Agreed. I look after around 40 people in a research lab and have being doing a slow rollout of SP2 on our windows boxes over the past few weeks.
All machines upgraded so far without a hitch. The (newish) firewall seems fair enough and it's actually quite nice when it pops up a window and tells you that something is trying to talk to the world. Downside? Some MS related programs (and Yahoo messeger to name but one) automatically open ports in the firewall.
Even installed a laptop from scratch with a slipstream install with no problems.
Personally, the only bad thing to me is the continual reminders about automatic updates being turned off. At least you can turn the reminder off I suppose.
I don't use IE (and advise people not to, under threat of upgrading their CPU with a hammer) so don't have any comments on that. We're all firefox people here.
Most of my problems come from people opening attachments and running unspecified 'bad' programs.
Funny you should mention giving away free quotes for car insurance with a game as an incentive for older gamers.
Recently in the UK Acclaim Entertainment software offered to pay the speeding fines incurred by people who bought their Burnout2:Point of Impact game. After several official (and semi-official) bodies voices their dispeasure they revoked their offer. Story Here.
That said, it's legal to drive over 17 in the UK, so maybe targetting 'older' gamers will catch on. I hope so, I'm one and could do with cheaper insurance...
One thing that hasn't been mentioned is the sheer cost of spending 86 hours at the computer. I read that you're talking something like 10 dollars/hour, that's 860 dollars (i can still multiply without xcalc!).
How could an unemployed man afford that? More to the point, not having much money - it could been the shock that killed him when he realised how much he spent.
A year without a growing season would be a positive boom for the farmers in Europe... with the absurd Common Agricultural Policy and the subsidies given to farmers who grow *nothing* they'd all become millionaires and retire!
Then, a year later, that's when we'd all starve as there would be no-one growing food...
Having multiple monitors is nothing new, they were doing that 10 years ago with the Windows SDK and Codeview via a serial port to a 2nd terminal monitor.
What with the move to displaying text slowly, aren't we going *back* in time? Surely nowadays the best thing is one monitor with the minimal amount of information on it as our attention span is getting shorter and the information we can process at one time just can't increase as we've only got one pair of eyes.
Absolute truth.
I did my degree year placement at Microsoft in the UK along with seven other students and we were put immediately on front line support. The existing guys all used us to get 1 day/week away from the phones to 'work on other problems.'
Two words... slave labour. We were paid a pittance for taking front line calls and were given a crib sheet of stock answers from a support database where we basically typed in a couple of keywords from the customer's query. After a few months we'd had enough and started messing around forwarding each other calls (to get the calls stats up and achieve [small] bonuses), seeing how long people would last on hold (to the 'Miami Vice' theme), listening to how people react to getting forwarded to the fax machine etc. etc.
Thank God after 10 months we left, but those poor guys are still mostly there. Only way out? Learn out, like the man said.
Nowadays I wouldn't call tech support either - I'd rather learn it myself.
I agree totally, but especially with the 'cubical' environment. There's no greater enemy to personal productivity and your sanity than having everyone looking over your shoulder as they walk on by.
Added to that is the lack of real authentic daylight. I'm a contract employee and as such usually get dumped in the middle of the building at the furthest point from natural light. It seems to me that the permanent guys all migrate with years of service towards the windows and stay there until they leave. I hate neon lights, they give me headaches! Let's have some proper lighting or more windows, that'd make me a lot happier...
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed. I look after around 40 people in a research lab and have being doing a slow rollout of SP2 on our windows boxes over the past few weeks.
All machines upgraded so far without a hitch. The (newish) firewall seems fair enough and it's actually quite nice when it pops up a window and tells you that something is trying to talk to the world. Downside? Some MS related programs (and Yahoo messeger to name but one) automatically open ports in the firewall.
Even installed a laptop from scratch with a slipstream install with no problems.
Personally, the only bad thing to me is the continual reminders about automatic updates being turned off. At least you can turn the reminder off I suppose.
I don't use IE (and advise people not to, under threat of upgrading their CPU with a hammer) so don't have any comments on that. We're all firefox people here.
Most of my problems come from people opening attachments and running unspecified 'bad' programs.
The Linux people? They're a dream.
Couldn't it be Voyager seen just after kidnapping Steve Jobs shortly before encountering a Federation Timeship from the 29th Century?
The technical challenge of hacking an XBox to run Linux is something I'd like to take up...
However, it'd be much nicer if I could just mail MS and ask them for $100 towards a new PC and cut out all the middle men.
Is anyone working on a Xbox emulator btw?
I'd be up for that.
"They won't see a thing" (ever again)
-- particularly if they were looking upwards at the time
I would guess that a certain government already knows that there's a huge amount of oil under there.
This road is literally all about starting a long journey with a single step.
Funny you should mention giving away free quotes for car insurance with a game as an incentive for older gamers.
Recently in the UK Acclaim Entertainment software offered to pay the speeding fines incurred by people who bought their Burnout2:Point of Impact game. After several official (and semi-official) bodies voices their dispeasure they revoked their offer. Story Here.
That said, it's legal to drive over 17 in the UK, so maybe targetting 'older' gamers will catch on. I hope so, I'm one and could do with cheaper insurance...
One thing that hasn't been mentioned is the sheer cost of spending 86 hours at the computer. I read that you're talking something like 10 dollars/hour, that's 860 dollars (i can still multiply without xcalc!).
How could an unemployed man afford that? More to the point, not having much money - it could been the shock that killed him when he realised how much he spent.
> (choose your unit)
You may have to, from a range of plastic replacements if you've come down from low orbit on a slide at 2000 degrees...
A year without a growing season would be a positive boom for the farmers in Europe... with the absurd Common Agricultural Policy and the subsidies given to farmers who grow *nothing* they'd all become millionaires and retire!
Then, a year later, that's when we'd all starve as there would be no-one growing food...
Having multiple monitors is nothing new, they were doing that 10 years ago with the Windows SDK and Codeview via a serial port to a 2nd terminal monitor.
What with the move to displaying text slowly, aren't we going *back* in time? Surely nowadays the best thing is one monitor with the minimal amount of information on it as our attention span is getting shorter and the information we can process at one time just can't increase as we've only got one pair of eyes.
Oops, what was I saying?
Absolute truth. I did my degree year placement at Microsoft in the UK along with seven other students and we were put immediately on front line support. The existing guys all used us to get 1 day/week away from the phones to 'work on other problems.' Two words... slave labour. We were paid a pittance for taking front line calls and were given a crib sheet of stock answers from a support database where we basically typed in a couple of keywords from the customer's query. After a few months we'd had enough and started messing around forwarding each other calls (to get the calls stats up and achieve [small] bonuses), seeing how long people would last on hold (to the 'Miami Vice' theme), listening to how people react to getting forwarded to the fax machine etc. etc. Thank God after 10 months we left, but those poor guys are still mostly there. Only way out? Learn out, like the man said. Nowadays I wouldn't call tech support either - I'd rather learn it myself.
I agree totally, but especially with the 'cubical' environment. There's no greater enemy to personal productivity and your sanity than having everyone looking over your shoulder as they walk on by. Added to that is the lack of real authentic daylight. I'm a contract employee and as such usually get dumped in the middle of the building at the furthest point from natural light. It seems to me that the permanent guys all migrate with years of service towards the windows and stay there until they leave. I hate neon lights, they give me headaches! Let's have some proper lighting or more windows, that'd make me a lot happier...