At home, doing laundry from a weekend away with my fiancee, I felt rattling that I initially attributed to my dad toodling around in his wheelchair. Then when stuff started to fall off shelves, I knew something else was going on.
Not many clouds in the sky - no tornado... only thing left that's not unnatural is earthquake. It was neat, but slightly scary too.
He said "I'm the only one at this address with the authority to do that". He didn't say he was the only person there.
I do the same thing with my "household" - the house and all the bills are in my name, and if any telemarketers call, whomever answers the phone (if they want to, we do screen calls) they are instructed to answer "put it in writing, or give me a number and call reference number so the homeowner can call you back."
I pay 50 bucks (US) a month for my Earthlink DSL. I get 1.5Mb/s down, less than 300Kb/s up. Yes, you read that right - my total downloads never exceed 150KB/s and my uploads never exceed about 36KB/s.
It works for me and my needs (though it's annoying downloading game demos/updates that are larger than a few hundred MBs - takes me multiple days)
I wouldn't mind faster service - but I don't want to pay the 75+ a month that Comcast will eventually charge me (and no, I don't want to spend 2+ hours a month trying to negotiate them down to a "special" price) and the FiOS pricing and availability in my area is kind of stinky, too. Lots of packages that don't last long enough and price ranges that jump up 50+% at the end of the promotional period.
If I could get 10Mb symmetrical service for 50 bucks a month and not have the price change (except to go down), I'd jump on it.
And in the Northeastern United States, it shouldn't be a non-existent option.
I agree.
The last decent manual I got in a box with a game was Fallout 2.
Then again, Interplay had some kick-ass manual writers and the manual had just as much awesome charm as the game.
(Disclaimer: I have not purchased Fallout 3 to make a comparison.)
I'm not grayscale colorblind. But I have trouble, at times, depending on context, differentiating between blue-green, blue-purple, green-brown, brown-red, red-green, purple-gray, gray-green... I'm sure you get the picture.
I'd love to be able to tell when my cellphone or DS Lite needs charging just by the light of the power indicator. I'd love to be able to tell my girlfriend that the red of her blouse goes great with the highlights in her hair. I wish I could see those Magic Image thingies. I hate picking out "the wrong shirt" on St. Patty's Day.
I can't tell resistor colors apart - I had to get help in that class in school. I had to tell a Navy Sub recruiter that I am colorblind. He stopped calling. I can't play a lot of video games because of color problems. Metroid Prime, Devil May Cry. Had issues in certain zones in Everquest; still have issues in certain zones in World of Warcraft.
My cell phone, with Sprint as a service, gets less than crappy reception inside my office. However, I have no problems getting and sending text messages quickly.
So it's not unthinkable to imagine that they had crap for voice reception but had no issues with a web connection, especially given that they were inside a storm drain.
Oh, and when did a ten-year-old and twelve-year-old become teenagers? (The answer: "not yet".)
At my last job (I was call center tech support, but did a lot of the Mac work for the Tech Dept) all workstations had names based on their cubicle location. IE if you were in Tech Dept, Room 4 Row 5 Cube 6, your computer name was TD040506. It made it easy for them to find people who were doing Bad Computer Things(TM).
At my current job, since my office is so small, we use the actual user's user number, an OS code, and a system number (ie if they've had a replacement or if it's a temp machine.) Something like E0000098-XPA. (Vista is VB for Biz, right now, since we only have one Vista laptop in use.)
I had suggested using cube numbers - since it's easier to equate the cube number with the person, due to a lot of "self approved migrations" - but was shot down by Net Ops 300 miles away.
At home, I use ship names, planets, etc from Stargate.
The company should be saving a good amount of money from reduced operating expenses because fewer employees are on campus and increased productivity from those who telecommute. Certainly some of this savings should be put to use for those who still commute to work; improve their work experience by having more benefits on campus; drinks, food, recreation, and public transportation or company shuttles. Certainly these services should be simpler to implement on campus if more employees telecommute and would certainly be appreciated by those who still come to work. Certainly we notice how new you are to the whole "corporate world."
You know where that monetary savings goes? The VP's pocket.
"Look, El Pres, I saved 15% on my car insurance by switching to the Lizard, and whoa, check out this bottom line! I've got a third of my saps working from home. The office is quiet, we don't spend money on the snack machine, coffee, and heck, we don't even need to pay to get those three toilets on the west side fixed." "Hai, you are so kewl, more money for j00!"
I think a company that properly uses telecommuting has some sort of obligation to employees that don't telecommute to improve their office experience. Soon, you too will be absolved of your optimistic, fresh ideas, and be consumed into Dilbertville.
I've had this job for a bit over three years, working dual phone support and in-house desktop/network support.
My immediate office and domain of responsibility is now about 55 users (started around 45). When I started in July 04, all but two users used IE. And over 80% of systems had a wide and various host of viruses, backdoors, and trojans. Within two weeks, installing Netscape 7.2 and FF.9, and an aggressive training schedule coupled with long hours after close of business, I was down to under a dozen problematic systems.
I installed FF1.0 when it came out, and have been able to keep users up to date pretty easily. Some of the savvy ones do it themselves; others need a little handholding. Which I don't mind, it gets me off the phone;) More recently, I was praised by one of our netop managers in NYC for doing so, because the virus/spyware etc problems in my office are 9/10ths of other offices he oversees.
But I do agree with the article. One of the things holding back some of my sister offices is the very fact that, with 100+ users, it's inefficient or dangerous to have (certain) users as full desktop administrators, especially when they can't figure out which mouse button is the "right" button. So finding a way to easily deploy FF would make a lot of techs happy, in my corner here, if not necessarily the intraweb coders.:)
First would be not to post to Slashdot with a username that seems to feature your last name. They might be ignorant of security, but even the dumbest people like to hope they're geeky enough to visit here.
Second would be to find the appropriate IRS tax confidentiality laws and try to explain to them how the breech of your network would fuxxor their Happy Place. Most CPA firms I've worked with do have tax information as well, so this is certainly a valid argument.
While I'm doing this, I would see about finding a better work environment.
In about 2-5 years, WoW will start to fizzle out as people grow up and away from the game. As well, improvements in computer hardware, GPUs in particular, will start to make the cheesy character graphics that WoW uses seem old.
You seem to be missing the fact that 6 million people subscribe to the game that has the cheesy graphics when other games (EQ2, for example) have better looking character models.
WoW has bright, vibrant colors that -also- can be played on 4 year old systems. Sure it might be choppy in Ironforge (where even my system with an ATI All-in-Wonder 256MB, 2GB RAM, 7200RPM HDD gets ~20FPS at peak Eastern time) but that's the draw - it's playable without a large expenditure.
But so what if the character models in EQ2 look better than WoW's? They're bland. The world is bland. The brightest colors you get is when you level up, or even occasionally have a flashy spell (a la Heroic Opportunities). Everything else seems almost sepia-washed (without the puke sepia color.) You also have to be standing -right next to- a player to get the full view of all of the different details of their armor or faces, even at medium settings. Further than that, they're an almost amorphous blob with incomplete, dreary armor.
EVE-Online and WoW play tenfold better on my system with better effects and brighter, more contrasting colors, than EQ2 does.
You bring up Vanguard... Of course it's not going to challenge WoW for numbers when, again, the minimum system requirements were stated (albeit unofficially) to be something in the 3GHZ range with 1GB of RAM and at least a 256MB Video card. Mom and Pop aren't going to want to buy Johnny a new system just so he can stare at 3d-rendered breasts all day. They'll tell him to keep his WoW account.
But you may wind up arguing who gets to play with it.
You're a geek with a wife. You shouldn't be arguing over who gets to play with it, she should have full permissions, rights, and access to anything of yours she wishes to play with, with minimal downtime.
Walmart's selection for PC games has traditionally sucked ass. Even if they DO have the ability to control publishing the way the article states (and I admit, it's a very likely possibility, considering how many copies the office supply store I worked at used to sell of Deer Hunter back in the late 90s), they do a piss poor job at stocking that which they do allow.
Five Walmarts in the greater South Jersey area near Philly, and not a single damned one had a copy of Oblivion for PC on release week.*
You can find just about all mainstream, popular titles for consoles, but if you want anything else... Look somewhere else.
*Ironically, I was -sent- to Walmart by three seperate Gamestops and EBGames because they had sold out of the whole six non-preorder copies they'd received.
In return, I get:
Junk mail/spam.
Woken up way too early in the morning.
Harrassed about how the computer takes 3 seconds longer to start up after installing AntiVirus.
A dirty look when I remind Mom that her best course of action is to 'restart the f-ing computer'.
The dubious pleasure of cleaning a keyboard used by three smokers.
Jolted out of sleep at 2am because the printer's not working. If they'd look at the damn LED status indicator, they'd see it only wants to be fed some frigging paper.
Screaming and hollering when the router needs to be reset. Heaven forbid my sister should stop chatting for a minute.
Slashdot Mirror
Well hell, that saves me at least 99 bucks, or 1200 if I really wanted to be a true Monster hunter...
Not many clouds in the sky - no tornado... only thing left that's not unnatural is earthquake. It was neat, but slightly scary too.
You're not reading the whole comment.
He said "I'm the only one at this address with the authority to do that". He didn't say he was the only person there.
I do the same thing with my "household" - the house and all the bills are in my name, and if any telemarketers call, whomever answers the phone (if they want to, we do screen calls) they are instructed to answer "put it in writing, or give me a number and call reference number so the homeowner can call you back."
It works for me and my needs (though it's annoying downloading game demos/updates that are larger than a few hundred MBs - takes me multiple days)
I wouldn't mind faster service - but I don't want to pay the 75+ a month that Comcast will eventually charge me (and no, I don't want to spend 2+ hours a month trying to negotiate them down to a "special" price) and the FiOS pricing and availability in my area is kind of stinky, too. Lots of packages that don't last long enough and price ranges that jump up 50+% at the end of the promotional period.
If I could get 10Mb symmetrical service for 50 bucks a month and not have the price change (except to go down), I'd jump on it.
And in the Northeastern United States, it shouldn't be a non-existent option.
I agree.
The last decent manual I got in a box with a game was Fallout 2.
Then again, Interplay had some kick-ass manual writers and the manual had just as much awesome charm as the game.
(Disclaimer: I have not purchased Fallout 3 to make a comparison.)
I'm not grayscale colorblind. But I have trouble, at times, depending on context, differentiating between blue-green, blue-purple, green-brown, brown-red, red-green, purple-gray, gray-green... I'm sure you get the picture.
I'd love to be able to tell when my cellphone or DS Lite needs charging just by the light of the power indicator.
I'd love to be able to tell my girlfriend that the red of her blouse goes great with the highlights in her hair.
I wish I could see those Magic Image thingies.
I hate picking out "the wrong shirt" on St. Patty's Day.
I can't tell resistor colors apart - I had to get help in that class in school.
I had to tell a Navy Sub recruiter that I am colorblind. He stopped calling.
I can't play a lot of video games because of color problems. Metroid Prime, Devil May Cry. Had issues in certain zones in Everquest; still have issues in certain zones in World of Warcraft.
It would make my life easier.
So it's not unthinkable to imagine that they had crap for voice reception but had no issues with a web connection, especially given that they were inside a storm drain.
Oh, and when did a ten-year-old and twelve-year-old become teenagers? (The answer: "not yet".)
At my current job, since my office is so small, we use the actual user's user number, an OS code, and a system number (ie if they've had a replacement or if it's a temp machine.) Something like E0000098-XPA. (Vista is VB for Biz, right now, since we only have one Vista laptop in use.)
I had suggested using cube numbers - since it's easier to equate the cube number with the person, due to a lot of "self approved migrations" - but was shot down by Net Ops 300 miles away.
At home, I use ship names, planets, etc from Stargate.
Due to human perspiration and respiration, not all of the water ingested by the driver/passengers/donors/etc would be returned as urea.
You know where that monetary savings goes? The VP's pocket.
"Look, El Pres, I saved 15% on my car insurance by switching to the Lizard, and whoa, check out this bottom line! I've got a third of my saps working from home. The office is quiet, we don't spend money on the snack machine, coffee, and heck, we don't even need to pay to get those three toilets on the west side fixed."
I think a company that properly uses telecommuting has some sort of obligation to employees that don't telecommute to improve their office experience. Soon, you too will be absolved of your optimistic, fresh ideas, and be consumed into Dilbertville."Hai, you are so kewl, more money for j00!"
My immediate office and domain of responsibility is now about 55 users (started around 45). When I started in July 04, all but two users used IE. And over 80% of systems had a wide and various host of viruses, backdoors, and trojans. Within two weeks, installing Netscape 7.2 and FF .9, and an aggressive training schedule coupled with long hours after close of business, I was down to under a dozen problematic systems.
I installed FF1.0 when it came out, and have been able to keep users up to date pretty easily. Some of the savvy ones do it themselves; others need a little handholding. Which I don't mind, it gets me off the phone ;) More recently, I was praised by one of our netop managers in NYC for doing so, because the virus/spyware etc problems in my office are 9/10ths of other offices he oversees.
But I do agree with the article. One of the things holding back some of my sister offices is the very fact that, with 100+ users, it's inefficient or dangerous to have (certain) users as full desktop administrators, especially when they can't figure out which mouse button is the "right" button. So finding a way to easily deploy FF would make a lot of techs happy, in my corner here, if not necessarily the intraweb coders. :)
$20 for a case of Guinness is a pittance in the budget (bucket?) of computing sanity.
After all, after posting the link on Slashdot, look at the website now?
Getting a whole bunch of "drupal" errors and a weird login screen.
Please note! I do not live in California, but I know quite a few people who do and speak to them regularly during their hour plus commutes.
I bet he did it without the benefit of a Time Turner from Professor McGonagall.
Second would be to find the appropriate IRS tax confidentiality laws and try to explain to them how the breech of your network would fuxxor their Happy Place. Most CPA firms I've worked with do have tax information as well, so this is certainly a valid argument.
While I'm doing this, I would see about finding a better work environment.
You seem to be missing the fact that 6 million people subscribe to the game that has the cheesy graphics when other games (EQ2, for example) have better looking character models.
WoW has bright, vibrant colors that -also- can be played on 4 year old systems. Sure it might be choppy in Ironforge (where even my system with an ATI All-in-Wonder 256MB, 2GB RAM, 7200RPM HDD gets ~20FPS at peak Eastern time) but that's the draw - it's playable without a large expenditure. But so what if the character models in EQ2 look better than WoW's? They're bland. The world is bland. The brightest colors you get is when you level up, or even occasionally have a flashy spell (a la Heroic Opportunities). Everything else seems almost sepia-washed (without the puke sepia color.) You also have to be standing -right next to- a player to get the full view of all of the different details of their armor or faces, even at medium settings. Further than that, they're an almost amorphous blob with incomplete, dreary armor.
EVE-Online and WoW play tenfold better on my system with better effects and brighter, more contrasting colors, than EQ2 does.
You bring up Vanguard... Of course it's not going to challenge WoW for numbers when, again, the minimum system requirements were stated (albeit unofficially) to be something in the 3GHZ range with 1GB of RAM and at least a 256MB Video card. Mom and Pop aren't going to want to buy Johnny a new system just so he can stare at 3d-rendered breasts all day. They'll tell him to keep his WoW account.
You're a geek with a wife. You shouldn't be arguing over who gets to play with it, she should have full permissions, rights, and access to anything of yours she wishes to play with, with minimal downtime.
So stock up on batteries and vitamin E.
He wasn't laughing at you using the PDA to play it. He was laughing at you because you sucked at Mario Brothers 3.
Walmart's selection for PC games has traditionally sucked ass. Even if they DO have the ability to control publishing the way the article states (and I admit, it's a very likely possibility, considering how many copies the office supply store I worked at used to sell of Deer Hunter back in the late 90s), they do a piss poor job at stocking that which they do allow.
Five Walmarts in the greater South Jersey area near Philly, and not a single damned one had a copy of Oblivion for PC on release week.*
You can find just about all mainstream, popular titles for consoles, but if you want anything else... Look somewhere else.
*Ironically, I was -sent- to Walmart by three seperate Gamestops and EBGames because they had sold out of the whole six non-preorder copies they'd received.
I'd bet real latinum that what they detected was a Kemplerer Rosette!
It's either buy the RAM from Apple and have them install it pre-ship, or buy it from CompUSA/Apple Store, have them install it in-house.
Because the MacMini is not user servicable, and if you're not ADT (Apple Desktop Technican Certified) *poof* your warranty will go up in smoke.
The Lost Outpost of the Ancients?
With all the geeks calling from a simple post on Slashdot...
Verizon now knows how many different states will want FTTP :D
I fix the computer.
In return, I get:
Junk mail/spam.
Woken up way too early in the morning.
Harrassed about how the computer takes 3 seconds longer to start up after installing AntiVirus.
A dirty look when I remind Mom that her best course of action is to 'restart the f-ing computer'.
The dubious pleasure of cleaning a keyboard used by three smokers.
Jolted out of sleep at 2am because the printer's not working. If they'd look at the damn LED status indicator, they'd see it only wants to be fed some frigging paper.
Screaming and hollering when the router needs to be reset. Heaven forbid my sister should stop chatting for a minute.