Well, unless it were also my computer which I could then dock and play games on ( desktop games, not mobile ). The dock and associated peripherals would have to be included in that 1,200, or no deal.
Plenty of the "warm body" type luser might not even notice the difference. Seems worth a shot (but a careful one, please) since you're that up for budget. But maybe you as an IT manager don't have knowledgeable techies at your disposal?
Perhaps you have users like that where you work, but it's quite a different story every where I've been. Users are...extremely resistant to change, to put it nicely. Actually had one secretary we did manage to upgrade complain loud enough and long enough that we had to revert her back to xp/xp, and that's as recent as 2 years ago.
Given those constraints, I'm a fan of a subscription model.
For me it's a classic "rock and a hard place" type of scenario. I've had to bang my head against training new users on new versions or fixing what an upgrade broke. I've also had to explain to auditors why we're still on an unsupported version of windows and have had to do some Rube Goldberg shit to bring us into compliance. Given the two problems, for me, I'd much rather have the subscription problem over the upgrade problem.
Of course, if only MS could fucking behave itself and not A) Randomly change interfaces "just 'cuz" and B) Do regression testing so as not to break shit, then we wouldn't be having this problem. Fuckers.
OH, and if only vendors who build on office would actually use the right API calls instead of relying on known broken ones ( or relying on unexpected behavior ). They get a "Fuckers" badge too. The fuckers.
As much as I hate MS and dislike the "subscription" model, it's not really a horrible idea in a corporate environment.
I've been stuck behind budgeting concerns which left XP *still* being installed on a sizable portion of our workstations. I'm not even going to talk about the archaic version of office we're rocking.
For home use; bullshit. For corporate/government, it's got it's appeal.
So they made an assumption and seemingly tested exclusively against the assumption, attempting to prove it right. Not science.
Allow me to posit an alternative hypothesis ( which is all they really have ); young men are avoiding marriage until later in life and in some case swearing it off entirely. It's well known that marriage, and the inevitable spawn that comes with it, are a major pressure on men to produce; perhaps the toxic mating culture in today's western society is poisoning the well against that well known mechanism. Young men have seen what divorce puts men through and have wisely decided to "Nope" the fuck out of that equation.
Hours to burnout isn't necessarily a valid relationship. Neither is hours to expertise, for that matter. There are far more factors to both relationships.
However, he's not entirely wrong; in order to get to the top of your field, that means a high degree of dedication and, yes, time. Can't put in an hour here and there and expect magical results. Of course, those who are at the top of their field usually love what they do, so those long hours spent in pursuit of excellence have a reduced chance to cause burnout.
One thing that "experts" like doctors and lawyers hate about the age of "free" information is that the common rabble now knows stuff, actual stuff.
Some, sure. You'll have low energy assholes in every field who just want to coast, and having an educated client upsets that balance.
Fuck them.
The ones who will thrive are my kind of people; those that are constantly improving, looking for new and innovative ways to solve old problems and more efficiently use their time. Won't be hard to tell the difference between the two, either.
I didn't say it was going to be all sunshine and roses. There are definitely downsides, but what you mentioned barely rates as an annoyance. Those same people who think they know what they're talking about because they read an article online ALSO sometimes have some pretty good ideas. More, their good ideas are informed by the knowledge they gained online. They may not be able to execute the idea, but that's where I come in.
Knowledge workers aren't going away as a result of the internet, but rather their roles will change and in many cases allow them to better use their energy on more interesting tasks.
We have absolutely no grasp of how much better our lives are now, and how much better they're going to be in the future, due to advancements in communication technology.
Take the healthcare industry. The joke is, of course, that doctors hate it when their patients internet-diagnose themselves, but the truth of the matter is that the internet enables patients to have a much greater degree of participation in their own health. This is amazing. Doctors are, generally speaking, pretty smart people, but they are also very busy. Having a patient who takes an active role in their health make visits far more efficient and effective. That's just one industry, and we haven't really progressed far with AI yet. Imagine what's coming: a doctor that lives in your browser that can make recommendations based on data from your telemetry band. Preemptive heart treatment. Prescriptions auto modified based on your reactions to them.
Some may lament days gone by of the "Experts", but they can have it. I'm looking forward to the future.
Better tech education employees will create a more versatile office work force. I agree with your conclusion that actual programming jobs won't be stolen by grade school educated coders, however; there are plenty of tasks that can be streamlined through the use of programming in the office. Traditionally these have been too small and low priority to dedicate a coder to it, but when more people have access to entry level skills in this area? It will have an impact.
Of course, amateur-level coders using MS-access equivalent tools is a terrifying concept BUT as ugly as it may be it will still represent an increase in efficiency.
I've noticed for years that when a very public figure head makes a controversial stance against something, it only serves to popularize the opposition. A variation of the Streisand Effect, or an more ur-version of it at any rate. I wonder how aware politicians have been of this, and have used this to push their own agenda?
Obama and guns for instance; guns and ammo sales skyrocketed in 2008 and 2012, so much so that there were severe ammo shortages. Obama never made any real moves to limit 2nd amendment rights. Crazy as it sounds, I can't discount the possibility that Obama secretly holds pro-2nd views.
Same with Trump. Regardless of your opinions of the man, he has demonstrated mastery of public manipulation. Could his intent have been to encourage environmentalism? It's borderline conspiracy theory craziness, I'll grant you, but I can't discount that as a possibility.
If someone in India is good at their job (and I have known some highly skilled Indians), they can move to wherever country they want meaning that if you want to hire someone skilled in India than you must pay them enough that they do not want to move.
I agree with this statement. I would only add that folks of this quality won't work for outsourcing firms, typically, or if they do it's transitory.
Bias against Indians abroad is also compounding workers' fears of layoffs and downsizing at home.
Let's not pretend this bias isn't warranted. Outsourced indian tech support has a horrible reputation, and I'm taking into account the language barrier. It is almost universal that the best you can hope for from them is that they follow their scripts. Any deviation from the scripts and you can expect nothing but frustration and pain.
Outsourced Chinese tech support is notably better ( note; I didn't say good, only that it's better than indian tech support ). As a consultant and influencer, I make sure to steer my companies away from any company which outsources their tech support.
Let's not even discuss outsourced sysops. That shit is the stuff of nightmares.
The average woman's unadjusted annual salary has been cited as 78%[2] to 82%[3] of that of the average man's. However, after adjusting for choices made by male and female workers in college major, occupation, working hours, and parental leave, multiple studies find that pay rates between males and females varied by 5–6.6% or, females earning 94 cents to every dollar earned by their male counterparts. The remaining 6% of the gap has been speculated to originate from deficiency in salary negotiation skills and gender discrimination
I would imagine that would give anyone pause before making any declarative statements regarding the wage gap.
This is why I take "expert" dietary recommendations with a huge grain of salt ( which isn't, as it turns out, the devil it once was. Joining coffee and eggs on the pile of things which "may or may not be good or horrible for you" ).
It's staggering not only how much we don't know about how our bodies really work, but also how confident "we" are in what we only think we know. I'm also amazed at slow new information is propagated out. For instance; we knew in the 80s, the 80s that fat wasn't the dietary enemy that had been made out in previous studies ( well, "studies" given their methodology included throwing out data that didn't agree with their conclusions ), yet it would take another 30+ years before that started becoming general knowledge. In the meanwhile, increased sugar based diets ravaged the population.
I know because all the statistics I see tell me that women earn significantly less than men. That's a wage gap, OK?
If all you're going off of is the conclusions of studies you haven't read and don't know the methodology used, then I'm sorry; you really can't discuss it intelligently. Or rather, it would be inappropriate for you to make declarative statements like "that's the wage gap" or "the wage gap exists".
The first step to knowledge is admitting your own ignorance. You start by asking questions, not by telling people what does or does not exist.
Slashdot Mirror
I wouldn't drop 1,200 on ANY mobile device.
Well, unless it were also my computer which I could then dock and play games on ( desktop games, not mobile ). The dock and associated peripherals would have to be included in that 1,200, or no deal.
Plenty of the "warm body" type luser might not even notice the difference. Seems worth a shot (but a careful one, please) since you're that up for budget. But maybe you as an IT manager don't have knowledgeable techies at your disposal?
Perhaps you have users like that where you work, but it's quite a different story every where I've been. Users are...extremely resistant to change, to put it nicely. Actually had one secretary we did manage to upgrade complain loud enough and long enough that we had to revert her back to xp/xp, and that's as recent as 2 years ago.
Given those constraints, I'm a fan of a subscription model.
I've seen your concerns as well, and share them.
For me it's a classic "rock and a hard place" type of scenario. I've had to bang my head against training new users on new versions or fixing what an upgrade broke. I've also had to explain to auditors why we're still on an unsupported version of windows and have had to do some Rube Goldberg shit to bring us into compliance. Given the two problems, for me, I'd much rather have the subscription problem over the upgrade problem.
Of course, if only MS could fucking behave itself and not A) Randomly change interfaces "just 'cuz" and B) Do regression testing so as not to break shit, then we wouldn't be having this problem. Fuckers.
OH, and if only vendors who build on office would actually use the right API calls instead of relying on known broken ones ( or relying on unexpected behavior ). They get a "Fuckers" badge too. The fuckers.
As much as I hate MS and dislike the "subscription" model, it's not really a horrible idea in a corporate environment.
I've been stuck behind budgeting concerns which left XP *still* being installed on a sizable portion of our workstations. I'm not even going to talk about the archaic version of office we're rocking.
For home use; bullshit. For corporate/government, it's got it's appeal.
What a strange way of spelling "an asshole".
I'll be the one walking down the street slapping phones out of the zombie's hands, thanks.
So they made an assumption and seemingly tested exclusively against the assumption, attempting to prove it right. Not science.
Allow me to posit an alternative hypothesis ( which is all they really have ); young men are avoiding marriage until later in life and in some case swearing it off entirely. It's well known that marriage, and the inevitable spawn that comes with it, are a major pressure on men to produce; perhaps the toxic mating culture in today's western society is poisoning the well against that well known mechanism. Young men have seen what divorce puts men through and have wisely decided to "Nope" the fuck out of that equation.
That's my hypothesis anyway.
Hours to burnout isn't necessarily a valid relationship. Neither is hours to expertise, for that matter. There are far more factors to both relationships.
However, he's not entirely wrong; in order to get to the top of your field, that means a high degree of dedication and, yes, time. Can't put in an hour here and there and expect magical results. Of course, those who are at the top of their field usually love what they do, so those long hours spent in pursuit of excellence have a reduced chance to cause burnout.
Hell, that's not new. The only novel thing with this is how obvious they're being about it.
That's not even new, it's just a recent resurgence of willful ignorance.
One thing that "experts" like doctors and lawyers hate about the age of "free" information is that the common rabble now knows stuff, actual stuff.
Some, sure. You'll have low energy assholes in every field who just want to coast, and having an educated client upsets that balance.
Fuck them.
The ones who will thrive are my kind of people; those that are constantly improving, looking for new and innovative ways to solve old problems and more efficiently use their time. Won't be hard to tell the difference between the two, either.
I didn't say it was going to be all sunshine and roses. There are definitely downsides, but what you mentioned barely rates as an annoyance. Those same people who think they know what they're talking about because they read an article online ALSO sometimes have some pretty good ideas. More, their good ideas are informed by the knowledge they gained online. They may not be able to execute the idea, but that's where I come in.
Knowledge workers aren't going away as a result of the internet, but rather their roles will change and in many cases allow them to better use their energy on more interesting tasks.
We have absolutely no grasp of how much better our lives are now, and how much better they're going to be in the future, due to advancements in communication technology.
Take the healthcare industry. The joke is, of course, that doctors hate it when their patients internet-diagnose themselves, but the truth of the matter is that the internet enables patients to have a much greater degree of participation in their own health. This is amazing. Doctors are, generally speaking, pretty smart people, but they are also very busy. Having a patient who takes an active role in their health make visits far more efficient and effective. That's just one industry, and we haven't really progressed far with AI yet. Imagine what's coming: a doctor that lives in your browser that can make recommendations based on data from your telemetry band. Preemptive heart treatment. Prescriptions auto modified based on your reactions to them.
Some may lament days gone by of the "Experts", but they can have it. I'm looking forward to the future.
Wonder how many 0s those "steps" had.
So did congress do it? Override his veto, I mean?
--Your local liquor store.
I've supported employee developed "solutions".
I disagree to an extent.
Better tech education employees will create a more versatile office work force. I agree with your conclusion that actual programming jobs won't be stolen by grade school educated coders, however; there are plenty of tasks that can be streamlined through the use of programming in the office. Traditionally these have been too small and low priority to dedicate a coder to it, but when more people have access to entry level skills in this area? It will have an impact.
Of course, amateur-level coders using MS-access equivalent tools is a terrifying concept BUT as ugly as it may be it will still represent an increase in efficiency.
I've noticed for years that when a very public figure head makes a controversial stance against something, it only serves to popularize the opposition. A variation of the Streisand Effect, or an more ur-version of it at any rate. I wonder how aware politicians have been of this, and have used this to push their own agenda?
Obama and guns for instance; guns and ammo sales skyrocketed in 2008 and 2012, so much so that there were severe ammo shortages. Obama never made any real moves to limit 2nd amendment rights. Crazy as it sounds, I can't discount the possibility that Obama secretly holds pro-2nd views.
Same with Trump. Regardless of your opinions of the man, he has demonstrated mastery of public manipulation. Could his intent have been to encourage environmentalism? It's borderline conspiracy theory craziness, I'll grant you, but I can't discount that as a possibility.
If someone in India is good at their job (and I have known some highly skilled Indians), they can move to wherever country they want meaning that if you want to hire someone skilled in India than you must pay them enough that they do not want to move.
I agree with this statement. I would only add that folks of this quality won't work for outsourcing firms, typically, or if they do it's transitory.
Bias against Indians abroad is also compounding workers' fears of layoffs and downsizing at home.
Let's not pretend this bias isn't warranted. Outsourced indian tech support has a horrible reputation, and I'm taking into account the language barrier. It is almost universal that the best you can hope for from them is that they follow their scripts. Any deviation from the scripts and you can expect nothing but frustration and pain.
Outsourced Chinese tech support is notably better ( note; I didn't say good, only that it's better than indian tech support ). As a consultant and influencer, I make sure to steer my companies away from any company which outsources their tech support.
Let's not even discuss outsourced sysops. That shit is the stuff of nightmares.
The second sentence on your wiki link:
The average woman's unadjusted annual salary has been cited as 78%[2] to 82%[3] of that of the average man's. However, after adjusting for choices made by male and female workers in college major, occupation, working hours, and parental leave, multiple studies find that pay rates between males and females varied by 5–6.6% or, females earning 94 cents to every dollar earned by their male counterparts. The remaining 6% of the gap has been speculated to originate from deficiency in salary negotiation skills and gender discrimination
I would imagine that would give anyone pause before making any declarative statements regarding the wage gap.
...this presumably highly intelligent anesthesiologist discovered "teenagers".
This is why I take "expert" dietary recommendations with a huge grain of salt ( which isn't, as it turns out, the devil it once was. Joining coffee and eggs on the pile of things which "may or may not be good or horrible for you" ).
It's staggering not only how much we don't know about how our bodies really work, but also how confident "we" are in what we only think we know. I'm also amazed at slow new information is propagated out. For instance; we knew in the 80s, the 80s that fat wasn't the dietary enemy that had been made out in previous studies ( well, "studies" given their methodology included throwing out data that didn't agree with their conclusions ), yet it would take another 30+ years before that started becoming general knowledge. In the meanwhile, increased sugar based diets ravaged the population.
We're still just stumbling around blind on this.
I know because all the statistics I see tell me that women earn significantly less than men. That's a wage gap, OK?
If all you're going off of is the conclusions of studies you haven't read and don't know the methodology used, then I'm sorry; you really can't discuss it intelligently. Or rather, it would be inappropriate for you to make declarative statements like "that's the wage gap" or "the wage gap exists".
The first step to knowledge is admitting your own ignorance. You start by asking questions, not by telling people what does or does not exist.
Turns out I was wrong; google drive does keep versions, you just have to use their web interface.
However, Mozy is overly expensive and complex. I use backblaze. It's 5 bucks per computer per month...period.
So how do you know that a wage gap exists?
Ha! What's wrong with it is apparently I've never actually used the web interface.
Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue.