And tell them to go find something else to work on. Firefox is officially trash now, never used thunderbird (but I don't know anyone else that does either so whatever) and I know I for wont be touching firefox os after seeing how bad the browser platform has gotten in the last couple years.
Firefox is the least ram hungry browser available! Chrome and even IE 9 last year kicked Firefox 4 ass in on a silver platter. However, the quality is considerable better for their browser at least.
I installed FF 3.6 on a machine to test something and it was PAINFUL and slow to scroll and ram and disk hungry. I was so used to it for so long I forgot about what made Chrome so special in 2009 - 2011 when people started using it.
I still feel comfortable using it and if Mozilla fixes just a few more things I may just switch back to using it.
I do contracting and I am not a sys admin. I have seen all too many times some young 28 year old who was help desk do sys admin for 1200 computers with outdated domain controllers with stale OUs all over the place because the senior guys who made 70k were let go due to economic times etc.
I have not seen any respectable sys admin make more than 55k in years which is shocking since having a crappy help desk costs little compared to having the network down!
My guess is those that sold the least amount of protection plans. All BestBuy is based is upon sales metrics like 80% of the rest of retail. Credit card sales and protection plans are YOU OUT OF THERE.
The problem is when you need to share the data. Then a database is the answer and it can do data mining as well if it is a good non free one... well except if its Oracle. UGH.
But to me that is common sense rather than feeding it into a script in some programming langauge.
Remember back in the good old days when a System Administrator who had 7 years experience pulled in $120,000 a year? Now if you make over $40,000 you are eyed to be axed. After $45,000 you have to walk in water and know everything to justify to keep your job. They can find some guy with 1 year experience in help desk to always replace them for $32,000 a year to manage their mult million dollar IT infrastructure... rolls eyes.
I guess cost centers are always treated like crap even if they generate revenue and actually hurt the company when cut
Where else can I find these all so valued IT professionals? They are the only ones who know about these gold plated MONSTER grade $120 HDMI cables and those $60 power outlet extenders for superior computer performance and TV picture quality.
The answer is a Firefox exploit with an invisible iFrame. I have seen it myself and Hairyfeet noticed the same thing if you browse some porn sites with Firefox after you log in your account will randomly start spamming people.
Basically it is an iframe rogue ad which looks identical to the yahoo email login and it uses javascript to place it over the real yahoo login from yahoo.com. Since the iframe is invisible in Firefox you have no clue and just click on it and give in the username and password.
The Price/Earnings ratio is irrelevant to whether a company is doomed. In terms of whether a company is viable, income and cash flow are what really matters. Having a low P/E just means that the gamblers on the stock market don't think they're going to be doubling their money on you. And they won't with MS.
The fact that MS is not a growth stock probably means it's a *safer* bet than the latest rocket up (and then often enough, down).
(Sorry, but I lived through the dot-com bust. The idea that the stock market is anything more than a guess about the double derivative of expectations about what some other sucker will pay down the line is long dead. If you're expecting the stock market to actually provide an in-depth valuation about what a tech company is really worth, you're in for some deep disappointment.)
I strongly disagree as it is the only thing that matters if you are publically traded.... ok maybe if you pay a good dividend it wont matter as much I guess. But MS historically did not and pays a pittance.
The goal of a company is to raise its share price. Not make money. Nothing else matters. I studies the firing of Home Depot's CEO in business school. He increased sales by 80%, lowered its debt, did everything right for the company to grow and its profits were sky high! What did the shareholders do? They fired him. Why?
Share price did not go up. In finance you need to have the right magic ratios to do this. You need lots of debt to increase the cash on hand, increase liquid assets (things you can sell to make money fast/er) so you can show Wall Street that you can sell things to meet its quarterly expections, keep costs down, and grow quarter by quarter.
Look at from this angle? You pay x amount for shares of Microsoft that do not pay a dividend? Where is your money? Will you ever see it again? Unless the share price increases in value you just flushed it down the toilet.
MS needs to increase its debt load and liquid assets and use that cash to break into more markets and invest in itself while at the same time cut its costs by laying people off. HP, IBM, and others are all doing that with the profit per employee ratio. That or Balmer and Gates need to buy back the rest of the 40% of the shares of Microsoft and go private.
Your mother would be a classic example of using a tablet like an IPad or Amazon fire for her email and reading her books. People replaced their computer eveyr 2 - 3 years back in the 1990s just like they do with phones. Once things start stabilizing I predict the same for smart phones and tablets. In 10 years corporations will start to move that way too.
AD and static directory services are really a pain in the ass in this mobile age where a policy uploaded from an exchange email server can be uploaded to a Windows 8 device. My guess is future versions of Andriod and iOS will take the same settings and lock down other devices at work too similiar to Blackberry tools.
MS is in trouble indeed even if they do have an increase in sales the p/e and costs are going way higher than the revenue increases and this is what people saying MS is as strong as ever fail to see. IBM had a similiar downfall right before it had to leave the PC market and refocus itself.
Also, MS hires good people. If you are competing against other good people (not useless dolts), then it's hard to win on ability alone. It's far more effective to do a reasonable job, and suck up to your boss / make your boss look good / advertise your "achievements" to your boss's peers, etc.
Eventually, the people who are good at the game get promoted, and forget that the game is actually a bad thing. They start consciously rewarding people for playing the game (not getting fooled by it, but actually expecting their workers to game the system), and madness prevails.
I keep seeing this over and over that they hire good people. Everyone wants to only hire good people and why would good people with a poor rating at places like this work at such a place? Good people choose where they want to work. Bad or entry level people on the other hand get chosen by employers and have to suck it up just to get a job.
Also after you have a termination on your application or resume many places refuse to hire you or you work in another shitty company that can't find good workers who are willing to put up with the crap and lower pay even if you are a good performer but didn't make the metric. It makes you look incompetent and ruins your career. That is not really fair to the worker and his/her family.
I will even go further and say studies show when you turn your office into a dictatorship you do not even have to fire the lower performers. The good ones will simply quit leaving the bad apples who are desperate for a job to stay. Do you want to weed the out the bad apples? Or do you want to retain the cream of the crop? You can't have both in such a situation.
Usually VPs fighting each other is a result of a lack of vision and leadership. No one is calling the shots and unifying the company. I agree that Balmer has to go and Gates would be better able to put in a vision so VPs could work in their areas rather than trying to piss in each others departments for control.
The question is after that kind of environment can different departments like the Office and Windows departments trust each other?
Let me know when you lose that job because the employers that Taleo system requires word docs and the ones that look great in OpenOffice look funny on HRs computer with word?
Wow, I guess Tenth Show Jam can't even use margins in Word??! Who does this guy think he is?
Give me a break! Until the file format in office is not locked into the MS ecosystem corporations and myself will continue to use Windows/Office for this reason and it is really the only reason besides some old corporatware crap.
I do not know who moderated you, but in the business world saying you do not use Office shows you are incompetent like gloating you do not have an email address or a fax machine before then. Must be college students with no real world experience? Vendors, customers, workers, all use Office and email these documents to each other. Not "Here are the instructions on using Whiteboard..".
Until that changes Windows is going to stay. At least in the corporate world.
any job with metrics / review where someone has to get a poor review all suck and if you want to see how bad it can get look at best buy, circuit city, staples and others to see where that get's you.
Or teaching for that matter. All employers are doing this now and the MBAs love them. Maybe I am cynical but the strong demand for results really is the result of all this downsizing and restructuring.
In law school, you get all sorts of people being admitted to the program. Microsoft supposedly hires only the best and the brightest. If you're firing the same percentage of people in both situations, you're doing it wrong.
The people desperate for the job end up working at MS. 10 years ago I would believe you but today? Why would the best and brightest want to work there?
But the catch is unlike law school grads, no employee would want to work in that environment. Well at least a good employee knows he can get hired elsewhere and not fear of being fired every day.
I used to work minimum wage jobs that did this and it was a great motivator to finish my education so I would not have to put up with that again. People have student loans to pay off, mortgages, kids, wives, and their livelihood.
I do not like lower level performers but just the threat of termination every day if you don't sweat and fear for your job fucks you up even if you are not hte lowest performer. Morale goes down and so does everyones' productivity in the process.
It is exactly what is happening. Once consumers start buying more of these devices than PCs the software will start to be ported over and be gradually as good as the desktop versions. Then corporations will notice and leave ship too next.
I admit we are far from that at the office but businesses are 6 to 7 years behind consumers. The lockin is gradually going away and even if Windows 8 catches on MS will be screwed because they do not control the w3c standards like they once did and these apps can be ported over to Andriod and IOS fair easily.
Everytime a story about appears on ask slashdot where IE 6 is mentioned, there are million comments from kids under 23 saying how retarded could you be to use a proprietary standard by one company? The response is always, well MS set the standards and it is what everyone else did back then.
A decade ago MS set the standards on the web, not the W3C. They set the standards for cell phones. They set the standards for office document exchange. They set the standard on what can talk to an email server. They set the standard for PDA's and so on and so on. No one could survive against the all so scary Microsoft.
Today, W3C sets the standards, Apple, BB, and Google read emails from exchange servers fine, Apple, BB, and Google all make successful phones and smart PDA replacements, win 32 defecto standard is now slowly being replaced by clouds and internet apps that are device and OS independent.
To say MS is still as strong as ever and not going away is like saying the IBM mainframe is as strong as ever in the 20 years ago which it was and we all know what happened next in that timeframe as PCs became popular and a few apps from mainframes started to get ported over.
MS is fucked as we frankly do not need them except for Office document exchange. If we can break the Office file format monopoly next, then people like myself wont need Windows and Office anymore and it is game over for MS. They will be done.
In new markets MS has done terrible and been a loss leader. Has anyone seen a Windows 7 phone yet? I rest my point.
Balmer is hoping WIndows 8 turns things around but Metro is all W3C ajax mostly that can easily be ported.
This trojan uses pnp exploit to reset the routers firmware to use the hacked DNS settings.
No amount of AV software nor a new computer hooked into the network can escape this. Logging into the router is out of depth of average users knowledge and expertise and my guess is this and inept corporate IT departments who use unpatched Windows (almost all of them) are the majority of those that are left. So I do not blame these users.
They will have to call their ISP on instructions on how to reset their DNS settings or buy a new wifi router. It will suck to be helpdesk tomorrow on any ISP that is for sure.
The FBI could be liable. Especially if corporate or government computers became infected and no anti virus package had the definitions for it at the time assuming it started as a 0 day exploit,
My guess is all the corporate phbs bigwigs who love to still use XP/IE 6 with no updates because it is cheaper to have IT just put out fires to help boast the share price are the ones in for a surprise.
With Symantec endpoint I am sure it would be detected... yeah right
Sure, but how many ISPs really have the resources to fix this problem? After all, an ISP deals with the network side of things, not fixing viruses. If the ISP's DNS server is down, you call your ISP. If the ISP cut a fiber optic cable and your internet is down, you call your ISP. If your HDD is broken, you don't call your ISP. If you get a virus, you don't call your ISP. Etc.
Sadly, aside from a few local places, most of the "big chain" tech support people are extortionists and by the time "Geek Squad" is done "fixing" your computer, you could already upgrade to a newer machine (which is what they want) where the salesmen will use lies and manipulations. Of course, Geek Squad and Best Buy's salesmen are good for the humor value, I asked one of them what the clock speed of one computer was and he said "Eastern standard time of course"...
The problem is once your machine becomes infected it uses a plugnplay exploit to reset your routers DNS settings. So it is now the ISPs problem as even if you clean or even buy a new pc you will be cut off and Joe Sixpack doesn't know what a DNS is. All he knows is his internets stop working and since he got a new computer it is therefore the ISPs fault.
He maybe chairman but he does nothing with daily operation nor guiding teams and telling them what to do. Windows 8 with Metro would not be so pathetic and Vista never would have happened in its current form he was the actual CEO and ran the company.
It shows. Vista was rushed to get it out and so was Windows 8 with Metro. Metro is truly terrible even for a tablet OS that even iOS 1.0 and Andriod 1.x are more functional and feature filled. The integration with the desktop is wrong as well as taking away instant search to the abomination and many many more small things that add with attention to detail.
Some people browse the web on iPads now. This is approximately the only piece of evidence I've seen that the PC is "dying".
We all still have a PC in our office to do real work. People write code, write papers, design things, run simulations, SSH into servers, work with complicated spreadsheets and databases, run custom software applications, etc. When there's any sign at all that most of that work is moving onto tablets, then it'll be reasonable to start saying the PC is dying.
... time machine whirling back 27 years in your office...
Some people browse terminal emulation software on PCs now. This is approximately the only piece of evidence I've seen that the mainframe is "dying". We still have a Mammonth IBM Mainframe in our office to do real work. People write code, write papers, design things, run simulations, x3270 into our mainframes, work with complicated accounting software and databases, run custom software applications, etc. When there's any sign at all that most of that work is moving onto PCs, then it'll be reasonable to start saying the mainframe is dying.
I wanted to post in the story, but didn't want to appear off topic is how similar this is when Gui's in Mac/Windows were competing against Dos/Unix in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The IPhone is almost 5 years old and parallels to 1989 when the Mac just turned 5 years and Windows 3.0 was in beta with the same too companies today.
Is this new trend similar to the gui vs CLI wars? X was hated and used in the UNIX community too back in the late 1980s similar to Gnome-Shell/Unity today as well. Ironically it was the Macintosh that brought the gui and professional IT staff and programmers HATED it! Hipsters or those who could afford one loved it, but many preferred Unix or Dos if you could not afford a $30,000 workstation.
Is the Tablet UI the new gui and a new age in computing? It seems professionals love the old way better.
Slashdot Mirror
And tell them to go find something else to work on. Firefox is officially trash now, never used thunderbird (but I don't know anyone else that does either so whatever) and I know I for wont be touching firefox os after seeing how bad the browser platform has gotten in the last couple years.
Firefox is the least ram hungry browser available! Chrome and even IE 9 last year kicked Firefox 4 ass in on a silver platter. However, the quality is considerable better for their browser at least.
I installed FF 3.6 on a machine to test something and it was PAINFUL and slow to scroll and ram and disk hungry. I was so used to it for so long I forgot about what made Chrome so special in 2009 - 2011 when people started using it.
I still feel comfortable using it and if Mozilla fixes just a few more things I may just switch back to using it.
Uh, thanks for the offensive reply.
I do contracting and I am not a sys admin. I have seen all too many times some young 28 year old who was help desk do sys admin for 1200 computers with outdated domain controllers with stale OUs all over the place because the senior guys who made 70k were let go due to economic times etc.
I have not seen any respectable sys admin make more than 55k in years which is shocking since having a crappy help desk costs little compared to having the network down!
Most are certainly not random.
My guess is those that sold the least amount of protection plans. All BestBuy is based is upon sales metrics like 80% of the rest of retail. Credit card sales and protection plans are YOU OUT OF THERE.
It does a great job.
The problem is when you need to share the data. Then a database is the answer and it can do data mining as well if it is a good non free one ... well except if its Oracle. UGH.
But to me that is common sense rather than feeding it into a script in some programming langauge.
Then GeekSquad is like the rest of the IT field.
Remember back in the good old days when a System Administrator who had 7 years experience pulled in $120,000 a year? Now if you make over $40,000 you are eyed to be axed. After $45,000 you have to walk in water and know everything to justify to keep your job. They can find some guy with 1 year experience in help desk to always replace them for $32,000 a year to manage their mult million dollar IT infrastructure ... rolls eyes.
I guess cost centers are always treated like crap even if they generate revenue and actually hurt the company when cut
Where else can I find these all so valued IT professionals? They are the only ones who know about these gold plated MONSTER grade $120 HDMI cables and those $60 power outlet extenders for superior computer performance and TV picture quality.
No the question is whether it is legitimate.
Then that case Excel because you can email it and share it with colleagues and it is PHB approved.
The answer is a Firefox exploit with an invisible iFrame. I have seen it myself and Hairyfeet noticed the same thing if you browse some porn sites with Firefox after you log in your account will randomly start spamming people.
Basically it is an iframe rogue ad which looks identical to the yahoo email login and it uses javascript to place it over the real yahoo login from yahoo.com. Since the iframe is invisible in Firefox you have no clue and just click on it and give in the username and password.
I wonder if Mozilla fixed this?
The Price/Earnings ratio is irrelevant to whether a company is doomed. In terms of whether a company is viable, income and cash flow are what really matters. Having a low P/E just means that the gamblers on the stock market don't think they're going to be doubling their money on you. And they won't with MS.
The fact that MS is not a growth stock probably means it's a *safer* bet than the latest rocket up (and then often enough, down).
(Sorry, but I lived through the dot-com bust. The idea that the stock market is anything more than a guess about the double derivative of expectations about what some other sucker will pay down the line is long dead. If you're expecting the stock market to actually provide an in-depth valuation about what a tech company is really worth, you're in for some deep disappointment.)
I strongly disagree as it is the only thing that matters if you are publically traded. ... ok maybe if you pay a good dividend it wont matter as much I guess. But MS historically did not and pays a pittance.
The goal of a company is to raise its share price. Not make money. Nothing else matters. I studies the firing of Home Depot's CEO in business school. He increased sales by 80%, lowered its debt, did everything right for the company to grow and its profits were sky high! What did the shareholders do? They fired him. Why?
Share price did not go up. In finance you need to have the right magic ratios to do this. You need lots of debt to increase the cash on hand, increase liquid assets (things you can sell to make money fast/er) so you can show Wall Street that you can sell things to meet its quarterly expections, keep costs down, and grow quarter by quarter.
Look at from this angle? You pay x amount for shares of Microsoft that do not pay a dividend? Where is your money? Will you ever see it again? Unless the share price increases in value you just flushed it down the toilet.
MS needs to increase its debt load and liquid assets and use that cash to break into more markets and invest in itself while at the same time cut its costs by laying people off. HP, IBM, and others are all doing that with the profit per employee ratio. That or Balmer and Gates need to buy back the rest of the 40% of the shares of Microsoft and go private.
Your mother would be a classic example of using a tablet like an IPad or Amazon fire for her email and reading her books. People replaced their computer eveyr 2 - 3 years back in the 1990s just like they do with phones. Once things start stabilizing I predict the same for smart phones and tablets. In 10 years corporations will start to move that way too.
AD and static directory services are really a pain in the ass in this mobile age where a policy uploaded from an exchange email server can be uploaded to a Windows 8 device. My guess is future versions of Andriod and iOS will take the same settings and lock down other devices at work too similiar to Blackberry tools.
MS is in trouble indeed even if they do have an increase in sales the p/e and costs are going way higher than the revenue increases and this is what people saying MS is as strong as ever fail to see. IBM had a similiar downfall right before it had to leave the PC market and refocus itself.
Also, MS hires good people. If you are competing against other good people (not useless dolts), then it's hard to win on ability alone. It's far more effective to do a reasonable job, and suck up to your boss / make your boss look good / advertise your "achievements" to your boss's peers, etc.
Eventually, the people who are good at the game get promoted, and forget that the game is actually a bad thing. They start consciously rewarding people for playing the game (not getting fooled by it, but actually expecting their workers to game the system), and madness prevails.
I keep seeing this over and over that they hire good people. Everyone wants to only hire good people and why would good people with a poor rating at places like this work at such a place? Good people choose where they want to work. Bad or entry level people on the other hand get chosen by employers and have to suck it up just to get a job.
Also after you have a termination on your application or resume many places refuse to hire you or you work in another shitty company that can't find good workers who are willing to put up with the crap and lower pay even if you are a good performer but didn't make the metric. It makes you look incompetent and ruins your career. That is not really fair to the worker and his/her family.
I will even go further and say studies show when you turn your office into a dictatorship you do not even have to fire the lower performers. The good ones will simply quit leaving the bad apples who are desperate for a job to stay. Do you want to weed the out the bad apples? Or do you want to retain the cream of the crop? You can't have both in such a situation.
Usually VPs fighting each other is a result of a lack of vision and leadership. No one is calling the shots and unifying the company. I agree that Balmer has to go and Gates would be better able to put in a vision so VPs could work in their areas rather than trying to piss in each others departments for control.
The question is after that kind of environment can different departments like the Office and Windows departments trust each other?
Let me know when you lose that job because the employers that Taleo system requires word docs and the ones that look great in OpenOffice look funny on HRs computer with word?
Wow, I guess Tenth Show Jam can't even use margins in Word??! Who does this guy think he is?
Give me a break! Until the file format in office is not locked into the MS ecosystem corporations and myself will continue to use Windows/Office for this reason and it is really the only reason besides some old corporatware crap.
I do not know who moderated you, but in the business world saying you do not use Office shows you are incompetent like gloating you do not have an email address or a fax machine before then. Must be college students with no real world experience? Vendors, customers, workers, all use Office and email these documents to each other. Not "Here are the instructions on using Whiteboard ..".
Until that changes Windows is going to stay. At least in the corporate world.
any job with metrics / review where someone has to get a poor review all suck and if you want to see how bad it can get look at best buy, circuit city, staples and others to see where that get's you.
Or teaching for that matter. All employers are doing this now and the MBAs love them. Maybe I am cynical but the strong demand for results really is the result of all this downsizing and restructuring.
In law school, you get all sorts of people being admitted to the program. Microsoft supposedly hires only the best and the brightest. If you're firing the same percentage of people in both situations, you're doing it wrong.
Well anyone worth their salt goes to many sites like , googles and reads articles like this on slashdot before taking a job offer. If they are the best and brightest they would RUN! Every employer wants only the best. But they can't possible get all the best unless they pay 40% above market value, and kiss ass to the employees and do crazy things and have tremendous growth and so on.
The people desperate for the job end up working at MS. 10 years ago I would believe you but today? Why would the best and brightest want to work there?
But the catch is unlike law school grads, no employee would want to work in that environment. Well at least a good employee knows he can get hired elsewhere and not fear of being fired every day.
I used to work minimum wage jobs that did this and it was a great motivator to finish my education so I would not have to put up with that again. People have student loans to pay off, mortgages, kids, wives, and their livelihood.
I do not like lower level performers but just the threat of termination every day if you don't sweat and fear for your job fucks you up even if you are not hte lowest performer. Morale goes down and so does everyones' productivity in the process.
Why is this funny?
It is exactly what is happening. Once consumers start buying more of these devices than PCs the software will start to be ported over and be gradually as good as the desktop versions. Then corporations will notice and leave ship too next.
I admit we are far from that at the office but businesses are 6 to 7 years behind consumers. The lockin is gradually going away and even if Windows 8 catches on MS will be screwed because they do not control the w3c standards like they once did and these apps can be ported over to Andriod and IOS fair easily.
MS hasn't had a downfall?
Everytime a story about appears on ask slashdot where IE 6 is mentioned, there are million comments from kids under 23 saying how retarded could you be to use a proprietary standard by one company? The response is always, well MS set the standards and it is what everyone else did back then.
A decade ago MS set the standards on the web, not the W3C. They set the standards for cell phones. They set the standards for office document exchange. They set the standard on what can talk to an email server. They set the standard for PDA's and so on and so on. No one could survive against the all so scary Microsoft.
Today, W3C sets the standards, Apple, BB, and Google read emails from exchange servers fine, Apple, BB, and Google all make successful phones and smart PDA replacements, win 32 defecto standard is now slowly being replaced by clouds and internet apps that are device and OS independent.
To say MS is still as strong as ever and not going away is like saying the IBM mainframe is as strong as ever in the 20 years ago which it was and we all know what happened next in that timeframe as PCs became popular and a few apps from mainframes started to get ported over.
MS is fucked as we frankly do not need them except for Office document exchange. If we can break the Office file format monopoly next, then people like myself wont need Windows and Office anymore and it is game over for MS. They will be done.
In new markets MS has done terrible and been a loss leader. Has anyone seen a Windows 7 phone yet? I rest my point.
Balmer is hoping WIndows 8 turns things around but Metro is all W3C ajax mostly that can easily be ported.
This trojan uses pnp exploit to reset the routers firmware to use the hacked DNS settings.
No amount of AV software nor a new computer hooked into the network can escape this. Logging into the router is out of depth of average users knowledge and expertise and my guess is this and inept corporate IT departments who use unpatched Windows (almost all of them) are the majority of those that are left. So I do not blame these users.
They will have to call their ISP on instructions on how to reset their DNS settings or buy a new wifi router. It will suck to be helpdesk tomorrow on any ISP that is for sure.
The FBI could be liable. Especially if corporate or government computers became infected and no anti virus package had the definitions for it at the time assuming it started as a 0 day exploit,
My guess is all the corporate phbs bigwigs who love to still use XP/IE 6 with no updates because it is cheaper to have IT just put out fires to help boast the share price are the ones in for a surprise.
With Symantec endpoint I am sure it would be detected ... yeah right
Sure, but how many ISPs really have the resources to fix this problem? After all, an ISP deals with the network side of things, not fixing viruses. If the ISP's DNS server is down, you call your ISP. If the ISP cut a fiber optic cable and your internet is down, you call your ISP. If your HDD is broken, you don't call your ISP. If you get a virus, you don't call your ISP. Etc.
Sadly, aside from a few local places, most of the "big chain" tech support people are extortionists and by the time "Geek Squad" is done "fixing" your computer, you could already upgrade to a newer machine (which is what they want) where the salesmen will use lies and manipulations. Of course, Geek Squad and Best Buy's salesmen are good for the humor value, I asked one of them what the clock speed of one computer was and he said "Eastern standard time of course"...
The problem is once your machine becomes infected it uses a plugnplay exploit to reset your routers DNS settings. So it is now the ISPs problem as even if you clean or even buy a new pc you will be cut off and Joe Sixpack doesn't know what a DNS is. All he knows is his internets stop working and since he got a new computer it is therefore the ISPs fault.
He's still chairman of the board.
He maybe chairman but he does nothing with daily operation nor guiding teams and telling them what to do. Windows 8 with Metro would not be so pathetic and Vista never would have happened in its current form he was the actual CEO and ran the company.
It shows. Vista was rushed to get it out and so was Windows 8 with Metro. Metro is truly terrible even for a tablet OS that even iOS 1.0 and Andriod 1.x are more functional and feature filled. The integration with the desktop is wrong as well as taking away instant search to the abomination and many many more small things that add with attention to detail.
Some people browse the web on iPads now. This is approximately the only piece of evidence I've seen that the PC is "dying".
We all still have a PC in our office to do real work. People write code, write papers, design things, run simulations, SSH into servers, work with complicated spreadsheets and databases, run custom software applications, etc. When there's any sign at all that most of that work is moving onto tablets, then it'll be reasonable to start saying the PC is dying.
... time machine whirling back 27 years in your office ...
Some people browse terminal emulation software on PCs now. This is approximately the only piece of evidence I've seen that the mainframe is "dying". We still have a Mammonth IBM Mainframe in our office to do real work. People write code, write papers, design things, run simulations, x3270 into our mainframes, work with complicated accounting software and databases, run custom software applications, etc. When there's any sign at all that most of that work is moving onto PCs, then it'll be reasonable to start saying the mainframe is dying.
I wanted to post in the story, but didn't want to appear off topic is how similar this is when Gui's in Mac/Windows were competing against Dos/Unix in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The IPhone is almost 5 years old and parallels to 1989 when the Mac just turned 5 years and Windows 3.0 was in beta with the same too companies today.
Is this new trend similar to the gui vs CLI wars? X was hated and used in the UNIX community too back in the late 1980s similar to Gnome-Shell/Unity today as well. Ironically it was the Macintosh that brought the gui and professional IT staff and programmers HATED it! Hipsters or those who could afford one loved it, but many preferred Unix or Dos if you could not afford a $30,000 workstation.
Is the Tablet UI the new gui and a new age in computing? It seems professionals love the old way better.