has been destroyed, according to our standard policy".
Deleting things to avoid the discovery process = bad. Deleting them constantly as part of a standard policy that allows you to avoid the discovery process = good.
There are some frustrating things that happen here, but the real intent is to delete those emails that shouldn't surface, and which might look really bad out of context in court. Or that secretary telling her boyfriend how her boss is cheating and stealing, whether it's true or not. all these things will be found during a long discovery process in a court case, and are better off being nuked if you can do so.
This is exactly why brokerage firms are required to keep all (and they mean ALL) customer correspondence for 7 years. We archive every fax, letter, check, email, instant message, and even post-it notes that come from customers/clients. that's a LOT of data, but it's the law.
Sarbanes-Oxley is making some changes in the way that public corporations are having to archive corporate email and messaging, but even in that case having an appropriate policy to destroy the documents after the retention period is a very wise one.
my 2 cents!
Anyone who has gone through an SEC audit at their firm can tell you that the whole "laissez-faire" capitalism thing is deader than a doornail.
That doesn't bother me, but to make dubious claims about "freedom in the market" is questionable at best.
It doesn't help that the SEC rules are quite often more vague than a 4th grader making up rules to a game as they go along.
I have to say this:
I don't mean to brag, I don't mean to boast, but I like hot butter on my breakfast toast.
Y'know, the old school kind.
I too would love to see better GIS on the Mac. GRASS is good, and the price is right, but when you need to get down and work sometimes you want what you paid for to run on your pretty workstation...
...called muzak-1.
I wouldn't say Jamie's an evil genius... he's not evil, OR a genius.
Ugh. I just did this crap yesterday.
/filer management for Exchange seems to work pretty well, and you can restore arbitrary mailboxes, emails, whatever, from any point in time that you have backups for.
we don't do brick-level backups of mailboxes because it's too much overhead, so to restore a bunch of deleted contacts from a users mailbox I had to go back and restore the whole mailstore. conveniently, though, I was able to pop it on to the RSG on my new exchange 2003 box, which hurt much less than I thought it would.
I only wish the user had been on our new exchange 2003 box, which is backended onto a netapp filer- so far the snapshot backup
Sometimes, though exchange just makes me want to start smoking again.
"Would you be more or less likely to vote for the current president in the upcoming election if you knew he was having young girls kidnapped so he could rape them?"
sounds like another win for the Turd Blossom...
your .sig is SO on topic it's not even funny.
well, it would be funny, if it wasn't so painfully true.
the high-end G5's (at least the FX's) run at over 80C just ticking along. that's pretty warm, which explains the giant heat sinks (and the required liquid cooling units on the 2.5 and 2.7's).
I know the dual 2.0 box under my desk is like a freaking space heater, and really pumps out a lot of heat even just idling. it's nice and quiet, which means I don't notice the sheer quantity of hot air it's pushing out with those giant fans!
Pointing out the worst case scenarios of things usually means you're actually thinking actions through, before acting on them. that's a good trait to have.
When you look at some of the other posters, you realize that quite a few of them are the sort that would start taking down servers and destroying data the minute they found out they lost their job. you kiddies need to learn to behave yourselves! it comes back to bite you in the ass when you do stupid stuff.
Ironically, I have a friend who worked at Enron, and oddly enough all the people committing massive fraud there have by and large escaped scott-free. go figure.
good call. make sure to stamp "not a geek" on his forehead as he exits the basement.
...Seriously. I can only speculate that something really bad happened to you, to be so fixated on that.
:)
your advice about not intentionally pissing the guy off is very valid, but I do think that the best suggestion is to let the boss know in very calm terms that he is legally obligated to pay out the paycheck within (state-specific) time period of the pay date.
additionally, given that the US primarily operates under an "at will" employment model, if you feel like walking out you certainly can. it's not like the boss has to take your feelings into consideration if he decides to downsize you.
I think the best bet is to try to make it clear to the boss about how you're leaving, that you want things to go smoothly for everyone- but make sure he's aware that YOU are aware of your rights as laid down by law. Maybe he's the owner and whatnot but doesn't really know what the rules are? it might be good to make sure he knows the deal, and that quite a few actions on his part can really go against him in the long run.
the law is typically on your side as the employee; take advantage of it.
and I think you can probably disregard the possibility of being picked up on a warrant, unless you live in podunk, nebraska. when it gets "local" then the law is usually second to "kin". if that's the situation, then try moving to a larger city. really. we have better food and everything
ditto for me... I know all women aren't like that, but sometimes it feels that way. my wife will put her driver's license, atm card, and folding money into whatever pocket is convenient, or sometimes into whatever bag she's carrying at the time (!)
although that's changed for the better as the years go by, it still scares the crap out of me. I like to keep my wallet and keys in the same two places all the time, so I don't even have to think about where they are and if I have them or not. maybe that's just me...
As a PC user with an AMD64 and a brand spanking new 3.6 Ghz P4 in a shuttle 81P case, I was seriously dissapointed in the sheer amount of noise and heat that sucker generated. I mean, I KNEW it was going to be loud and hot, but seriously, it's just crazy.
my main surfing box is an old 1Ghz TiBook, but that still works pretty well for my needs. I picked up an apple mini when they came out to dink around with, and it's pretty nice and VERY small. It negated my need to build a nano-ITX based system, which I was pretty pleased about.
while it doesn't have the serious pixel-pushing power that my PC boxes have, those don't get used all that much. I don't need 54 dB of noise and massive power suckage just to look up recipes online, and the mini looks really nice on the kitchen countertop.
The only downside is my wife getting way too seriously into GarageBand - it's SCARY. I keep waking up to thumping bass and all sorts of odd noises that she's importing as loops. It's all fun, though.
That was a good one!
seriously.