the Courtney love text is here: http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/06/14/lov e/print.html
I have to admit that when I read this all I could say was, "Daaaaamn!" She nailed it right on the head. I recommend this to anyone interested in Napster/MP3's/Music/RIAA. I think she fairly gets on everyones case a bit. Very well reasoned out. I have to say that I am on her side. Go Courtney!!!
Disney's Tarzan and Dinosoaurs both were available in pure digital format without being transfered to film first. Tarzan was last year and Dinosaurs came out last month, so Titan AE isn't even the first one to be pure digital this year.
I have seen both in the digital formats. It is impressive.
While I agree with a lot of your comments. I think your time frame is compressed. Ten years from now this process will probably start getting going. The one item everyone refers to is broadband. It is going to take a lot longer then people think for usable bandwidth to be readily available for processes like this.
I use this same argument that ASP's won't be truly viable for home and many small business use until the pipelines to do an 80 Meg transfer in a couple of seconds is available across the board.
Broadband growth will be slowed by regulation and foot dragging, IMHO.
Really? In my experience, it's the developers who are only interested in looking at problems in the latest releases.
Point taken. I think a compromise would be best under this situation. A smaller company, ie less than 800 or so employees, would probably work well in your scenario. There is still a lot of interaction between sales/maerketing groups and development groups. As the company gets larger, sales and development will start to drift apart as more layers get in the way. I ask this, would you really want MS sales/marketing to be running the helpdesk there?
A middle size company, say 900-3000 or so, a blend of development and marketing would be needed to maintain adequate understanding of the products.
A large size company should have an independent unit stricly for help desk sperate from either arm; but with connections to both.
Of course, this is all for external type setups. I do maintain that an internal company helpdesk needs to be almost completely under the domain of the IS department.
Disclaimer: Above numbers are for illustrative purposes only and do not reflect any real world info. Do not use if seal is broken. Void in Ohio
Sales/Marketing???? Oh my God! This man has been assimilated!!!!
From a user support standpoint, JordonH's comments are the least practical I have ever seen. A Sales/Marketing run support group would probably suggest an upgrade every time you call for help at a fee. Bad bad bad bad bad move.
My personal opinion is that there is no magic number or ratio. A lot of it depends on how well user training is, how good the techs are and level of automation available.
My company, despite its size, really has a small helpdesk due to automation. Our ratio is about 1:110. That ratio is for level 1 helpdesk, roughly 75% of the calls [they fudge the numbers to make it look 90%; but 75% is more accurate. I don't count calls about moving a printer from one cube to another as helpdesk related.] I would say that under ideal situations, that would be a good number for my company. Only problem is that the quality of the level 1 folks is very poor. Over 70% of the 200+ folks are temps. Not very well trained most of the time. We rely too much on "Knowledge based systems" for canned tech solutions. Those are fine, except when the level 1 person can't even properly diagnose.
I should also add that our helpdesk is a "Technology Sweatshop." Everything is monitored and strict limits on time they work on calls are enforced. IMHO, this is the worst, most useless form of a helpdesk you can have.
If I were designing a helpdesk, I would try to set it up with a wide variety of trained individuals. If incorpoated into an existing IS shop, see if you could include a rotation of your current tech staff. Keep the rotations short enough that it is bearable. The majority of an experienced tech staff would hate working helpdesk. However, if it is fair and projects are not impinged upon, it could work.
I would also try to avoid too much shifting of calls from a level 1 to a level 2 situation. The more calls the techs can handle at Level 1, the happier your users will be. Many times, a user will feel that his time will have been completely wasted because the Level 2 person usually redoes a lot of stuff that level 1 has already done.
Lastly, training training training! Unfotunately, most companies treat help desk works as just another body. Don't do that. train these people, encourage them, don't burn them out and offer a career path. A bad helpdesk person is easy to weed out and easy to replace. A good helpdesk worker is worth thier weight in gold when they can please your users and or customers. A good/bad experience with a helpdesk can be the difference if you are selling a product or service.
Be willing to experiment, some ways of doing things may work. Some may be hideous failures. Do not tie yourself to somethig just because a consultant says so. You can use it as a start; but be prepared to trash the model.
A good helpdesk will be creative and dynamic. Never be afraid of trying things; but always make sure you are treating the staff with respect. A master slave realtionship can work with muxes and modems and various hardware, but it doesn't work with people!
It just dawned on me. Unisys and AccuWeather are competing providers of weather data, such as value added weather radar feeds. So my suspicion is that this may be more than just trying to get huge royalties.
In addition to this, Unisys will be losing its bread and butter in the weather area at the end of September when its contract with NOAA expires to be one of three exclusive providers of radar data from the NEXRAD system[NOAA's doppler radars]. NOAA is going to start providing the data free on the net at that time. Unisys, WSI and Kavouras contracts all expire at the same time. They all made boatloads of money off of this. AccuWeather will be in the weather business long after this. Unisys may slowly bow out.
I know I will be flamed for this; but, if a parent wants to use a piece of blocking software to prevent their kid from seeing porn, what is actually wrong with that? Why shouldn't a parent be able to have some control over their kid? If the blocking software is what works for them, so be it. To advocate putting ways of getting the passwords to bypass them on the net is irresponsible. Just as I feel that government really doesn't have a right to tell me how I should raise a kid, I don't think any of you have a right to tell me what I should do either! What happens inside someones home is their own problem.
I am not pro-censorship. I in no way support filters in libraries and places like that. I do agree that the list of block sites should be made available and support decryption of those. However, going beyond that is wrong and I think a lawsuit over that is actually reasonable.
Like the company, software or not, they do have a right to protect the viability of thier product. Other countries have laws also. Just because a US company is filing a suit against a Sweedish or Canadian national, it doesn't mean they are enforcing US laws. Between treaties and other items, most of these compaines will have laws of their own to cover these situations.
/. posters tend to take a knee-jerk reaction to certain items. Being completely radical will cause views to be dismissed as crackpot in just the same way many of you would dismiss the views of the American Family Association[which is a screwed up all together]. There is a use for filtering for parents at home. Yes, the parents have to use proper discretion and know when to disable such filters. However, that should be the parents call. As much as many of you in the under 18 crowd think you know everything, you don't. I thought I knew everything when I was a kid, as did my parents, as did your parents and as did your own kids. I never thought I would say this; but your parents do know what they are talking about [much of the time].
I would suggest that future efforts stick to decryption of the blocking databases. Having that available is far more beneficial then just trying to destroy the programs because that will only lead to someone coming up with something even harder.
All arguments aside about private vs. public colleges: I attended the U of Missouri and we did in fact pay $20 a month for ethernet access which came to around $9600 a month that a dorm would pay for something like ResNet. This most certainly facilitates the kind of bandwidth that the students would be using up with programs like Napster.
I hate to say this; but $9600/month is not nearly enough to service the bandwidth needs of 480 folks, even if only 20% are running Napster, IMHO. It's still subsidised. You have to factor in infrastructure cost, support costs and the like to come up with a true value. I don't know what kind of equipment or speed links are being used across that campus. I would say that $20 is a bargin, even if Napster is blocked.
Napster is pain in the butt and a bandwidth hog. If that is the real reason it is being blocked, I consider that a legit reason. Bandwidth is a finite item, even at universities. Yes, you can say that your dollars are paying for it. I would argue, if you want to say that, that there is a finite amount of bandwidth that you have paid for and after you have used it, your service is cut or you can pay for more. It is not cheap to throw in additional internet links. The end user has to be responsible in their usage.
Now on the censorship side, that is just not acceptable and should not be tolerated. Bandwidth mangement is one thing. Censoring is never the right reason.
Their really isn't a fair way to implement a sales tax over the internet due to so many local option taxes. If it was just one rule for each state, it would still be a bit confusing. Although, it would be manageable. Taxes will come. There just has to be a good fair way to determine what it should be. Maybe a flat internet sales tax of 5% across the board. This is still unfair to states without sales tax. I think the option of one tax per state is the way to go. Let the municipalities fight it out with the state as to how to disperse the money.
Not a perfect replacement, by any means. Heck, I would love to get a hold of one just for the fun of it. My apartment is too small for a cat as it is. It would be an interesting conversation piece, too. Probably a bit too much money to for just that purpose. Plus, needing a rack of rechargeable batteries. Yeah, I would take one. I wonder if it will have a choice of fur. Better yet....Changeable fur. Cat of the week!!
To put it simply, a newspaper is a lot more portable at the moment. I know some folks out there may think and do otherwise, but I will not carry a laptop into the restroom/reading room. A newspaper, however, is perfect. [I don't even want to hear how some of you have installed screens in the wall and wireless keyboards and mouses attached to the john! A phone in the bathroom is too much for me.]
Plus, I still have yet to find a suitable online replacement for the Sunday newspaper. I like being able to jump around in the newspaper a lot easier then I can on the newspapers web page. Plus, the battery won't die on the newspaper when reading it on a plane.
Yeah, newspapers are slowly dying. I'm sure the newspaper subscription of the future will be some kind of PDA style device that continually updates during the day and folds out to newspaper size. until that happens, a good ole newspaper is still easier to deal with.
These guys/kaids are getting very annoying. If they had a purpose it would be one thing. I'm guessing they are just doing this to give themselves a reason to whack off at their computers. 'I'm cool! I took down CNN. Oh yeah! Oh Yeah! oh Yeaaaaaaaaaaah!':P
I think it is time we came up with a new term for this group. We have Hackers and Crackers, of which they fit neither. I propose a new group: UPDiCs - Useless Piles of Dividing Cells. Now if some one could just go ahead and degause these UPDiCs hard drives along with giving them frontal lobotomies, I would be very happy. If we can't do that, lets just fill up there data storage devices with Janet Reno Porn!
this is one way to do it. Not that business shouldn't offer some ergonomic aid. Many good companies will. However, if this practice will open them up to more lawsuits or higher costs than what they would have in a regular office enviroment, telecommuting will be killed off. A company will, usually, only use this option if there is also a benefit to the company. If this benefit is out weighed by possible costs of regulations/lawsuits, they won't think twice about cutting it.
OSHA has a duty to enforce workplace regulations; but if they push the issue, growth of SOHO's will drop like a plummeting anvil.
And I think the point that he's trying to make isn't that experiences in tech support can't be funny. Strips like UF don't make fun of the tech support occupation. They make fun of the people that tech support is supposed to be helping.
UF doesn't make fun of the tech support people? I think it sure does. There are plenty of shots at tech folks in there.
At the company I work for, customers aren't referred to as 'users' because many don't understand that as anything but a negative term.
My company does the same thing. Just because we call someone a 'Business Partner' instead of a user doesn't mean a thing, IMHO. It has nothing to do with the name as much as it has to do with the attitude.
Tech support is about helping people. It's not about solving their problems, but getting them to solve their problems. Tech support employees are educators, because the more education they do, the better they serve their company.
Half right. TS is about helping folks. However, education is up to the person on the other end of the phone. My first question is 'Have you read the manual?' At least two thirds of the time the answer is no. In at least 75% of those, the answer was in the manual. TS is not a manual via phone. In my company, we have a training unit. They do a poor job. Not all their fault. Most training methods are junk these days.
We don't call them names behind their back because you never know when that information may be subpoenad and you get caught red-faced.
I save this for last. WHAT A JOKE! This is the most incredulous comment I have seen. If you and your company or you is that worried about being sued that you can't even joke on downtime, you need a new life or new company. Sorry. It has nothing to do with 'being professional.' Humor is simply part of life. I laugh at myself as much as I laugh at anyone else.
Simple fact of the matter is that the artwork is not the be all end all of a strip. A comic strips intention is to express a set of ideas where the medium is visual. No one is ever going to see a comic strip auctioned off for $1M and hung in a museum of fine art next to works by the Masters. Comic strips are entertainment for the masses and can be directed to a specific audience. I read comics to be entertained. If I wanted to critique art, I'd head to the art gallery.
Simply put, to complain about a strips 'artisitic look' is like complaining about how bad the water tastes when you are at an oasis in the desert.
Why is it that we have to take everything so seriously? Nothing is ever going to be funny to everyone. Some people want a well drawn comic. If so, try Mary Worth. Others want simple humor, try Family Circus. Then there are some that want humor that they can relate too. If you do technical support, you can probably relate to UF et al. I'm not looking for a masterpiece. I want something that I can chuckle with. Parody and sarcasm are valid humor lines. When training departments don't train and tech support becomes defacto trainers, you are going to have these situations. UF just puts into pixels what a lot of folks would love to do; but can't. Personally, I am sympathetic to a user who has problems; but is willing to learn. A user who thinks that learning to use their computer isn't part of their job is useless to me. The computer is a tool as is a car or a phone when it comes to business. You HAVE to learn how to use them.
I digress, though. You may think that a strip is funny or not, thats AOK. To go on a diatribe and say that it is wrong is very judgemental, shortsighted and ultimately make the person look like a close minded fool. No one is harmed by a comic strip that makes fun of computer users. It is a parody of real life. Just as the Simpsons parodies cops eating doughnuts and King of The Hill parodies Texans. A parody will always extend the towards the absurd. I personally don't find PvP funny. I'm not going to write a rant about it.
For the artist of a strip to attack other strips rings of sour grapes. Especially when the same person admits to being guilty of the same thing he is ranting about. Please check your hubris and hipocracy at the door, I'm too busy having fun to care.
PS. Ob-Flame: The grammar in the subtitle under the plucked strips is wrong on the rant page. Aren't is horrible and should have been 'am I not'.
You get what you pay for in most cases. [Open Source not included. I don't want to don an abestos suit today.] I'm pretty sure they would have to have had something in their EULA. Simply put, almost no company gives away a product wihout getting something out of it. All in all, if the only place Comet mentioned their real purpose was in the EULA, that was pretty sneaky. I bet they have piled up a ton of data. Considering about 80% of the people who downloaded these cursors probably don't read tech news, they will probably be able to continue reaping the data.
You get what you pay for in most cases. [Open Source not included. I don't want to don an abestos suit today.] I'm pretty sure they would have to have had something in their EULA. Simply put, almost no company gives away a product without getting something out of it. All in all, if the only place Comet mentioned their real purpose was in the EULA, that was pretty sneaky. I bet they have piled up a ton of data. Considering about 80% of the people who downloaded these cursors probably don't read tech news, they will probably be able to continue reaping the data.
The PCWeek dead tree edition from last week had this info in it. I don't have an url link. It also mentioned that it caused problems with Compaq's Network Teaming when used with load balancing causing BSOD's. Compaq did issue a patch for that, though. One of the few times I have seen ZDNet recommend to delay putting it in until MS issues SP6 fixes.
with this is that if the local bells can't make as much money off of DSL as they were, will they just slow down the roll out even more. Granted, I doubt they could go any slower. In the long run, this is a very positive event. I would think that within a few months of this taking full effect, we will see a lot more DSL services being offered in areas where it is available.
This is fine????????? What are you smoking? There are nifty things called killfiles to take care of obnoxious folks. Just don't read the messages, for crying out loud. To bring the courts into this is not only crazy but dangerous. I personally would not recognize a Seattle court jurisdiction over me on the internet. I'm getting off topic though. Ask yourselves this question, where is/. any different from the Usenet? This sounds like it has nothing to do with anything but a bunch of immature people who don't know how to carry on a conversation. Could you imagine how cluttered the courts would get if only 1% of all flamewars ended up there? This is simply bad precedent. Users have to take responsibilty and know when to just ignore others. The correct answer to this is not to involve the courts but just use common sense.
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the Courtney love text is here:v e/print.html
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/06/14/lo
I have to admit that when I read this all I could say was, "Daaaaamn!" She nailed it right on the head. I recommend this to anyone interested in Napster/MP3's/Music/RIAA. I think she fairly gets on everyones case a bit. Very well reasoned out. I have to say that I am on her side. Go Courtney!!!
Disney's Tarzan and Dinosoaurs both were available in pure digital format without being transfered to film first. Tarzan was last year and Dinosaurs came out last month, so Titan AE isn't even the first one to be pure digital this year.
I have seen both in the digital formats. It is impressive.
While I agree with a lot of your comments. I think your time frame is compressed. Ten years from now this process will probably start getting going. The one item everyone refers to is broadband. It is going to take a lot longer then people think for usable bandwidth to be readily available for processes like this.
I use this same argument that ASP's won't be truly viable for home and many small business use until the pipelines to do an 80 Meg transfer in a couple of seconds is available across the board.
Broadband growth will be slowed by regulation and foot dragging, IMHO.
Really? In my experience, it's the developers who are only interested in looking at problems in the latest releases.
Point taken. I think a compromise would be best under this situation. A smaller company, ie less than 800 or so employees, would probably work well in your scenario. There is still a lot of interaction between sales/maerketing groups and development groups. As the company gets larger, sales and development will start to drift apart as more layers get in the way. I ask this, would you really want MS sales/marketing to be running the helpdesk there?
A middle size company, say 900-3000 or so, a blend of development and marketing would be needed to maintain adequate understanding of the products.
A large size company should have an independent unit stricly for help desk sperate from either arm; but with connections to both.
Of course, this is all for external type setups. I do maintain that an internal company helpdesk needs to be almost completely under the domain of the IS department.
Disclaimer: Above numbers are for illustrative purposes only and do not reflect any real world info. Do not use if seal is broken. Void in Ohio
Sales/Marketing???? Oh my God! This man has been assimilated!!!!
From a user support standpoint, JordonH's comments are the least practical I have ever seen. A Sales/Marketing run support group would probably suggest an upgrade every time you call for help at a fee. Bad bad bad bad bad move.
My personal opinion is that there is no magic number or ratio. A lot of it depends on how well user training is, how good the techs are and level of automation available.
My company, despite its size, really has a small helpdesk due to automation. Our ratio is about 1:110. That ratio is for level 1 helpdesk, roughly 75% of the calls [they fudge the numbers to make it look 90%; but 75% is more accurate. I don't count calls about moving a printer from one cube to another as helpdesk related.] I would say that under ideal situations, that would be a good number for my company. Only problem is that the quality of the level 1 folks is very poor. Over 70% of the 200+ folks are temps. Not very well trained most of the time. We rely too much on "Knowledge based systems" for canned tech solutions. Those are fine, except when the level 1 person can't even properly diagnose.
I should also add that our helpdesk is a "Technology Sweatshop." Everything is monitored and strict limits on time they work on calls are enforced. IMHO, this is the worst, most useless form of a helpdesk you can have.
If I were designing a helpdesk, I would try to set it up with a wide variety of trained individuals. If incorpoated into an existing IS shop, see if you could include a rotation of your current tech staff. Keep the rotations short enough that it is bearable. The majority of an experienced tech staff would hate working helpdesk. However, if it is fair and projects are not impinged upon, it could work.
I would also try to avoid too much shifting of calls from a level 1 to a level 2 situation. The more calls the techs can handle at Level 1, the happier your users will be. Many times, a user will feel that his time will have been completely wasted because the Level 2 person usually redoes a lot of stuff that level 1 has already done.
Lastly, training training training! Unfotunately, most companies treat help desk works as just another body. Don't do that. train these people, encourage them, don't burn them out and offer a career path. A bad helpdesk person is easy to weed out and easy to replace. A good helpdesk worker is worth thier weight in gold when they can please your users and or customers. A good/bad experience with a helpdesk can be the difference if you are selling a product or service.
Be willing to experiment, some ways of doing things may work. Some may be hideous failures. Do not tie yourself to somethig just because a consultant says so. You can use it as a start; but be prepared to trash the model.
A good helpdesk will be creative and dynamic. Never be afraid of trying things; but always make sure you are treating the staff with respect. A master slave realtionship can work with muxes and modems and various hardware, but it doesn't work with people!
It just dawned on me. Unisys and AccuWeather are competing providers of weather data, such as value added weather radar feeds. So my suspicion is that this may be more than just trying to get huge royalties.
In addition to this, Unisys will be losing its bread and butter in the weather area at the end of September when its contract with NOAA expires to be one of three exclusive providers of radar data from the NEXRAD system[NOAA's doppler radars]. NOAA is going to start providing the data free on the net at that time. Unisys, WSI and Kavouras contracts all expire at the same time. They all made boatloads of money off of this. AccuWeather will be in the weather business long after this. Unisys may slowly bow out.
tell me they aren't going to use CGI apes. Vision of Jar Jar dance in mind mind!
Run away! Run away!
I know I will be flamed for this; but, if a parent wants to use a piece of blocking software to prevent their kid from seeing porn, what is actually wrong with that? Why shouldn't a parent be able to have some control over their kid? If the blocking software is what works for them, so be it. To advocate putting ways of getting the passwords to bypass them on the net is irresponsible. Just as I feel that government really doesn't have a right to tell me how I should raise a kid, I don't think any of you have a right to tell me what I should do either! What happens inside someones home is their own problem.
I am not pro-censorship. I in no way support filters in libraries and places like that. I do agree that the list of block sites should be made available and support decryption of those. However, going beyond that is wrong and I think a lawsuit over that is actually reasonable.
Like the company, software or not, they do have a right to protect the viability of thier product. Other countries have laws also. Just because a US company is filing a suit against a Sweedish or Canadian national, it doesn't mean they are enforcing US laws. Between treaties and other items, most of these compaines will have laws of their own to cover these situations.
/. posters tend to take a knee-jerk reaction to certain items. Being completely radical will cause views to be dismissed as crackpot in just the same way many of you would dismiss the views of the American Family Association[which is a screwed up all together]. There is a use for filtering for parents at home. Yes, the parents have to use proper discretion and know when to disable such filters. However, that should be the parents call. As much as many of you in the under 18 crowd think you know everything, you don't. I thought I knew everything when I was a kid, as did my parents, as did your parents and as did your own kids. I never thought I would say this; but your parents do know what they are talking about [much of the time].
I would suggest that future efforts stick to decryption of the blocking databases. Having that available is far more beneficial then just trying to destroy the programs because that will only lead to someone coming up with something even harder.
All arguments aside about private vs. public colleges: I attended the U of Missouri and we did in fact pay $20 a month for ethernet access which came to around $9600 a month that a dorm would pay for something like ResNet. This most certainly facilitates the kind of bandwidth that the students would be using up with programs like Napster.
I hate to say this; but $9600/month is not nearly enough to service the bandwidth needs of 480 folks, even if only 20% are running Napster, IMHO. It's still subsidised. You have to factor in infrastructure cost, support costs and the like to come up with a true value. I don't know what kind of equipment or speed links are being used across that campus. I would say that $20 is a bargin, even if Napster is blocked.
Napster is pain in the butt and a bandwidth hog. If that is the real reason it is being blocked, I consider that a legit reason. Bandwidth is a finite item, even at universities. Yes, you can say that your dollars are paying for it. I would argue, if you want to say that, that there is a finite amount of bandwidth that you have paid for and after you have used it, your service is cut or you can pay for more. It is not cheap to throw in additional internet links. The end user has to be responsible in their usage.
Now on the censorship side, that is just not acceptable and should not be tolerated. Bandwidth mangement is one thing. Censoring is never the right reason.
Their really isn't a fair way to implement a sales tax over the internet due to so many local option taxes. If it was just one rule for each state, it would still be a bit confusing. Although, it would be manageable. Taxes will come. There just has to be a good fair way to determine what it should be. Maybe a flat internet sales tax of 5% across the board. This is still unfair to states without sales tax. I think the option of one tax per state is the way to go. Let the municipalities fight it out with the state as to how to disperse the money.
Not a perfect replacement, by any means. Heck, I would love to get a hold of one just for the fun of it. My apartment is too small for a cat as it is. It would be an interesting conversation piece, too. Probably a bit too much money to for just that purpose. Plus, needing a rack of rechargeable batteries. Yeah, I would take one. I wonder if it will have a choice of fur. Better yet....Changeable fur. Cat of the week!!
To put it simply, a newspaper is a lot more portable at the moment. I know some folks out there may think and do otherwise, but I will not carry a laptop into the restroom/reading room. A newspaper, however, is perfect. [I don't even want to hear how some of you have installed screens in the wall and wireless keyboards and mouses attached to the john! A phone in the bathroom is too much for me.]
Plus, I still have yet to find a suitable online replacement for the Sunday newspaper. I like being able to jump around in the newspaper a lot easier then I can on the newspapers web page. Plus, the battery won't die on the newspaper when reading it on a plane.
Yeah, newspapers are slowly dying. I'm sure the newspaper subscription of the future will be some kind of PDA style device that continually updates during the day and folds out to newspaper size. until that happens, a good ole newspaper is still easier to deal with.
These guys/kaids are getting very annoying. If they had a purpose it would be one thing. I'm guessing they are just doing this to give themselves a reason to whack off at their computers. 'I'm cool! I took down CNN. Oh yeah! Oh Yeah! oh Yeaaaaaaaaaaah!' :P
I think it is time we came up with a new term for this group. We have Hackers and Crackers, of which they fit neither. I propose a new group:
UPDiCs - Useless Piles of Dividing Cells. Now if some one could just go ahead and degause these UPDiCs hard drives along with giving them frontal lobotomies, I would be very happy. If we can't do that, lets just fill up there data storage devices with Janet Reno Porn!
That camera must be encrypted. Anyone have PGP key for video?
this is one way to do it. Not that business shouldn't offer some ergonomic aid. Many good companies will. However, if this practice will open them up to more lawsuits or higher costs than what they would have in a regular office enviroment, telecommuting will be killed off. A company will, usually, only use this option if there is also a benefit to the company. If this benefit is out weighed by possible costs of regulations/lawsuits, they won't think twice about cutting it.
OSHA has a duty to enforce workplace regulations; but if they push the issue, growth of SOHO's will drop like a plummeting anvil.
I can't disagree more with your opinions.
And I think the point that he's trying to make isn't that experiences in tech support can't be funny. Strips like UF don't make fun of the tech support occupation. They make fun of the people that tech support is supposed to be helping.
UF doesn't make fun of the tech support people? I think it sure does. There are plenty of shots at tech folks in there.
At the company I work for, customers aren't referred to as 'users' because many don't understand that as anything but a negative term.
My company does the same thing. Just because we call someone a 'Business Partner' instead of a user doesn't mean a thing, IMHO. It has nothing to do with the name as much as it has to do with the attitude.
Tech support is about helping people. It's not about solving their problems, but getting them to solve their problems. Tech support employees are educators, because the more education they do, the better they serve their company.
Half right. TS is about helping folks. However, education is up to the person on the other end of the phone. My first question is 'Have you read the manual?' At least two thirds of the time the answer is no. In at least 75% of those, the answer was in the manual. TS is not a manual via phone. In my company, we have a training unit. They do a poor job. Not all their fault. Most training methods are junk these days.
We don't call them names behind their back because you never know when that information may be subpoenad and you get caught red-faced.
I save this for last. WHAT A JOKE! This is the most incredulous comment I have seen. If you and your company or you is that worried about being sued that you can't even joke on downtime, you need a new life or new company. Sorry. It has nothing to do with 'being professional.' Humor is simply part of life. I laugh at myself as much as I laugh at anyone else.
Simple fact of the matter is that the artwork is not the be all end all of a strip. A comic strips intention is to express a set of ideas where the medium is visual. No one is ever going to see a comic strip auctioned off for $1M and hung in a museum of fine art next to works by the Masters. Comic strips are entertainment for the masses and can be directed to a specific audience. I read comics to be entertained. If I wanted to critique art, I'd head to the art gallery.
Simply put, to complain about a strips 'artisitic look' is like complaining about how bad the water tastes when you are at an oasis in the desert.
Why is it that we have to take everything so seriously? Nothing is ever going to be funny to everyone. Some people want a well drawn comic. If so, try Mary Worth. Others want simple humor, try Family Circus. Then there are some that want humor that they can relate too. If you do technical support, you can probably relate to UF et al. I'm not looking for a masterpiece. I want something that I can chuckle with. Parody and sarcasm are valid humor lines. When training departments don't train and tech support becomes defacto trainers, you are going to have these situations. UF just puts into pixels what a lot of folks would love to do; but can't. Personally, I am sympathetic to a user who has problems; but is willing to learn. A user who thinks that learning to use their computer isn't part of their job is useless to me. The computer is a tool as is a car or a phone when it comes to business. You HAVE to learn how to use them.
I digress, though. You may think that a strip is funny or not, thats AOK. To go on a diatribe and say that it is wrong is very judgemental, shortsighted and ultimately make the person look like a close minded fool. No one is harmed by a comic strip that makes fun of computer users. It is a parody of real life. Just as the Simpsons parodies cops eating doughnuts and King of The Hill parodies Texans. A parody will always extend the towards the absurd. I personally don't find PvP funny. I'm not going to write a rant about it.
For the artist of a strip to attack other strips rings of sour grapes. Especially when the same person admits to being guilty of the same thing he is ranting about. Please check your hubris and hipocracy at the door, I'm too busy having fun to care.
PS. Ob-Flame: The grammar in the subtitle under the plucked strips is wrong on the rant page. Aren't is horrible and should have been 'am I not'.
You get what you pay for in most cases. [Open Source not included. I don't want to don an abestos suit today.] I'm pretty sure they would have to have had something in their EULA. Simply put, almost no company gives away a product wihout getting something out of it. All in all, if the only place Comet mentioned their real purpose was in the EULA, that was pretty sneaky. I bet they have piled up a ton of data. Considering about 80% of the people who downloaded these cursors probably don't read tech news, they will probably be able to continue reaping the data.
You get what you pay for in most cases. [Open Source not included. I don't want to don an abestos suit today.] I'm pretty sure they would have to have had something in their EULA. Simply put, almost no company gives away a product without getting something out of it. All in all, if the only place Comet mentioned their real purpose was in the EULA, that was pretty sneaky. I bet they have piled up a ton of data. Considering about 80% of the people who downloaded these cursors probably don't read tech news, they will probably be able to continue reaping the data.
The PCWeek dead tree edition from last week had this info in it. I don't have an url link. It also mentioned that it caused problems with Compaq's Network Teaming when used with load balancing causing BSOD's. Compaq did issue a patch for that, though. One of the few times I have seen ZDNet recommend to delay putting it in until MS issues SP6 fixes.
with this is that if the local bells can't make as much money off of DSL as they were, will they just slow down the roll out even more. Granted, I doubt they could go any slower. In the long run, this is a very positive event. I would think that within a few months of this taking full effect, we will see a lot more DSL services being offered in areas where it is available.
This is fine????????? What are you smoking? There are nifty things called killfiles to take care of obnoxious folks. Just don't read the messages, for crying out loud. To bring the courts into this is not only crazy but dangerous. I personally would not recognize a Seattle court jurisdiction over me on the internet. I'm getting off topic though. Ask yourselves this question, where is /. any different from the Usenet? This sounds like it has nothing to do with anything but a bunch of immature people who don't know how to carry on a conversation. Could you imagine how cluttered the courts would get if only 1% of all flamewars ended up there? This is simply bad precedent. Users have to take responsibilty and know when to just ignore others. The correct answer to this is not to involve the courts but just use common sense.