Blog hype or lack of it may change the impression of the product, or maybe MSFT finally has brought out the product Vista should have been, but the real question is does it provide value for the money it costs?
Microsoft's strategy of keeping itself inserted in the market by pressuring OEM's isn't going to last. There are already cracks in that wall. Netbooks almost got away from them, still could unless Windows 7 flies on low end hardware and doesn't add $100 to the cost. Maybe a lower cost version for low end hardware
Any way you slice it MS is in a bind. Sure they'll keep muscling the market via OEM's and leveraging school and government officials, the dead weight of legions of MCSE's and.NET developers, people invested in Microsoft, many in positions to influence decision makers. There's a lot of institutional inertia there. But if they field a crippled version for lower cost netbooks, Linux will eat their lunch on features. If they charge full price that will essentially double the cost of low end hardware. In addition, hardware OEM's want to sell more powerful and more expensive new desktops. But the market for high end hardware is not growing that fast. There's gaming, video, CAD and a few other specialized areas where you need beefy horsepower. The average productivity workstation doesn't need dual cores. For a majority of home users being able to see pictures of their kids, dash off a quick letter once in a while and check email is all they need to do and they don't need a $300 OS or high end hardware to do that. I just don't see a bright future for Redmond in this.
Theoretically, their duty is to maximize return on investment for their stockholders, which means doing everything they can legally to minimize their tax liability.
I've heard that line ever since the Regan administration. It's a line corporate execs use to excuse excess and over-stepping. Fiduciary duty to investors does not require anyone to cheat the government and broader base of taxpayers by setting up operations in tax shelter countries and burying revenue to avoid paying US taxes.
It's time we crushed that truism and stop accepting it as some sort of financial gospel that will excuse corporate misbehavior. The "free market" we have in place now rewards a few people at the top and screws everyone else down the line. Time for accountability and responsibility to come back in style and that starts with the people at the top of the artificial person we call a corporation.
What is this? Making a big deal out not monitoring a frequency that would potentially save lives when grandma's TV could stop working in just a matter of days. Have you no sense of perspective? Saving lives or making sure the American public has an uninterrupted stream of Wheel of Fortune? Come on now, wake up and smell the stale beer.
I worked a 9/80 schedule for years and grew to hate it. If you've got any kind of a commute that turns a 9 hour day into an 11 hour day. Days seemed interminable. All those extra hours for two days off a month. And the three days fly by because you tend to pack everything into your day off. Car maintenance, doctor visits, any errands.
A new company got the contract and didn't include the flex schedule and we went back to 8 hour days. It was like a vacation every day. 8 hours was a breeze.
Better than any flex schedule was finding a job I could telecommute part of the week. Now that's a luxury. Work is exactly the same but the stress is way lower. You don't realize how much time you spend getting ready and getting to work. No jarring alarm clocks, no traffic. I'm probably going to jinx it saying this, but since I started the telecommute schedule I haven't been really sick once. The difference is really quite amazing.
Couldn't be that this is the tool (I repeat, the TOOL, not the religion) that is, for good or bad, the defacto standard out there in the real world?
Or it could be that the manufacturer of the tool gives their tools away to educational institutions and maybe offers a scholarship or other financial incentive in addition to make sure any of them thinking about an alternative gets a reminder of how much money is on the line. And the reps of that tool manufacturer phone the local politicians and senior administrators and remind them how much money and how many jobs the proprietary software circle jerk provides.
So if you mean that influence peddling and bribery are the de facto standard in the "real world" then, sadly, you are quite right. And it certainly explains how Windows could have an edge in academia that has nothing to do with the relative merits of the tool itself.
You couldn't hit the real world in the butt with a base fiddle.
but the mental cost of switching could be high for someone used to particular Firefox extensions, unless or until they can all be expected to work seamlessly with Chrome.
What's the big rush? I tried Linux several times before I finally dual booted, then went on later to make the switch. If Chrome offers some features you find compelling, there's no reason they can't share browsing duty.
A little competition is a good thing. Though I do have to say that opening up their platform for custom user extensions was a brilliant move by Mozilla.
I've seen it so many times over the years. I wonder why it's so hard to add an administrative setting that limits Reply All to a certain number of users? Set at 100, it would only send the first 100, then ask the user if they wanted to send the next 100. Or 300 or 400 or whatever.
I can't count the number of people sending a hasty and blistering reply to thousands of people. Not only committing public suicide but accounting for who knows how many unproductive man hours while the entire organization stopped to read their spew. It's just crazy.
When you're a small company, sometimes you have to try and get more out of a smaller number of people. Even if you discuss it up front, it can still be stressful. On the flip side of the coin I've had IT staff go off with little provocation.
It's a business with a lot of stress, a lot of ego and many times more than one right answer. That's pretty much a formula for hurt feelings.
We discovered a River Otter living in our pond. I was suddenly glad the little guy wasn't poisonous. He was enjoying one of my bluegill for breakfast this am. If he starts eating my bass he could become an endangered species. Cute little rascal, though.
Wonder why an insect eating mammal needs venom? Those must be some bad ass bugs he's hunting.
Amazon said the new Requester Pays option relieves data providers of that burden, leaving them to pay only the basic storage fees for the cloud computing service.
Unless that data is mountains of scalding hot porn, I don't think they're going to make much money.
Also, as far as I'm aware, UK security services have been doing this for some time, this simply makes it legal.
Makes me wonder what else the Bush administration has been doing we don't know about. I'll actually be surprised if they haven't.
This is going too far in the name of security. Get a warrant. We have to draw the line somewhere and this is it. There is more stupidity that needs to be undone, but start with this.
I wonder how successful they are at breaking into Linux boxes? Or monitoring ssh connections? I'm sure they can crack an individual box, given enough time, but I'm really wondering about their capabilities. I'm guessing they can bone Windows boxes fairly easy but a hardened Linux box or Mac...not so easy. Even with the resources of the state. Either they have keys to all the encryption schemes being used for data transmission or they're using these powers to go after the low-hanging fruit.
If these are being funded by Federal dollars, than it should look carefully at how these are administered.
I'd go one better. If the taxpayers pay for it, the taxpayers own it. There's something cynical and wrong imho that a university can take federal dollars for basic research, then turn around and charge those same taxpayers for the right to use the inventions stemming from that research. If you want to lock up the discoveries, don't take federal dollars.
If it were up to me I'd expand that to every government purchase, including software. I don't mean the government would take ownership of the product, but would retain the right of first sale. So DHS could transfer software they're not using to DoD or GAO or some other agency or excess it on eBay and recover some of the funds. If you don't like the terms, don't sell to the government. That may mean there are some software products that wouldn't be available to government...well, too bad.
And since the pharmaceutical companies constantly complain about the cost of basic research and use that as one of the excuses we pay more for the same drugs in this country, maybe we could use some of our collective funds for basic pharma research. Then the taxpayers would at least get some of that money back from royalties, or the government could opt to release those discoveries without exclusive distribution agreements. How about that, Pfizer? I like that idea.
If anyone is talking about a "bomb" or what have you, they should be reported. Better safe and late then dead and never arriving.
This group never said anything about a bomb. A professional terrorist wouldn't wander down the isle speculating about the best place to put one, either. What does it say about airport security that people who have been through a thorough screening can still arouse suspicion with a casual comment? No faith in Homeland Security or the billions we're spending on airport security?
I am constantly amazed at the level of ignorance and stupidity this country displays toward security. It's gutless and unreasoned. There are something like 1.2 billion Muslims on the planet, around 22% of the total population of the planet! We have problems with a few thousand of them. How long are we going to use 9-11 to justify continued fear and ignorance?
I think just about everyone in tech, outside of Microsoft, saw this coming. Instead of adopting inclusive standards, MS opted for exclusive, proprietary technology and then implemented it poorly. ActiveX, VBScript,.NET...all require Windows and IE to work right. They tried to tie their OS to the development environment, the server environment and did everything they could to try and force the client as well.
IE was a stagnant, monolithic bug farm that lacked imagination and, perhaps most desperately, innovation. How many Firefox add-ons would be hard to live without? NoScript, FlashBlock, FireFTP there are dozens of applets that let you customize your browsing experience to your preference.
Gadget security, no matter how good the gadget, is ever going to provide security. The false positives will be worse than Vista UAC and pretty soon people will start ignoring them or turning the sensitivity down to the point it's nearly useless.
Anything that's uses behavior can be fooled. Even lie detectors can be spoofed with training.
Once again Homeland Insecurity spending billions to provide the most sophisticated false sense of security money can buy.
The concerns involve government tracking of the movements of vehicles within the state, though this has been denied by ODOT
That will last as long as it takes to process the first subpoena, if that. There is no way this won't be abused. If Oregon has vehicle inspection, then why not just use odometer checks instead? Or check the odometer reading when they renew their tags. You don't need GPS for that. Lower the tax per mile and don't worry about whether the miles were in Oregon or not. A penny a mile is like $1,000 on the life of most cars. It can't pay to run some kind of GPS tracking system for that.
Although not for all the reasons they listed under that scenario. I was there when the pronouncements of the paperless office doomed every word processor to the scrap heap of history, only to see the amount of paper actually expand. But now offices really are using less paper and I believe the need for heavy duty word processing, particularly one for every workstation, will...no, is diminishing. That chops at one of Microsoft's major profit centers and, even if you disagree about the future of paper, it's still a declining industry segment any way you shred it. The need is diminishing, the alternatives are getting better and more abundant.
The internet appliance trend will continue to eat away at OS market share. On less expensive hardware the cost of Windows becomes a larger percentage of the cost of a new machine. Unless the user has a need that justifies the cost, if users have a choice they will, at least some of the time, choose the alternative. The desktop market isn't growing as fast as the appliance market and more functional and more powerful appliance devices, like Netbooks (oh, no, we're gonna get sued!) are going to continue undermining the sales of higher end laptops and at least a few desktop sales. Mobile devices, smart phones all take their razor nick of blood out of the beast.
I don't see MS disappearing for a long time but I do see them diminishing over time. And I also believe there will be an "Enron" moment when it becomes apparent that earnings have been sliding for a long time.
After the Vista disaster MS seemed to settle down and focus on making Windows 7 a better product. Just when you think MS is going to get it together, they pull out a large caliber weapon, pop in a fresh clip and proceed to empty it into their foot.
After which they claim it was good for them and their users.
I am saying that trucks are not only required but are also wanted. There is nothing wrong with that.
I beg to differ. What percentage of the population actually does construction? 1%? Probably less. I live in farm country and most people I know drive a truck that gets 12 mpg all the time so they can haul stuff maybe once or twice a month. And that justification gets weaker and weaker as you get closer to town. My former stock broker insisted his wife needed a giant SUV so she didn't have to bend over to lift stuff out of a trunk. Lot of people drive a 12 mpg vehicle all the time so they tow a boat to the lake five or six times over the summer, haul their 4 wheeler out in the woods so they can go hunting. I'm not saying those are bad things, but multiply those flimsy justifications across the nation and it adds up to 25% of the world's gasoline being used by 3% of the world's population. Our economy being dependent on a string of oil tankers stretching around the world and something on the order of $700 billion a year going to countries that don't like us.
So, yeah, there's a lot wrong with that. And that ignorant, short-sighted mentality is what keeps us dependent on foreign oil. That let's us think that drilling more here, not conservation, is the solution. It's a national security issue and you're on the wrong side of the equation.
And I haul lumber behind my sensible sedan that gets 33 mpg all the time. It hasn't broken yet. Once or twice a year there might be something bigger than my car can haul and I slip one my buddies a few bucks to haul it for me...with their giant pickups that get 12 mpg all the time. But I could rent a truck if that wasn't an option. If it's a big enough load of lumber I'd just have the yard deliver it.
...I'm thinking everyone but our engineering design department could do their jobs fine with free software.
I'd take a hard look at accounting as well. They're one of our problem children for migration. First there were the linked spreadsheets, then we still had to set up a Windows kiosk for them.
We ditched Exchange by switching to corporate Gmail. The transition was a little rocky, but since things settled down, support calls have dropped to near zero. A good number of our people we're already using Gmail to manage their work mail anyway.
I'd have a plan to deal with Access db's scattered everywhere, too. Those are annoying but if you can corral them, it's better for everyone.
A car does not positively identify a person, nor does a license plate or a blurry photo.
It's the law of unintended consequences in action. No one in the legislature would consider taping a a license plate photoshop over their tags, therefore they fail to see the massive hole in machine enforcement. All they see is dollar signs and if a few thousand of their citizens are wrongly accused, what's that to the state?
If you want to slow traffic down, put more cops on traffic control. That works. The history of gadget enforcement is replete with examples of failures that range from routine to spectacular.
My answer? Be your own boss. It comes with a caveat: starting your own business alone is a bad idea.
I had the same experience when I tried to go part-time. But I was able to transition to my own gig without anyone else.
Ironically, starting my own business led directly to the job I have now. A job with really flexible hours and telecommute options. I don't make as much as working on my own but I get to keep more.
You can do IT consulting, support or programming alone. It's not as much fun, but you can do it. There are shared offices and day offices where other self-employed professionals hang out. A lot of times if you get to know people you can partner up and bid bigger jobs. It's not working alone but not carrying the expense of partners or employees.
I wonder why more companies don't consider job sharing and part-time people? You can get some really blue chip employees if you're a little flexible on the hours. But the majority of companies are so ridged.
Slashdot Mirror
Blog hype or lack of it may change the impression of the product, or maybe MSFT finally has brought out the product Vista should have been, but the real question is does it provide value for the money it costs?
Microsoft's strategy of keeping itself inserted in the market by pressuring OEM's isn't going to last. There are already cracks in that wall. Netbooks almost got away from them, still could unless Windows 7 flies on low end hardware and doesn't add $100 to the cost. Maybe a lower cost version for low end hardware
Any way you slice it MS is in a bind. Sure they'll keep muscling the market via OEM's and leveraging school and government officials, the dead weight of legions of MCSE's and .NET developers, people invested in Microsoft, many in positions to influence decision makers. There's a lot of institutional inertia there. But if they field a crippled version for lower cost netbooks, Linux will eat their lunch on features. If they charge full price that will essentially double the cost of low end hardware. In addition, hardware OEM's want to sell more powerful and more expensive new desktops. But the market for high end hardware is not growing that fast. There's gaming, video, CAD and a few other specialized areas where you need beefy horsepower. The average productivity workstation doesn't need dual cores. For a majority of home users being able to see pictures of their kids, dash off a quick letter once in a while and check email is all they need to do and they don't need a $300 OS or high end hardware to do that. I just don't see a bright future for Redmond in this.
Theoretically, their duty is to maximize return on investment for their stockholders, which means doing everything they can legally to minimize their tax liability.
I've heard that line ever since the Regan administration. It's a line corporate execs use to excuse excess and over-stepping. Fiduciary duty to investors does not require anyone to cheat the government and broader base of taxpayers by setting up operations in tax shelter countries and burying revenue to avoid paying US taxes.
It's time we crushed that truism and stop accepting it as some sort of financial gospel that will excuse corporate misbehavior. The "free market" we have in place now rewards a few people at the top and screws everyone else down the line. Time for accountability and responsibility to come back in style and that starts with the people at the top of the artificial person we call a corporation.
What is this? Making a big deal out not monitoring a frequency that would potentially save lives when grandma's TV could stop working in just a matter of days. Have you no sense of perspective? Saving lives or making sure the American public has an uninterrupted stream of Wheel of Fortune? Come on now, wake up and smell the stale beer.
I worked a 9/80 schedule for years and grew to hate it. If you've got any kind of a commute that turns a 9 hour day into an 11 hour day. Days seemed interminable. All those extra hours for two days off a month. And the three days fly by because you tend to pack everything into your day off. Car maintenance, doctor visits, any errands.
A new company got the contract and didn't include the flex schedule and we went back to 8 hour days. It was like a vacation every day. 8 hours was a breeze.
Better than any flex schedule was finding a job I could telecommute part of the week. Now that's a luxury. Work is exactly the same but the stress is way lower. You don't realize how much time you spend getting ready and getting to work. No jarring alarm clocks, no traffic. I'm probably going to jinx it saying this, but since I started the telecommute schedule I haven't been really sick once. The difference is really quite amazing.
Couldn't be that this is the tool (I repeat, the TOOL, not the religion) that is, for good or bad, the defacto standard out there in the real world?
Or it could be that the manufacturer of the tool gives their tools away to educational institutions and maybe offers a scholarship or other financial incentive in addition to make sure any of them thinking about an alternative gets a reminder of how much money is on the line. And the reps of that tool manufacturer phone the local politicians and senior administrators and remind them how much money and how many jobs the proprietary software circle jerk provides.
So if you mean that influence peddling and bribery are the de facto standard in the "real world" then, sadly, you are quite right. And it certainly explains how Windows could have an edge in academia that has nothing to do with the relative merits of the tool itself.
You couldn't hit the real world in the butt with a base fiddle.
but the mental cost of switching could be high for someone used to particular Firefox extensions, unless or until they can all be expected to work seamlessly with Chrome.
What's the big rush? I tried Linux several times before I finally dual booted, then went on later to make the switch. If Chrome offers some features you find compelling, there's no reason they can't share browsing duty.
A little competition is a good thing. Though I do have to say that opening up their platform for custom user extensions was a brilliant move by Mozilla.
I've seen it so many times over the years. I wonder why it's so hard to add an administrative setting that limits Reply All to a certain number of users? Set at 100, it would only send the first 100, then ask the user if they wanted to send the next 100. Or 300 or 400 or whatever.
I can't count the number of people sending a hasty and blistering reply to thousands of people. Not only committing public suicide but accounting for who knows how many unproductive man hours while the entire organization stopped to read their spew. It's just crazy.
Is this the version of Vista that actually works and provides some value for all the money it costs?
When you're a small company, sometimes you have to try and get more out of a smaller number of people. Even if you discuss it up front, it can still be stressful. On the flip side of the coin I've had IT staff go off with little provocation.
It's a business with a lot of stress, a lot of ego and many times more than one right answer. That's pretty much a formula for hurt feelings.
We discovered a River Otter living in our pond. I was suddenly glad the little guy wasn't poisonous. He was enjoying one of my bluegill for breakfast this am. If he starts eating my bass he could become an endangered species. Cute little rascal, though.
Wonder why an insect eating mammal needs venom? Those must be some bad ass bugs he's hunting.
Amazon said the new Requester Pays option relieves data providers of that burden, leaving them to pay only the basic storage fees for the cloud computing service.
Unless that data is mountains of scalding hot porn, I don't think they're going to make much money.
Also, as far as I'm aware, UK security services have been doing this for some time, this simply makes it legal.
Makes me wonder what else the Bush administration has been doing we don't know about. I'll actually be surprised if they haven't.
This is going too far in the name of security. Get a warrant. We have to draw the line somewhere and this is it. There is more stupidity that needs to be undone, but start with this.
I wonder how successful they are at breaking into Linux boxes? Or monitoring ssh connections? I'm sure they can crack an individual box, given enough time, but I'm really wondering about their capabilities. I'm guessing they can bone Windows boxes fairly easy but a hardened Linux box or Mac...not so easy. Even with the resources of the state. Either they have keys to all the encryption schemes being used for data transmission or they're using these powers to go after the low-hanging fruit.
If these are being funded by Federal dollars, than it should look carefully at how these are administered.
I'd go one better. If the taxpayers pay for it, the taxpayers own it. There's something cynical and wrong imho that a university can take federal dollars for basic research, then turn around and charge those same taxpayers for the right to use the inventions stemming from that research. If you want to lock up the discoveries, don't take federal dollars.
If it were up to me I'd expand that to every government purchase, including software. I don't mean the government would take ownership of the product, but would retain the right of first sale. So DHS could transfer software they're not using to DoD or GAO or some other agency or excess it on eBay and recover some of the funds. If you don't like the terms, don't sell to the government. That may mean there are some software products that wouldn't be available to government...well, too bad.
And since the pharmaceutical companies constantly complain about the cost of basic research and use that as one of the excuses we pay more for the same drugs in this country, maybe we could use some of our collective funds for basic pharma research. Then the taxpayers would at least get some of that money back from royalties, or the government could opt to release those discoveries without exclusive distribution agreements. How about that, Pfizer? I like that idea.
If anyone is talking about a "bomb" or what have you, they should be reported. Better safe and late then dead and never arriving.
This group never said anything about a bomb. A professional terrorist wouldn't wander down the isle speculating about the best place to put one, either. What does it say about airport security that people who have been through a thorough screening can still arouse suspicion with a casual comment? No faith in Homeland Security or the billions we're spending on airport security?
I am constantly amazed at the level of ignorance and stupidity this country displays toward security. It's gutless and unreasoned. There are something like 1.2 billion Muslims on the planet, around 22% of the total population of the planet! We have problems with a few thousand of them. How long are we going to use 9-11 to justify continued fear and ignorance?
Pathetic.
I think just about everyone in tech, outside of Microsoft, saw this coming. Instead of adopting inclusive standards, MS opted for exclusive, proprietary technology and then implemented it poorly. ActiveX, VBScript, .NET...all require Windows and IE to work right. They tried to tie their OS to the development environment, the server environment and did everything they could to try and force the client as well.
IE was a stagnant, monolithic bug farm that lacked imagination and, perhaps most desperately, innovation. How many Firefox add-ons would be hard to live without? NoScript, FlashBlock, FireFTP there are dozens of applets that let you customize your browsing experience to your preference.
Gadget security, no matter how good the gadget, is ever going to provide security. The false positives will be worse than Vista UAC and pretty soon people will start ignoring them or turning the sensitivity down to the point it's nearly useless.
Anything that's uses behavior can be fooled. Even lie detectors can be spoofed with training.
Once again Homeland Insecurity spending billions to provide the most sophisticated false sense of security money can buy.
The concerns involve government tracking of the movements of vehicles within the state, though this has been denied by ODOT
That will last as long as it takes to process the first subpoena, if that. There is no way this won't be abused. If Oregon has vehicle inspection, then why not just use odometer checks instead? Or check the odometer reading when they renew their tags. You don't need GPS for that. Lower the tax per mile and don't worry about whether the miles were in Oregon or not. A penny a mile is like $1,000 on the life of most cars. It can't pay to run some kind of GPS tracking system for that.
Although not for all the reasons they listed under that scenario. I was there when the pronouncements of the paperless office doomed every word processor to the scrap heap of history, only to see the amount of paper actually expand. But now offices really are using less paper and I believe the need for heavy duty word processing, particularly one for every workstation, will...no, is diminishing. That chops at one of Microsoft's major profit centers and, even if you disagree about the future of paper, it's still a declining industry segment any way you shred it. The need is diminishing, the alternatives are getting better and more abundant.
The internet appliance trend will continue to eat away at OS market share. On less expensive hardware the cost of Windows becomes a larger percentage of the cost of a new machine. Unless the user has a need that justifies the cost, if users have a choice they will, at least some of the time, choose the alternative. The desktop market isn't growing as fast as the appliance market and more functional and more powerful appliance devices, like Netbooks (oh, no, we're gonna get sued!) are going to continue undermining the sales of higher end laptops and at least a few desktop sales. Mobile devices, smart phones all take their razor nick of blood out of the beast.
I don't see MS disappearing for a long time but I do see them diminishing over time. And I also believe there will be an "Enron" moment when it becomes apparent that earnings have been sliding for a long time.
It's apparent that Windows 7 represents a radical name change from Vista. A bold new direction in OS branding.
And people say innovation is dead in Redmond.
After the Vista disaster MS seemed to settle down and focus on making Windows 7 a better product. Just when you think MS is going to get it together, they pull out a large caliber weapon, pop in a fresh clip and proceed to empty it into their foot.
After which they claim it was good for them and their users.
I am saying that trucks are not only required but are also wanted. There is nothing wrong with that.
I beg to differ. What percentage of the population actually does construction? 1%? Probably less. I live in farm country and most people I know drive a truck that gets 12 mpg all the time so they can haul stuff maybe once or twice a month. And that justification gets weaker and weaker as you get closer to town. My former stock broker insisted his wife needed a giant SUV so she didn't have to bend over to lift stuff out of a trunk. Lot of people drive a 12 mpg vehicle all the time so they tow a boat to the lake five or six times over the summer, haul their 4 wheeler out in the woods so they can go hunting. I'm not saying those are bad things, but multiply those flimsy justifications across the nation and it adds up to 25% of the world's gasoline being used by 3% of the world's population. Our economy being dependent on a string of oil tankers stretching around the world and something on the order of $700 billion a year going to countries that don't like us.
So, yeah, there's a lot wrong with that. And that ignorant, short-sighted mentality is what keeps us dependent on foreign oil. That let's us think that drilling more here, not conservation, is the solution. It's a national security issue and you're on the wrong side of the equation.
And I haul lumber behind my sensible sedan that gets 33 mpg all the time. It hasn't broken yet. Once or twice a year there might be something bigger than my car can haul and I slip one my buddies a few bucks to haul it for me...with their giant pickups that get 12 mpg all the time. But I could rent a truck if that wasn't an option. If it's a big enough load of lumber I'd just have the yard deliver it.
I'd take a hard look at accounting as well. They're one of our problem children for migration. First there were the linked spreadsheets, then we still had to set up a Windows kiosk for them.
We ditched Exchange by switching to corporate Gmail. The transition was a little rocky, but since things settled down, support calls have dropped to near zero. A good number of our people we're already using Gmail to manage their work mail anyway.
I'd have a plan to deal with Access db's scattered everywhere, too. Those are annoying but if you can corral them, it's better for everyone.
Octopuses give eight thumbs up for high-def TV
Well, duh. What kind of self-respecting cephalopod would opt for standard definition in this day and age?
A car does not positively identify a person, nor does a license plate or a blurry photo.
It's the law of unintended consequences in action. No one in the legislature would consider taping a a license plate photoshop over their tags, therefore they fail to see the massive hole in machine enforcement. All they see is dollar signs and if a few thousand of their citizens are wrongly accused, what's that to the state?
If you want to slow traffic down, put more cops on traffic control. That works. The history of gadget enforcement is replete with examples of failures that range from routine to spectacular.
My answer? Be your own boss. It comes with a caveat: starting your own business alone is a bad idea.
I had the same experience when I tried to go part-time. But I was able to transition to my own gig without anyone else.
Ironically, starting my own business led directly to the job I have now. A job with really flexible hours and telecommute options. I don't make as much as working on my own but I get to keep more.
You can do IT consulting, support or programming alone. It's not as much fun, but you can do it. There are shared offices and day offices where other self-employed professionals hang out. A lot of times if you get to know people you can partner up and bid bigger jobs. It's not working alone but not carrying the expense of partners or employees.
I wonder why more companies don't consider job sharing and part-time people? You can get some really blue chip employees if you're a little flexible on the hours. But the majority of companies are so ridged.