Take a pay cut, show the world that you're not in it for the money, you're in it for the future of technology in the USA.
Then call the BSA, report software piracy in a government office, collect the rest of your salary as the "reporting bonus".
Or, in another thought: It really had nothing to do with him. Just because you work with someone who does something stupid/illegal doesn't immediately make you guilty of also being involved in the stupidity/illegalities. Doesn't mean it doesn't, just means it doesn't have to be that he does. Or not.
Before anybody starts in on the "Yay, less employees!" style rant, please remember that there are GOOD people who work at bad companies... not everyone is an evil backstabbing conniving shrew with the goal of proving that everyone is evil and owes them billions of dollars.
Of course, I have no proof of this "decent people" there, but one can only assume there would be.
...that hasn't been hating Microsoft for the past couple years?
I mean, I like having to jump through hoops to get something simple to work in linux as much as the next guy (no sarcasm, this is/. after all.. who HASN'T spent a friday night recompiling software from source and swearing at the unavailability of required source libraries?), but sometimes it's just nice to "Click-click-click-done" of windows.
Sure, it may be buggy sometimes, is a target for viruses, isn't as fast or powerful as it should be, vista's a bloated pig, but I've got XP so it works and does what I tell it to, doesn't crash, runs everything I want natively, no fuss.
Office? Yeah, it sucks, trying too hard. SQL Server? S'ok. Exchange? Simple, works. IIS? Crap. Silverlight? Pass. Their X-Boxen? They f'cked up on the RROD issue, but working at correcting (C'mon baby, don't jinx it, keep bein' green!)
People need to remember that you CAN be pissed off at a poorly performing / defective / overly expensive / ugly products. It's perfectly OK to be angry.
What is NOT acceptable, under any conditions, is to take it out on the person who sold it (unless of course they were responsible for the construction / repair / destruction / damage / defilement / or it being vista). Gas is an ass-rape, but it's NOT the fault of the pump-jockey earning minimum wage.
The printer broke, it's not this guy's fault. He tried to sell the store's standard extended warranty, which would have saved aggravation (bad timing on the breakage), and unless this guy pointed it out in an asinine way ("If you bought the warranty like I told you to, you'd be fine, but you're cheap and screwed now, ain't ya?" type response), it was simply not his fault.
BTW: I don't work retail. I just sympathize with people getting blamed for things well beyond their control. I don't sympathize with them being dumber than dirt or the crappy attitudes many have.
But don't you see, each of those were FINAL fantasies! How many finals are there? Much like the mattress store that's "GOING OUT OF BUSINESS!" for the past 15 years. It should only happen ONCE.
I too am with Cogeco. I've noticed some interesting things over the past couple months:
Last year, before August, I had great download speeds through torrents - Any kind of torrent (ISO images, videos, legal music) would maintain a high speed and I'd cap out at about 500KB/s (Yes, that's KB).
Between August (Maybe sept?) and Feb of this year, I found that any videos or music files would have a TOTAL bandwidth allocation of 50KB/s. Yet a linux ISO would still download at 450-500KB/s. My upload would never approach 75KB/s. These speeds were consistent - Various torrents, if they were audio or video, would never go above a TOTAL of 50KB/s. 1 = 50, 2 = 20+30 (give or take)... you get the idea. Strangely enough, if I downloaded a ZIPPED media file, I'd get full speed.
After Feb, I find I now will have about 75-125KB/s per torrent, which is better, but still nothing is near the 500KB/s I had before. As a test, I re-ran various other ISO downloads, and they were still in the 300-500KB/s speeds...
The throttling exists, I've seen it... but I can live with it. I buy my CD's / DVD's used if I can, purchase music online, or stream it if possible.
If the school doesn't have the technical expertise inhouse to install antivirus or anti-malware software on their computers, and likely doesn't have a firewall setup at all, then what are the odds that they would have the ability to manage a series of linux boxes?
"It's linux, it's simple" - Yes. It's Windows, it's simple. Windows was paid for. LIkely they've already licensed their software (Office / teaching tools). But they don't have the time and/or manpower and/or skillset to deal with that. THey have an 11 year old who runs from class to class dealing with viruses and malware (Let's face it, it's not rocket science, someone should do it, but nobody was. Kudos for the 11 year old stepping up to the plate and dealing with it.)
To get linux installed requires:
Every computer to have a working CD ROM or a USB install enabled BIOS OR a central server for network installation
If network installation, every computer needs to be networked, network working, network boot enabled, and someone to setup a server - This requires a minimal amount of skill, which the school would likely not have
Knowledge of what they're doing (Even limited)
Knowledge of how to setup WINE for their applications
Time to create a "Teaching Linux" instruction manual for teachers, who will likely not know anything about it
TIme to create a "How to do XYZ in Linux" for students - they will need to be taught (Not everyone can teach themselves, and if you force something on them they WILL need support to do their tasks)
Knowledge on how to support the system in the event that something (basic) goes wrong during install or day to day operation
Time to draw up a proposal to management (On whatever level) as to what they're proposing, and why ("You've paid all this money for software, but you could use this other stuff for free! It won't cost you anything! Ummmm... no, you can't use the stuff you paid for anymore... not really... and it'll be different... yes, the teachers will have to learn it, but it's easy and... I need to do it after school or on my lunch? But, I'll miss !")
You're not talking "Installing XYZ instead of XYX", you're talking a full migration, and this is falling on an 11 year old who is doing it for fun / to help out. And he'd be doing it for people who probably would be hard-pressed to understand why all this time / effort is needed (We've all seen the "Does it turn on? So it works, right? And we want to change because.. it'll work too?" attitude of many users)
How about just applauding him for doing something about a bad situation, instead of him saying "It's not my problem"? Yes, he could do thousands of other things differently... but he's the only one who's doing anything.
WHOA, did I type this?
Back in 96, I got a Microsoft trackball... Hideous white beast, wwith rollers that got dirty and stopped the thing from working all too easily. Coupled with a "MS Natural Keyboard", I was set.
Back in 2001, when the "Trackball Explorer" came out, I bought one.
2005: Bought another (3 pack while at the company - I took one for my workstation, CFO took one for his, and I snagged one for home).
2007: I bought a MS Ergonomic 4000 keyboard - BEST keyboard I have seen period. Why people still use "standard" keyboards is beyond me, they are NOT good for your wrists. Takes some getting used to for gaming, but after a person uses it for about an hour, they simply can't go back to a regular keyboard. The "bonus" buttons are just that on the kb - nice to have, but I never use them (Volume, zoom (reprogrammed to scroll), forward / back and the = ( ) backspace buttons above numpad are great to have).
I also bought a G5 for my home, I use the trackball explorer for my laptop. I love it, people can't use the laptop on me! Nobody likes the touchpad at first (I still don't), and very few like a trackball (The best is watching someone drag it on the table as they move with their fingertips, out of habit).
I've never had an RSI, and I've used both - at home, trackball, at friends / clients, mice, at work, I'll use either/or... You CAN get an RSI from a trackball, but in a different place - the thumb (or forefinger in my case). I attribute some of the lack of carpal tunnel to the lack of solid mouse-usage.
My company, a manufacturing company up here in Canada, has some strange ideas.
Pagers: We supply them. A pain in the ass for those of us in IT, as we're in charge of them (Ever realize how often pagers go missing / get damaged?), we handle all pager requests. OK, fine, not a huge issue. Company pays, users get them. Users are NOT responsible for them, all charged to company. Lost pagers are charged back to company. Money loss, but essential most of the time.
Cell phones: Users own their own cell phones, pay for their own plans, but are reimbursed for business related costs. Company does not dictate who owns / has a cell. Fraud / improper use is HIGHLY cut down. And to cut down on extravagant costs: Only certain users can charge for cells, and if you do, you don't get a pager.
Home phones / internet: You use, you pay. You don't use? Feel free to get your job done anyway you want. If that requires you to come in, that's your issue. If you prefer to work from home, hey, congrats, save yourself some issue, but that's your choice. Bad idea? Maybe. But for us, it's a convenience factor. We give dialup access to laptop users. every 20 users share 1 DU account (About 550 Laptop users). Again, their choice to get a laptop, their burden.
For the IT staff, it's similar: 24/7 operation, you're on call. Rotating cell phones (Company owned), everybody has a laptop (Fun). You have the choice of coming in to fix the issue, or working from home on dialup, or your own connection. The choice is ours. If the company didn't pay for the high speed: Would you still have it? The answer for all but one of us: Yes.
Companies give employees the ability to work. If the employee is in a position where their job requires them to work 12 hours a day, they have 2 options: Deal with it, or leave. If you can't find something else, then you deal with it until you get work elsewhere. We come and go as we need, time off for family and such, but even then we're still on call should emergencies rise. Are we paid well? I guess. We all have jobs.
I'm happy. Sorta. And searching for better. I was unemployed for 2 years, I'm happy with what I have. Until I can find something better. In today's IT society, isn't that what the prize is? Income which doesn't rely on the phrase "Would you like to upsize your fries for only 49 cents?"?
Think about what you have, not what you have to endure.
If you purchase a site license, and use the key from an individual install, is this still legit?
I'm working in an organization which has only 400 or so computers (Half seem to be laptops, the other half old p-200 systems), and I've been installing with a license from a standard retail box. Scripted install helps, as does a standard install... but is this legal in the eyes of M$? Good thinking, or simply a Bad Idea(TM)?
And we would 'upgrade'.... WHY???
on
Office 2003 and XML
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Without going into the evils of microsoft and it's office products, how there are better OS's and products out there on the market, I'd like to ask: WHY???
Office 95 to 97 was a substantial jump.
97 to 2000 was a fairly substantial jump. Stability, document abilities, general ease of use. Most people were happy with 2000. Stable, if large.
2000 to XP: Smaller install, activation / registration nightmare, some interface changes, but otherwise the application is the same. How documents are saved, their base format has been changed, yet to the end user this should be transparent.
XP to 2003: What is the major differences? I mean... yes, it's going to be new, in a new year, but why would Joe Schmoe, Enterprise User (Or home user for that matter) want to shell out a couple hundred dollars per license where the increase in functionality will be limited? Increased document collaboration would be good, yes, but is it truly worth the cost? How many users don't KNOW how to use the advanced features?
I work as a sysadmin at a plastics factory, and the majority of the users barely know how to use a keyboard. I've worked in an insurance company, where I had to teach the corelation between moving the mouse and the pointer on the screen moving. I've done the dot-com thing, with users wanting more but not using it properly. What are the odds that an entire company would be utilizing the software to it's fullest potential? And what percentage of a company would actually get an advantage out of using these features, compared to the time required to train an entire office? Half of it would backfire if some users didn't understand the base concepts, as most don't..
Thoughts?
Slashdot Mirror
Take a pay cut, show the world that you're not in it for the money, you're in it for the future of technology in the USA.
Then call the BSA, report software piracy in a government office, collect the rest of your salary as the "reporting bonus".
Or, in another thought: It really had nothing to do with him. Just because you work with someone who does something stupid/illegal doesn't immediately make you guilty of also being involved in the stupidity/illegalities. Doesn't mean it doesn't, just means it doesn't have to be that he does. Or not.
Before anybody starts in on the "Yay, less employees!" style rant, please remember that there are GOOD people who work at bad companies... not everyone is an evil backstabbing conniving shrew with the goal of proving that everyone is evil and owes them billions of dollars.
Of course, I have no proof of this "decent people" there, but one can only assume there would be.
...that hasn't been hating Microsoft for the past couple years?
I mean, I like having to jump through hoops to get something simple to work in linux as much as the next guy (no sarcasm, this is /. after all.. who HASN'T spent a friday night recompiling software from source and swearing at the unavailability of required source libraries?), but sometimes it's just nice to "Click-click-click-done" of windows.
Sure, it may be buggy sometimes, is a target for viruses, isn't as fast or powerful as it should be, vista's a bloated pig, but I've got XP so it works and does what I tell it to, doesn't crash, runs everything I want natively, no fuss.
Office? Yeah, it sucks, trying too hard. SQL Server? S'ok. Exchange? Simple, works. IIS? Crap. Silverlight? Pass. Their X-Boxen? They f'cked up on the RROD issue, but working at correcting (C'mon baby, don't jinx it, keep bein' green!)
Am I the only one who isn't on with the hatred?
People need to remember that you CAN be pissed off at a poorly performing / defective / overly expensive / ugly products. It's perfectly OK to be angry.
What is NOT acceptable, under any conditions, is to take it out on the person who sold it (unless of course they were responsible for the construction / repair / destruction / damage / defilement / or it being vista). Gas is an ass-rape, but it's NOT the fault of the pump-jockey earning minimum wage.
The printer broke, it's not this guy's fault. He tried to sell the store's standard extended warranty, which would have saved aggravation (bad timing on the breakage), and unless this guy pointed it out in an asinine way ("If you bought the warranty like I told you to, you'd be fine, but you're cheap and screwed now, ain't ya?" type response), it was simply not his fault.
BTW: I don't work retail. I just sympathize with people getting blamed for things well beyond their control. I don't sympathize with them being dumber than dirt or the crappy attitudes many have.
WINE 1.0 is the ONCE.
At least until 1.1
The bible never states the date of creation, true... but we all know it happened on a Thursday.
Last year, before August, I had great download speeds through torrents - Any kind of torrent (ISO images, videos, legal music) would maintain a high speed and I'd cap out at about 500KB/s (Yes, that's KB).
Between August (Maybe sept?) and Feb of this year, I found that any videos or music files would have a TOTAL bandwidth allocation of 50KB/s. Yet a linux ISO would still download at 450-500KB/s. My upload would never approach 75KB/s. These speeds were consistent - Various torrents, if they were audio or video, would never go above a TOTAL of 50KB/s. 1 = 50, 2 = 20+30 (give or take)... you get the idea. Strangely enough, if I downloaded a ZIPPED media file, I'd get full speed.
After Feb, I find I now will have about 75-125KB/s per torrent, which is better, but still nothing is near the 500KB/s I had before. As a test, I re-ran various other ISO downloads, and they were still in the 300-500KB/s speeds... The throttling exists, I've seen it... but I can live with it. I buy my CD's / DVD's used if I can, purchase music online, or stream it if possible.
- Every computer to have a working CD ROM or a USB install enabled BIOS OR a central server for network installation
- If network installation, every computer needs to be networked, network working, network boot enabled, and someone to setup a server - This requires a minimal amount of skill, which the school would likely not have
- Knowledge of what they're doing (Even limited)
- Knowledge of how to setup WINE for their applications
- Time to create a "Teaching Linux" instruction manual for teachers, who will likely not know anything about it
- TIme to create a "How to do XYZ in Linux" for students - they will need to be taught (Not everyone can teach themselves, and if you force something on them they WILL need support to do their tasks)
- Knowledge on how to support the system in the event that something (basic) goes wrong during install or day to day operation
- Time to draw up a proposal to management (On whatever level) as to what they're proposing, and why ("You've paid all this money for software, but you could use this other stuff for free! It won't cost you anything! Ummmm... no, you can't use the stuff you paid for anymore... not really... and it'll be different... yes, the teachers will have to learn it, but it's easy and... I need to do it after school or on my lunch? But, I'll miss !")
You're not talking "Installing XYZ instead of XYX", you're talking a full migration, and this is falling on an 11 year old who is doing it for fun / to help out. And he'd be doing it for people who probably would be hard-pressed to understand why all this time / effort is needed (We've all seen the "Does it turn on? So it works, right? And we want to change because.. it'll work too?" attitude of many users) How about just applauding him for doing something about a bad situation, instead of him saying "It's not my problem"? Yes, he could do thousands of other things differently... but he's the only one who's doing anything.At least nobody seems to be wanting to annoy the free-roaming croc named Cthulhu....
(And yes, I know Cthulhu isn't a croc, but if you named a croc that.... REALLY, who would mess with it?)
WHOA, did I type this? Back in 96, I got a Microsoft trackball... Hideous white beast, wwith rollers that got dirty and stopped the thing from working all too easily. Coupled with a "MS Natural Keyboard", I was set. Back in 2001, when the "Trackball Explorer" came out, I bought one. 2005: Bought another (3 pack while at the company - I took one for my workstation, CFO took one for his, and I snagged one for home). 2007: I bought a MS Ergonomic 4000 keyboard - BEST keyboard I have seen period. Why people still use "standard" keyboards is beyond me, they are NOT good for your wrists. Takes some getting used to for gaming, but after a person uses it for about an hour, they simply can't go back to a regular keyboard. The "bonus" buttons are just that on the kb - nice to have, but I never use them (Volume, zoom (reprogrammed to scroll), forward / back and the = ( ) backspace buttons above numpad are great to have). I also bought a G5 for my home, I use the trackball explorer for my laptop. I love it, people can't use the laptop on me! Nobody likes the touchpad at first (I still don't), and very few like a trackball (The best is watching someone drag it on the table as they move with their fingertips, out of habit). I've never had an RSI, and I've used both - at home, trackball, at friends / clients, mice, at work, I'll use either/or... You CAN get an RSI from a trackball, but in a different place - the thumb (or forefinger in my case). I attribute some of the lack of carpal tunnel to the lack of solid mouse-usage.
My company, a manufacturing company up here in Canada, has some strange ideas.
Pagers: We supply them. A pain in the ass for those of us in IT, as we're in charge of them (Ever realize how often pagers go missing / get damaged?), we handle all pager requests. OK, fine, not a huge issue. Company pays, users get them. Users are NOT responsible for them, all charged to company. Lost pagers are charged back to company. Money loss, but essential most of the time.
Cell phones: Users own their own cell phones, pay for their own plans, but are reimbursed for business related costs. Company does not dictate who owns / has a cell. Fraud / improper use is HIGHLY cut down. And to cut down on extravagant costs: Only certain users can charge for cells, and if you do, you don't get a pager.
Home phones / internet: You use, you pay. You don't use? Feel free to get your job done anyway you want. If that requires you to come in, that's your issue. If you prefer to work from home, hey, congrats, save yourself some issue, but that's your choice. Bad idea? Maybe. But for us, it's a convenience factor. We give dialup access to laptop users. every 20 users share 1 DU account (About 550 Laptop users). Again, their choice to get a laptop, their burden.
For the IT staff, it's similar: 24/7 operation, you're on call. Rotating cell phones (Company owned), everybody has a laptop (Fun). You have the choice of coming in to fix the issue, or working from home on dialup, or your own connection. The choice is ours. If the company didn't pay for the high speed: Would you still have it? The answer for all but one of us: Yes.
Companies give employees the ability to work. If the employee is in a position where their job requires them to work 12 hours a day, they have 2 options: Deal with it, or leave. If you can't find something else, then you deal with it until you get work elsewhere. We come and go as we need, time off for family and such, but even then we're still on call should emergencies rise. Are we paid well? I guess. We all have jobs.
I'm happy. Sorta. And searching for better. I was unemployed for 2 years, I'm happy with what I have. Until I can find something better. In today's IT society, isn't that what the prize is? Income which doesn't rely on the phrase "Would you like to upsize your fries for only 49 cents?"?
Think about what you have, not what you have to endure.
If you purchase a site license, and use the key from an individual install, is this still legit?
I'm working in an organization which has only 400 or so computers (Half seem to be laptops, the other half old p-200 systems), and I've been installing with a license from a standard retail box. Scripted install helps, as does a standard install... but is this legal in the eyes of M$? Good thinking, or simply a Bad Idea(TM)?
Without going into the evils of microsoft and it's office products, how there are better OS's and products out there on the market, I'd like to ask: WHY??? Office 95 to 97 was a substantial jump. 97 to 2000 was a fairly substantial jump. Stability, document abilities, general ease of use. Most people were happy with 2000. Stable, if large. 2000 to XP: Smaller install, activation / registration nightmare, some interface changes, but otherwise the application is the same. How documents are saved, their base format has been changed, yet to the end user this should be transparent. XP to 2003: What is the major differences? I mean... yes, it's going to be new, in a new year, but why would Joe Schmoe, Enterprise User (Or home user for that matter) want to shell out a couple hundred dollars per license where the increase in functionality will be limited? Increased document collaboration would be good, yes, but is it truly worth the cost? How many users don't KNOW how to use the advanced features? I work as a sysadmin at a plastics factory, and the majority of the users barely know how to use a keyboard. I've worked in an insurance company, where I had to teach the corelation between moving the mouse and the pointer on the screen moving. I've done the dot-com thing, with users wanting more but not using it properly. What are the odds that an entire company would be utilizing the software to it's fullest potential? And what percentage of a company would actually get an advantage out of using these features, compared to the time required to train an entire office? Half of it would backfire if some users didn't understand the base concepts, as most don't.. Thoughts?