Sounds to me like you're trying to justify drug (ab)use.
The difference is that unless you're literally mentally ill, those natural chemicals aren't likely to ruin your life. Now I think people should be permitted to do whatever they like so long as it doesn't affect others - I'm not in favour of laws that try to prevent stupidity or self harm. However when's the last time you knew a drug addict that wouldn't steal, like, cheat or sell their body or their grandmother for the next hit? It doesn't just affect them. Of course stuffing them in prison where they learn how to commit new crimes is asinine, so basically I don't agree with either side when it comes to the "war on drugs". Wether it's the jailor or government trying to jail the addict or the pusher trying to sell them their next hit, it's all about control and manipulation of weak minded fools for profit.
I was head hunted all the time, so actually I am just waiting for the right call.
Hey I was averaging 2-3 calls a week a couple of years back, and more during the earlier boom.
I still wouldn't call myself top of my field. Perhaps you're in a different boat or have different skills but such popularity is short lived and fickle. There's always someone willing to work harder, longer, cheaper or who is brighter. Becoming complacent is a good way to end up on the scrap heap.
You should worry about the guys getting $15/hr not $5/hr. They have: 1) Enough education to do their job 2) Are at the very least moderately competent - some are even very good 3) Have nothing to lose and everything to gain by fighting tooth and nail to keep their job since they're coming from a background of very real poverty and this is a real way out 4) Eventually bring down the standard of living for everyone. By working so hard they set up higher expectations and lower expected compensation. See tragedy of commons. What's best for them in proving themselves able to do the job well for less is worst for you as it brings your own wage down.
If you really think you have something special and irreplaceable to offer I pity you for the hard fall you will one day take.
Firstly, it assumes that grunt work and management are part of the same continuum of skills. Anyone that's done both know they're very different skill sets. Some technical staff make excellent managers. Others not so much....and vice versa. The real problem is that in an office environment a worker with 20 years experience is rarely recognized as having superior skill to one with 2 years experience. There's no such thing as a master programmer the way there is a master craftsman.
Secondly, if everyone is promoted to their level of incompetence why isn't every old organization totally and completely full of completely incompetent people at all but the lowest level? One reason is that there's a limited number of higher positions, so this keeps people at their own level for longer. The increased competition means you have more and higher quality candidates to choose from when filling the higher roles. The only obstacle is recognizing which ones are best.
My fiancee is a naturalized U.S. citizen who spent many years in this country before she was sworn in. She's proud of the fact that she worked hard, proved her worth, and is now a citizen of this great nation
How exactly does one do that? Memorize some history and lose their accent? Emulate the local slang? How do you prove your worth? By earning a living? Working long hours, Shit, if that was all it took, your "foreign born individuals" who know what it's like to work 16 hours a day 6 or 7 days a week are much better citizens.
What your fiancee's attitude comes down to is simple resentment. Why should others have it easier than her. Now if that's the culture she's learnt to emulate, I'm glad I'm not American.
It seems to me that most people trying for citizenship do so because the country of which they wish to be a citizen provides them with better opportunities than the one they're leaving. In most cases it has nothing to do with loving the culture. Given the way your government has treated its constitution, you guys aren't exactly leading prospective immigrants by example either.
Most of us would settle for you fine members of the "there is no problem, just quit whining" club to shut up and keep out of our way, instead of filling the heavens with your complaining
Have you listened to yourself lately? We need a -1:Hypocrisy modifier.
You could make the same point with less words.... A: Shut up! B: How dare you tell me to shut up. You shut up! A: No you shut up! B: No you!!! A and B: SHUT UP!!!!
How about we let EVERYONE have their say. Depending on the intent, the point of view that this is a waste of time may be just as valid as the point of view that something ought to be done about it. Quit telling people to shut up and state your case effectively to convince the maximum number of people that there is actually an issue. Sure would beat childish rants, even if they are modded up.
Well no shit Sherlock. Educational games are a SUPPLEMENT. Trying to teach a kid solely through gaming is asinine. Adding interesting games to the mix to demonstrate practically a concept you've taught is fantastic. Think of teaching kids about timetables and then getting them to try to keep a train on schedule in a sim, or about conversion and teaching them to keep a plane in the air (correct airspeed) given stall speed in different units. Games shouldn't ever be the WHOLE story. If you get a guy a hammer and he tried to use it to do everything including put screws into the wall, you'd call him an idiot, not decry the use of hammers.
My wife is a casual (relief) primary school teacher. Get her to tell you what it's like trying to teaching a kid times tables without any kind of interesting or fun component when she effectively isn't permitted to discipline them and isn't allowed to fail them either. Some of the "special needs" classes she's taught it'd be all she could do to stop them hitting each other and running amok. That of course is a whole other problem with the system, but at least if she incorporates games she's got a chance of SOMETHING getting through and keeping them settled long enough to learn it. Even under those circumstances she won't try to use fun activities and games ALL of the time. However at least it's something she can threaten to take away to discipline.
I would never, ever accept a free umbrella that whispers ads to me; especially if my free hat was whispering different ads
You wouldn't? Most people would! Then they'd break or drown the whispering voice on each device and laugh at the manufacturer. Small and cheap, sure. Small, cheap and durable? Hahahahahahaha!!!
It's a goddamn stupid idea, not pie in the sky but pot in the air. I'm all for good ideas, but I'm happy to spray shit on the bad ones. If that means you feel the need to call me anal retentive so be it, but consider the irony of criticizing someone for being critical.
Ahhh once again MS changes the definition to suit their marketing needs. "Everything" now means a small selected subset of everything that they have chosen and decided is important. Does it record your mood? Does it record your vital signs? Does it record your dreams? Your aspirations? Your fears? No we're talking low res images of trivial crap like what web site you've visited. Shit I can do that now with File->Save As and get original resolution to boot. Would be nice to automate that with a firefox extension or store history permanently, but it's not life changing, revolutionary or a complete record of anything.
Even if you had high def video of what you saw for every second of your life, you'd still be missing many many important things, visual and otherwise that are going on around you. Not to mention privacy concerns. I simply don't need detailed video of me taking a shit on April 5th 1983. Wouldn't mind having video of when I proposed to my wife, but that's not something I'd want to share despite it being G rated.
You're dreaming. A person in charge of their own salary, usually working long hours and with plenty of responsibility to family etc. isn't going to cut their salary in half. An honest one might take 5-10% off, but since being honest makes it difficult to rise to CEO, again you're dreaming. The only way to do it is to link salary to performance and have it overseen by someone the CEO has no power over. Most CEOs would fight that tooth and nail.
More to the point : what could possibly be more important than paying attention to the people you're with ?
I don't know.
Perhaps finding out that your wife or child have been hit by a bus and are in a critical condition in hospital and that doctors will have to make decisions without you if you're not present.
Too extreme? Doesn't happen very often.
What about doctors or other professionals who are on call. It could be a life on the line such as with a doctor, or an opportunity knocking or a person in need (emergency plumber), or it could be your boss who will fire you if you don't respond to the call within 15 minutes because your clients are losing money big time.
And what could possibly be more rude than to temporarily ignore them to accept an interruption ?
Yes, how dare people interrupt those around them to respond to an emergency.
If it's not an emergency and you can't handle it in 4 sentences or less, you simply tell the person on the other end of the phone that you're busy and will get backt to them. It ain't hard. We don't need to switch off our mobiles. We just need to use some common sense.
So your dad was teaching you to curse people out at age 5 and your boss was teaching you to do a slap-together job with the wrong tools. I'd say that they fucked you. Yeah, sure, realize that people looking down on you is nothing to get flustered about, but you can move on politely instead of swearing at them (at least when you're 5 for freak sake. I can swear with the best of them, but I didn't at age 5)...and sure improvise with tools if you HAVE to, but don't do a poor job just because you're lazy.
My wife and I are about to have our first child. i won't be teaching it "Fuck you" and "Hammer nails with wrench".
Sad thing is I agree with your points. They were just phrased so badly it weakened your argument.
The correct term is almost ready to drive (ARTD). It's the way model aircraft are sold. Almost Ready to Fly (ARTF or ARF) basically means it's ready after you glue it all together according to the instructions, install and engine and propeller, and install a radio receiver and servos to control the flight surfaces. It's almost ready to fly in the same way that a live cow is almost ready to eat.
In my opinion, Vista is only for sophisticated users. Sophisticated users (developers, for example) tend to already go for high end systems, and are willing (and able) to learn new stuff. Ordinary users are resistant to change.
That's simply complete rubbish. I'm a developer. I run several machines at home and in a team of developers people often come to me for advice on hardware and OS configuration. I've run Linux in the past but haven't for some time because it doesn't run the applications I use most, where WIndows does. I do not like learning new ways of doing things just for the sake of it. I hate icons and menu options moving around. It's wasteful and stupid re-learning that. What I love is finding a new product that gives me a new capability when I learn it. I don't want to re-learn the basics when I could be spending my time learning cool new features that I actually want to use. If it ain't broke, leave it alone for goodness sake.
Now that said I think there's plenty that IS broken on XP. Why do we still need tools like robocopy? Everything I can do there (and particularly resumable file copy!!!) should be possible in Explorer by now. It's 2008 for goodness sake. What does Vista give me instead? A new explorer that's just as useless with buggy behaviour in a simple file copy that causes it to hang. That's not cool or new or interesting or innovative. It's just a waste of my time and I resent it. I don't need my file explorer to look pretty. I don't need distracting transparency in my windows and I don't need lame special effects on my desktop. I also don't need features that actually prevent me from doing things because I MIGHT be violating a copyright. Nor do I need yet another driver model when the old one was no worse than the new but a hell of a lot more mature.
So don't tar all "sophisticated" users or developers with the same brush. Just because you like to tinker and play doesn't mean we all don't have anything better to do. Some of us learn something new when there's an actual benefit to doing so.
As for Vista making better use of your RAM, that might be how the technology was written but it's not very good at doing so from an end user's perspective. If making better use of your RAM means slowing down the machine that kinda defeats the purpose. In any case unless you're running 64bit Windows (XP or Vista, doesn't matter which) a sophisticated user is stuck with under 4GB.
Yeah, you're right. It's sad. Normally marketing would insist on it being rebranded to something like Windows XP Classic edition and continuing to charge full price. To use your analogy Ford Sedan Classic doesn't sound so bad as '65 Model Ford Sedan.
One problem is that as soon as we create an image something new gets introduced and suddenly it's an out of date image. Our group is part of the IT department, just not the part in charge of imaging PCs.
....you believe everything you read. You take the blue pill, you're skeptical of such far fetched allegations (and you get a hardon that lasts and lasts).
The article you've pointed to states that this limit was initially estimated at 0.7 solar masses (lower than the Chandrasekhar limit) but that modern estimates are between 1.5 and 3 solar masses (which is higher), so yes sure this is definitely relevant. However the classic discussion centers around the more easily computed Chandrasekhar limit. In other words BOTH limits apply, it's just that we don't know which is lower. I haven't looked at this stuff for about 5 years. When I did we focused on the Chandrasekhar limit. The fact that there was no discussion, even in passing, of either limit in the article is damning. There's lay-person friendly then there's dumbed down.
It sounds to me like your IT department is sorely understaffed. If they are that slow with new software, imagine how bad it would be if your PC did not work because someone installed spyware or just a buggy application.
I'm a developer. We do install our own software. Unfortuantely we don't have a developer image for our team. I've only had hardware die. Help desk solution is to re-image and then you play the install game for 3 days.
So your first reaction, not knowing the other side of the story is to call an end user a liar, then rant about how most users are crooks out to scam there bosses. Yeah I'd just love to have you in charge of my work machine. What exactly are you trying to do here anyway? Stick up for the admin guy at the expense of the user? That whole us vs them mentality is inanely stupid. You're suppose to be helping these people get their work done first and foremost. Since looking up random sites that aren't work related may or may not be a sign that the user is not doing their job. The way I see it there's very little difference between browsing sites like myspace and reading a newspaper. (Parezhilton might be a bit much but the reason for that is that it immediately exposes the employer to law suits). It's their manager's job to keep them doing their work. If you've resorted to babysitting your employees you've got bigger issues. In any case I wonder how many non-work-related sites you visit and how many you justify as being work related when the situation is marginal. Did you post this from work?
I also wonder how well your "big boss" knows the work required and whether or not micro-managing his staff's PC configuration might be a bad use of his time. It certainly speaks volumes of what your company thinks of its employees.
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Sounds to me like you're trying to justify drug (ab)use.
The difference is that unless you're literally mentally ill, those natural chemicals aren't likely to ruin your life. Now I think people should be permitted to do whatever they like so long as it doesn't affect others - I'm not in favour of laws that try to prevent stupidity or self harm. However when's the last time you knew a drug addict that wouldn't steal, like, cheat or sell their body or their grandmother for the next hit? It doesn't just affect them. Of course stuffing them in prison where they learn how to commit new crimes is asinine, so basically I don't agree with either side when it comes to the "war on drugs". Wether it's the jailor or government trying to jail the addict or the pusher trying to sell them their next hit, it's all about control and manipulation of weak minded fools for profit.
I was head hunted all the time, so actually I am just waiting for the right call.
Hey I was averaging 2-3 calls a week a couple of years back, and more during the earlier boom.
I still wouldn't call myself top of my field. Perhaps you're in a different boat or have different skills but such popularity is short lived and fickle. There's always someone willing to work harder, longer, cheaper or who is brighter. Becoming complacent is a good way to end up on the scrap heap.
You should worry about the guys getting $15/hr not $5/hr. They have:
1) Enough education to do their job
2) Are at the very least moderately competent - some are even very good
3) Have nothing to lose and everything to gain by fighting tooth and nail to keep their job since they're coming from a background of very real poverty and this is a real way out
4) Eventually bring down the standard of living for everyone. By working so hard they set up higher expectations and lower expected compensation. See tragedy of commons. What's best for them in proving themselves able to do the job well for less is worst for you as it brings your own wage down.
If you really think you have something special and irreplaceable to offer I pity you for the hard fall you will one day take.
The Peter Principle is deeply flawed.
...and vice versa. The real problem is that in an office environment a worker with 20 years experience is rarely recognized as having superior skill to one with 2 years experience. There's no such thing as a master programmer the way there is a master craftsman.
Firstly, it assumes that grunt work and management are part of the same continuum of skills. Anyone that's done both know they're very different skill sets. Some technical staff make excellent managers. Others not so much.
Secondly, if everyone is promoted to their level of incompetence why isn't every old organization totally and completely full of completely incompetent people at all but the lowest level? One reason is that there's a limited number of higher positions, so this keeps people at their own level for longer. The increased competition means you have more and higher quality candidates to choose from when filling the higher roles. The only obstacle is recognizing which ones are best.
...but I can't afford it.
I didn't think the Russian economy had quite reached the point where orbital contruction factories were a consideration.
Would love to see it happen, but not holding my breath.
In other words you are talking out of your butt, which by legal terms is called SLANDER!
You learn something new on slashdot every day. Who'd have thought I was guilty of so much slander!!!
Now if you'll excuse me I need to go to the bathroom and take a slander.
My fiancee is a naturalized U.S. citizen who spent many years in this country before she was sworn in. She's proud of the fact that she worked hard, proved her worth, and is now a citizen of this great nation
How exactly does one do that? Memorize some history and lose their accent? Emulate the local slang? How do you prove your worth? By earning a living? Working long hours, Shit, if that was all it took, your "foreign born individuals" who know what it's like to work 16 hours a day 6 or 7 days a week are much better citizens.
What your fiancee's attitude comes down to is simple resentment. Why should others have it easier than her. Now if that's the culture she's learnt to emulate, I'm glad I'm not American.
It seems to me that most people trying for citizenship do so because the country of which they wish to be a citizen provides them with better opportunities than the one they're leaving. In most cases it has nothing to do with loving the culture. Given the way your government has treated its constitution, you guys aren't exactly leading prospective immigrants by example either.
Most of us would settle for you fine members of the "there is no problem, just quit whining" club to shut up and keep out of our way, instead of filling the heavens with your complaining
Have you listened to yourself lately? We need a -1:Hypocrisy modifier.
You could make the same point with less words....
A: Shut up!
B: How dare you tell me to shut up. You shut up!
A: No you shut up!
B: No you!!!
A and B: SHUT UP!!!!
How about we let EVERYONE have their say. Depending on the intent, the point of view that this is a waste of time may be just as valid as the point of view that something ought to be done about it. Quit telling people to shut up and state your case effectively to convince the maximum number of people that there is actually an issue. Sure would beat childish rants, even if they are modded up.
Well no shit Sherlock. Educational games are a SUPPLEMENT. Trying to teach a kid solely through gaming is asinine. Adding interesting games to the mix to demonstrate practically a concept you've taught is fantastic. Think of teaching kids about timetables and then getting them to try to keep a train on schedule in a sim, or about conversion and teaching them to keep a plane in the air (correct airspeed) given stall speed in different units. Games shouldn't ever be the WHOLE story. If you get a guy a hammer and he tried to use it to do everything including put screws into the wall, you'd call him an idiot, not decry the use of hammers.
My wife is a casual (relief) primary school teacher. Get her to tell you what it's like trying to teaching a kid times tables without any kind of interesting or fun component when she effectively isn't permitted to discipline them and isn't allowed to fail them either. Some of the "special needs" classes she's taught it'd be all she could do to stop them hitting each other and running amok. That of course is a whole other problem with the system, but at least if she incorporates games she's got a chance of SOMETHING getting through and keeping them settled long enough to learn it. Even under those circumstances she won't try to use fun activities and games ALL of the time. However at least it's something she can threaten to take away to discipline.
I would never, ever accept a free umbrella that whispers ads to me; especially if my free hat was whispering different ads
You wouldn't? Most people would! Then they'd break or drown the whispering voice on each device and laugh at the manufacturer. Small and cheap, sure. Small, cheap and durable? Hahahahahahaha!!!
Here, I'll pay for it. Whom do I make the check out to?
Your wife says her hairdresser and shoe store.
It's a goddamn stupid idea, not pie in the sky but pot in the air. I'm all for good ideas, but I'm happy to spray shit on the bad ones. If that means you feel the need to call me anal retentive so be it, but consider the irony of criticizing someone for being critical.
Ahhh once again MS changes the definition to suit their marketing needs. "Everything" now means a small selected subset of everything that they have chosen and decided is important. Does it record your mood? Does it record your vital signs? Does it record your dreams? Your aspirations? Your fears? No we're talking low res images of trivial crap like what web site you've visited. Shit I can do that now with File->Save As and get original resolution to boot. Would be nice to automate that with a firefox extension or store history permanently, but it's not life changing, revolutionary or a complete record of anything.
Even if you had high def video of what you saw for every second of your life, you'd still be missing many many important things, visual and otherwise that are going on around you. Not to mention privacy concerns. I simply don't need detailed video of me taking a shit on April 5th 1983. Wouldn't mind having video of when I proposed to my wife, but that's not something I'd want to share despite it being G rated.
You're dreaming. A person in charge of their own salary, usually working long hours and with plenty of responsibility to family etc. isn't going to cut their salary in half. An honest one might take 5-10% off, but since being honest makes it difficult to rise to CEO, again you're dreaming. The only way to do it is to link salary to performance and have it overseen by someone the CEO has no power over. Most CEOs would fight that tooth and nail.
More to the point : what could possibly be more important than paying attention to the people you're with ?
I don't know.
Perhaps finding out that your wife or child have been hit by a bus and are in a critical condition in hospital and that doctors will have to make decisions without you if you're not present.
Too extreme? Doesn't happen very often.
What about doctors or other professionals who are on call. It could be a life on the line such as with a doctor, or an opportunity knocking or a person in need (emergency plumber), or it could be your boss who will fire you if you don't respond to the call within 15 minutes because your clients are losing money big time.
And what could possibly be more rude than to temporarily ignore them to accept an interruption ?
Yes, how dare people interrupt those around them to respond to an emergency.
If it's not an emergency and you can't handle it in 4 sentences or less, you simply tell the person on the other end of the phone that you're busy and will get backt to them. It ain't hard. We don't need to switch off our mobiles. We just need to use some common sense.
So your dad was teaching you to curse people out at age 5 and your boss was teaching you to do a slap-together job with the wrong tools. I'd say that they fucked you. Yeah, sure, realize that people looking down on you is nothing to get flustered about, but you can move on politely instead of swearing at them (at least when you're 5 for freak sake. I can swear with the best of them, but I didn't at age 5)...and sure improvise with tools if you HAVE to, but don't do a poor job just because you're lazy.
My wife and I are about to have our first child. i won't be teaching it "Fuck you" and "Hammer nails with wrench".
Sad thing is I agree with your points. They were just phrased so badly it weakened your argument.
The correct term is almost ready to drive (ARTD). It's the way model aircraft are sold. Almost Ready to Fly (ARTF or ARF) basically means it's ready after you glue it all together according to the instructions, install and engine and propeller, and install a radio receiver and servos to control the flight surfaces. It's almost ready to fly in the same way that a live cow is almost ready to eat.
In my opinion, Vista is only for sophisticated users. Sophisticated users (developers, for example) tend to already go for high end systems, and are willing (and able) to learn new stuff. Ordinary users are resistant to change.
That's simply complete rubbish. I'm a developer. I run several machines at home and in a team of developers people often come to me for advice on hardware and OS configuration. I've run Linux in the past but haven't for some time because it doesn't run the applications I use most, where WIndows does. I do not like learning new ways of doing things just for the sake of it. I hate icons and menu options moving around. It's wasteful and stupid re-learning that. What I love is finding a new product that gives me a new capability when I learn it. I don't want to re-learn the basics when I could be spending my time learning cool new features that I actually want to use. If it ain't broke, leave it alone for goodness sake.
Now that said I think there's plenty that IS broken on XP. Why do we still need tools like robocopy? Everything I can do there (and particularly resumable file copy!!!) should be possible in Explorer by now. It's 2008 for goodness sake. What does Vista give me instead? A new explorer that's just as useless with buggy behaviour in a simple file copy that causes it to hang. That's not cool or new or interesting or innovative. It's just a waste of my time and I resent it. I don't need my file explorer to look pretty. I don't need distracting transparency in my windows and I don't need lame special effects on my desktop. I also don't need features that actually prevent me from doing things because I MIGHT be violating a copyright. Nor do I need yet another driver model when the old one was no worse than the new but a hell of a lot more mature.
So don't tar all "sophisticated" users or developers with the same brush. Just because you like to tinker and play doesn't mean we all don't have anything better to do. Some of us learn something new when there's an actual benefit to doing so.
As for Vista making better use of your RAM, that might be how the technology was written but it's not very good at doing so from an end user's perspective. If making better use of your RAM means slowing down the machine that kinda defeats the purpose. In any case unless you're running 64bit Windows (XP or Vista, doesn't matter which) a sophisticated user is stuck with under 4GB.
First article listed here:
http://arxiv.org/find/all/1/all:+noyola/0/1/0/all/0/1
If that doesn't work type "Noyola" without quotes into the "Search or Article-Id" field at the top right
http://arxiv.org/
Yeah, you're right. It's sad. Normally marketing would insist on it being rebranded to something like Windows XP Classic edition and continuing to charge full price. To use your analogy Ford Sedan Classic doesn't sound so bad as '65 Model Ford Sedan.
One problem is that as soon as we create an image something new gets introduced and suddenly it's an out of date image. Our group is part of the IT department, just not the part in charge of imaging PCs.
....you believe everything you read. You take the blue pill, you're skeptical of such far fetched allegations (and you get a hardon that lasts and lasts).
The article you've pointed to states that this limit was initially estimated at 0.7 solar masses (lower than the Chandrasekhar limit) but that modern estimates are between 1.5 and 3 solar masses (which is higher), so yes sure this is definitely relevant. However the classic discussion centers around the more easily computed Chandrasekhar limit. In other words BOTH limits apply, it's just that we don't know which is lower. I haven't looked at this stuff for about 5 years. When I did we focused on the Chandrasekhar limit. The fact that there was no discussion, even in passing, of either limit in the article is damning. There's lay-person friendly then there's dumbed down.
It sounds to me like your IT department is sorely understaffed. If they are that slow with new software, imagine how bad it would be if your PC did not work because someone installed spyware or just a buggy application.
I'm a developer. We do install our own software. Unfortuantely we don't have a developer image for our team. I've only had hardware die. Help desk solution is to re-image and then you play the install game for 3 days.
So your first reaction, not knowing the other side of the story is to call an end user a liar, then rant about how most users are crooks out to scam there bosses. Yeah I'd just love to have you in charge of my work machine. What exactly are you trying to do here anyway? Stick up for the admin guy at the expense of the user? That whole us vs them mentality is inanely stupid. You're suppose to be helping these people get their work done first and foremost. Since looking up random sites that aren't work related may or may not be a sign that the user is not doing their job. The way I see it there's very little difference between browsing sites like myspace and reading a newspaper. (Parezhilton might be a bit much but the reason for that is that it immediately exposes the employer to law suits). It's their manager's job to keep them doing their work. If you've resorted to babysitting your employees you've got bigger issues. In any case I wonder how many non-work-related sites you visit and how many you justify as being work related when the situation is marginal. Did you post this from work?
I also wonder how well your "big boss" knows the work required and whether or not micro-managing his staff's PC configuration might be a bad use of his time. It certainly speaks volumes of what your company thinks of its employees.