I don't know from direct experience with the Codemasters company if this is true, but from playing a lot of their games back in the 80's, that would be pretty obvious. The did have some GREAT games that sucked many of my hours away, but for each gem there were maybe 10 disasters. Yet to look at the back of the tape you'd think they were all the best game ever. How many times can they write, "This Game is Amazing! - Richard Darling" before my weak, 10 year old brain realized Richard Darling directly profited from the successful sales of the tape, and as such would say any old nonsense to get me to buy it?
Saying that, the Dizzy games, BMX Simulator, Rockstar Ate my Hamster, ATV Simulator and Grand Prix Simulator, were well worth the 1.99 I paid for them!
I don't know if this is recommended, and I've had a couple of times this didn't work. However, if in doubt, I usually go for the HP LaserJet 4 driver built into Windows.
I am by no means a Windows fan boy, but fair is fair. 99% of the time, Windows does not ask for the CD, it will pull anything it needs from the local cache, i386 or where ever. It's been a while since I spent any time with 2000, but I remember it being the same way. When you apt-get from your Linux install where is it getting the software to install from? It's either from the CD (which has to be in the drive), from a local cache (a la i386) or from the Internet.
My feeling is, based on a persons position within a company, I should be able to safely expect a certain level of competency. For example, if I'm hiring an auto-mechanic I should be able to assume they can drain the oil from a car, change a battery, rotate tires and other 'basic' mechanic functions.
By that same token if I'm hiring someone for {random office job here}, then I should be able to assume they have basic competency in defacto office skills, including email usage. I would be wrong to assume the auto-mechanic can update their Outlook calendar in the same way I would be wrong to assume the office worker can change break pads.
Yes, if it's an entry level position or 'first real job', there might be some education needed, but anyone else shouldn't need hand-holding.
I can only talk from my own experience as an IT Manager for a medium sized company, and obviously don't have the same situation as everyone else. However, it's not that we're expected to work long hours, or be on call 24/7, it's that we're expected to do all facets of the job. That includes fixing the CEOs Outlook when he breaks something again, as well as install the latest hotfix to the business critical CRM application server. Number 1 happens at 8am eastern, number 2 cannot be done until after close of business, 9pm central. The long hours basically create themselves!
I work for a company with ~200 PCs, across 4 states, all but 11 of which are Dells. I will agree, the phone support isn't the speediest thing in the world, but no worse than other companies I've had to call. The thing that does it for me though is the online chat with Technical Support. I've never had to wait more than 5 minutes to get to someone, and I think the longest chat I've ever had was about 10 minutes, mainly because I had to walk to another part of the office to check something.
The key is to know what the problem is, and know the steps you've already taken to try and fix it. If the power supply is bad, tell them you've tried another power supply in this machine and it works fine. Tell them you've tried this power supply in another machine and it didn't turn on. Pretty cut and dried, you need a new power supply. Then, per your warranty they will either send you a new power supply or send you someone with a power supply to swap it out.
I had an issue with a system critical server that the original purchaser felt only needed next day on-site hardware service. The system board went bad at 10am, and next day wouldn't cut it. The nice tech support person I had called, set up a 4 hour service call for me anyway, and transferred me to some billing department to buy 4 hour response retroactively. I waited on hold for these billing people for about 30 minutes (OK, that bit of the story sucks), but couldn't stand the music any longer and hung up. I went to notify our front desk that a system board and Dell tech would be arriving by 2pm to fix a server for us. The system board had already been delivered, and the tech was about 10 minutes behind. 15 minutes later my server was back up and running, and all my users happy again.
I might be biased, but HP would have to do a lot for me to replace Dell as my hardware manufacturer of choice.
We use RightFax also, we have 400 DIDs piped into it. We get probably 2 spam faxes a day per DID. Yes we can delete them, but they still take up times and space on the 8 channels we have coming in. They all come from one specific spammer (currently called My Hot Leads) who, according to (http://www.junkfax.org/fax/profiles/MyHotLeads.ht m) have been sued, are being sued, have been threatened with jail time, but still will not quit.
I hate email spammers as much as the next guy, but I can do a lot to stop email spam before it costs me any significant time, money or resources. Fax spam however, by it's very nature has already cost me all of these for it to come into the building. I've never been an angry person, but if I ever find myself in Addison, Texas, I may have to stop in and see these guys. Just to say hi you understand, nothing else, certainly no fiber cutting involved at all...
It's been a few years since I powered up my PC1512 (DD!), but I bet it still runs like a champion. I still remember installing Wordstar from ~30 5 1/4 inch floppies. Best word processor ever!
I used to run, if I remember rightly, Gem (GEM?) as the GUI on my PC1512, anyone know if it was possible to get Windows 1.0 running on it?
I went to school in the UK, and didn't have the luxury of one computer per classroom, we had 3 BBC B Micros (with floppy disk!) between the entire student body, up to the age of 11. We were lucky to get 30 minutes a week on the computer, and usually in groups of 3. Despite that, some of turned out to be quite handy with computers!
To address your list one by one;
'trudging to the library to get info for a report' - Gives children exercise, a certain amount of social interaction, as well as increasing reading, comprehension and problem solving skills (Dewey Decimal System).
'hand writing essays' - Helps improve a writing ability (natch!) as well as increases comprehension of a subject by giving a more hands-on feel to the content, and avoids simply cutting and pasting from existing documents.
'typewriters' - Not sure what you mean by this, no school I went to would have allowed using a typewriter except for learning typing skills. In which case, yes, Mavis Beacon kicks a typewriters ass any day of the week.
'snail mail' - Not school related, so I'm not sure how it relates to computers in school. However, the same advantages for hand written essays can be given to postal mail. Also, it's sometimes nice to receive a letter from somewhere over-seas, with it's funny stamp and strange postal marks, and be able to put it in an album.
'print newspapers' - From a personal anecdote, I read at least 1 newspaper a day from the age of 4 upwards, both broad-sheet and 'rag'. Thanks to this I have a much better grasp of the English language, and a much better understanding of the world around me. Newspapers are a great source of information and entertainment, that online news sources are not really able to compete with.
'lack of instant free porn' - I'm sure this was put in as a joke, but has a serious undertone. Whether you agree with sex education in school or not, second grade is definitely too young to be educating students on these matters. At this age sex education, and by extension porn education, should be handled in the home, and schools should do their best to 'protect' students.
You don't specify in your question if all 3500 current PCs are local or distributed. As someone who currently supports multiple remote locations, furthest being about 3000 miles from our main data center, I would say this is a VERY important distinction. We use Windows Terminal Services hosted on multiple Windows 2003 servers to give access to some fairly basic but unique CRM functionality. We have more than enough horse-power for each user, and my local users love it. However, remote users who have high-speed, high cost WAN connections, with pings between 8ms and 90ms, hate it.
Even with a ping time like that, it can get frustrating. A slight lag in a mouse movement or key stroke can have a huge effect on productivity. Even a slight drop in the connection, which seems to be happening WAAAY to frequently for the price we pay for our T's (damn Global Crossing...), destroys productivity. Of course, if the WAN connection goes down for any length of time, an entire office of people has zero productivity. We have back up connections, but usually if someone chops the fiber that supplies the T, the DSL goes down as well.
It's wonderful to be able to buy cheap hardware, and know it's going to run everything I need. It's wonderful being able to install an application once and know all my users have it. It's wonderful to update one config file, and know all my users have the new setting. However, it's horrible to get phone calls 24/7, from frustrated users because a thunderstorm in Texas is bouncing a WAN connection. I would think seriously before making a move like this, be sure the saving in time, energy and money supporting and running thin clients, make up for the increased user frustration and potential loss of productivity.
It's the Lathem TouchStation isn't it? We in IT were asked for recommendations on an updated time clock system. We have several, from simple manual cards, to a custom web based system. None of them involved a crappy USB fingerprint reader, and even crappier software. However, HR decided to buy two of them, and stick IT with the responsibility of making them work, and getting pissed when they didn't.
The fingerprint reader had a 50% success rate, on a good day. The manual specifically suggests that you rub your finger on your temple to make it greasy, and give you a better chance of being read. It didn't really help with the success rate, just made the next person to use it feel kind of queasy.
We had to move the software from one machine to another in an attempt to make it a little more stable, and not need to be rebooted 3 or 4 times every day. We had had them both for about 2 months, with 1 year of support. When installing on the new machine it asked for a registration code or similar, with a phone number to call. It cost, if I remember rightly, $50 for the new code. It didn't fix the problem.
Guess who got the blame... Of course, it was ITs fault, after all, it's an IT product...
What happens if Joe User comes to me and says he wants that file he deleted 6 months ago? I tell him if he wanted it, he shouldn't have deleted it. I'm not sure about other companies, but the amount of crap created every day in my organization would take a truck load of tapes to archive. If something is important it gets put in a specific group of network shares which get archived, everything else is under a daily backup schedule, with a retention of 1 month.
I too use a HDD backup system, although with more than 1 device, and with off-site storage. I've had one HDD go bad on me, but luckily, thanks to my daily backups, I didn't lose any data. We used to use tapes but when our data footprint exceeded the capacity of a tape, it became exponentially harder to maintain. I've now tripled my daily backup size in less than 6 months, without having to change process or (forget to) swap tapes, mid-backup.
Can I get an ahem to that? You can write the most lucid, rational, educative, polite but firm email, with step by step instructions and even screen shots and diagrams, and users still do not get it. I would say 50% reading it is about right. However, as far as understanding goes, it seems most people don't want to understand. They are with happy doing things the way they always have, and don't want to use any brain power to change. Heaven forbid though you have to take their machine away to clean up the resultant mess of them ignoring your directions. "What do you mean its going to take 2 hours to get it back up and running?! It only took me 30 seconds to break it!"
Yup, I remember that, I did Tech Support for IBM back in the day. The only thing I really remember about it was sometimes it got 'stuck' during the resume process. We had to do some thing like, turn it off, hold down both mouse buttons, turn it on, turn it off and then let it boot.
Or maybe that was part of some weird, Tech Support nightmare I had.
IANAL either, but I've at least been through a credit check for employment. Here in Florida if you agree to it (signed paperwork) potential employers can do a credit check on interviewees. I'm not sure they can directly use a credit score as a reason for hiring/not hiring, but its easy enough for the hiring manager to see a credit score they don't like, decline the candidate, but then record the reason as being something generic, and legal.
In my case I was interviewing (and passed!) for an IT Manager position at a sub-prime auto lending company. The thinking behind it is, if staff can't handle their own bills, how can they be expected to help customers handle theirs? While I don't think blinding taking a credit score as a reason to hire/fire someone (700 or below not hired, 701 or above hired) it does at least show something about a person. It should be carefully considered though, someone who has a low credit score because of a divorce and forced bankruptcy, but has otherwise perfect payment history, shouldn't be penalized for having an evil ex-wife or husband.
Erm, can you actually give some reasoning or thought behind your apparent loathing of SG and its staff? You use the word scum, then compare them to MySpace? MySpace allows for painful page design, hideous colors and mind-numbingly repetative 8 second music clips, as well giving every damn angst-ridden Emo teen out there a place to write "poetry" about slashing their wrists. All of these traits are definitely obnoxious, but I wouldn't say scummy.
I've been reading all the posts on this thread, and wanted to reply to each and every one of them. I don't think I've been this wound up in a long time, some posts on here really made my blood boil. Whether its the ignorance, the stupidity, or just plain naivety, I don't know. In my mind it really comes down to two different work (worker?) types, of course with variations and exceptions.
The first type are what I call the "John 'Maddog' Hall-ites", no offense meant to the big man. Whether it be by luck, education, hard work or something else, a person has found themselves to be in a position where they can (and do) earn big money, just to basically be themselves. I.e. if they want to hack on the latest up and coming file system for Linux on a beach in Brazil, they can. If they want to work on their website, blogging about their latest skiing trip, they can. If they want to take a 2 week contacting job, run a few ethereal scans on a companies network, then tell the SysAdmin he needs to get rid of his Windows servers and replace them with Linux, they can. dada21 at the top of this page seems to be an example of this taken to the Nth degree, with an extra scoop of arrogance, and some asshole sprinkles.
The second type is the larger of the two groups. Those of us who work in the real world, doing real jobs, to make real money, for real reasons. We have houses, cars, significant others, children even, all of which are wonderful in their own way, but require money for up-keep. It would be nice to be able to tell a 3 year old that she doesn't get any food this week because Daddy wanted a couple of days in the Mountains, but it just doesn't work out so well (they cry when hungry, who knew?!). I don't know about your Bank but mine tends to get a little upset when I miss a couple of mortgage payments. The argument "but I just HAD to go boating for a week!" doesn't seem to hold much water with the Bank Manger these days (Bastard!).
Some people will come back with an argument that gets me even more angry. They will say, if you aren't earning enough money to be able to survive for a couple of weeks without income, what are you doing still working at that job? For every CIO out there, there are thousands of Web Developers, Tech Support Agents, and entry level Code Monkeys. It would be nice if we could all take a quick run up the Corporate ladder and get the big corner office and the 7 figure salary or the prime Consulting positions, but whether its by lack of skill or lack of opportunity, not all of us can.
I don't want to sound bitter, because I'm not, I've been lucky enough to get myself in at the birth of a rapidly growing company with lots of potential, so I foresee in the next few years I'll be able to take a trip or two back to the old country. However, it does seem a little rich (pun intended) for someone to criticize, be-little and downright insult someone else, just because they weren't born as smart, haven't had the same breaks or made the same life decisions.
And on my not so modern Centrino laptop, my latest Ubuntu install took less than 45 minutes from boot to X up and running, and DVD/MP3 Playback, and Wireless access...
In fact thats how long it took on my ancient P3, and an even more ancient AMD laptop. Not that I'm anti Gentoo, its just I like to be able to use my computers during the same season that I start an install.
Being an avid F1 fan up until the mid 90's, I'd have to disagree with that. If anyone remembers 'back in the day', drivers had the option of turning up or down their turbo boost to gain speed but at a great cost to fuel. This definitely was technology taken to the N'th degree, but it was still the drivers decision when/if to turn up or down that affected the outcome. It may not be a physical skill, but driving is as much, if not more, mental than physical.
Right now the drivers are much better than the cars, so the limiting factor is the cars. Rather than the drivers skill then deciding outcomes, its the cars lack of skill that decides who wins.
I'm all for making F1 more exciting for fans, and increasing the field sizes (remember pre-qualifying?!), but this isn't the way to do it. Compare the tapes of Senna vs Piquet, against Schumacher vs Alonso and you might as well be watching two different sports.
How do you know its not wanted? There are a large number of less technical people out there who don't know HTML from a hole in the ground. For them creating their blog from within Word would be perfect. They already know how to create a document in Word so their time to create something would be shorter and as such more rewarding. The key thing to remember is most blogs aren't created for the reader, they are created for the blogger.
But you've hit the chicken and the egg right on the head here, if that isn't mixing metaphors too much. She should have experience and a degree if she wants to progress, and I would agree. However, how are you supposed to live and pay for school on $7.00 an hour? How are you supposed to get experience if there is no one out there willing to give you experience and a decent living wage?
Having spent a certain amount of time in the IT Tech Support field, as a Tech, Supervisor, Trainer and umtimately upper management, I can honestly say 2 weeks is probably a lot these days. I've seen people get thrown on to the phones after only a couple of days, and expected to perform like seasoned veterans. Its a train wreck to say the least.
However, the people to blame aren't the Technicians or even the Call Center companies, its the Compaqs, HPs and Gateways of this world. They are not willing to pay for decent Technicians, they put too much pressure on low call times rather than problem resolution, its no wonder customers aren't happy. These companies have spent a lot of time and energy putting together "automated support tools", and they always seem to include anti-virus and ant-spyware software in an attempt to avoid support calls. That goes totally against the reason someone calls support though. People call support for exactly that, support, someone to hold their hand and be reassuring, which a piece of software just can't give them.
There ARE higher level Tech Support jobs out there that pay more, thats true. However, there are a very limited number, how is everyone who is currently in a minimum wage Tech Support position supposed to get one, skilled or not?
Your comment is like you going into McDonalds and asking the fry-cook why they aren't Head Chef at Mesa Grill, and didn't they know it pays a bunch more than McDonalds.
How can he, and by extension you, say that? Why should one persons range (or lack thereof) of friends dictate which websites they can otherwise access? How about we put a CAPTCHA in Kanji on SlashDot? After all, anyone who doesn't have a Japanese friend doesn't belong on the website.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know from direct experience with the Codemasters company if this is true, but from playing a lot of their games back in the 80's, that would be pretty obvious. The did have some GREAT games that sucked many of my hours away, but for each gem there were maybe 10 disasters. Yet to look at the back of the tape you'd think they were all the best game ever. How many times can they write, "This Game is Amazing! - Richard Darling" before my weak, 10 year old brain realized Richard Darling directly profited from the successful sales of the tape, and as such would say any old nonsense to get me to buy it?
Saying that, the Dizzy games, BMX Simulator, Rockstar Ate my Hamster, ATV Simulator and Grand Prix Simulator, were well worth the 1.99 I paid for them!
I don't know if this is recommended, and I've had a couple of times this didn't work. However, if in doubt, I usually go for the HP LaserJet 4 driver built into Windows.
I am by no means a Windows fan boy, but fair is fair. 99% of the time, Windows does not ask for the CD, it will pull anything it needs from the local cache, i386 or where ever. It's been a while since I spent any time with 2000, but I remember it being the same way. When you apt-get from your Linux install where is it getting the software to install from? It's either from the CD (which has to be in the drive), from a local cache (a la i386) or from the Internet.
My feeling is, based on a persons position within a company, I should be able to safely expect a certain level of competency. For example, if I'm hiring an auto-mechanic I should be able to assume they can drain the oil from a car, change a battery, rotate tires and other 'basic' mechanic functions.
By that same token if I'm hiring someone for {random office job here}, then I should be able to assume they have basic competency in defacto office skills, including email usage. I would be wrong to assume the auto-mechanic can update their Outlook calendar in the same way I would be wrong to assume the office worker can change break pads.
Yes, if it's an entry level position or 'first real job', there might be some education needed, but anyone else shouldn't need hand-holding.
I can only talk from my own experience as an IT Manager for a medium sized company, and obviously don't have the same situation as everyone else. However, it's not that we're expected to work long hours, or be on call 24/7, it's that we're expected to do all facets of the job. That includes fixing the CEOs Outlook when he breaks something again, as well as install the latest hotfix to the business critical CRM application server. Number 1 happens at 8am eastern, number 2 cannot be done until after close of business, 9pm central. The long hours basically create themselves!
I work for a company with ~200 PCs, across 4 states, all but 11 of which are Dells. I will agree, the phone support isn't the speediest thing in the world, but no worse than other companies I've had to call. The thing that does it for me though is the online chat with Technical Support. I've never had to wait more than 5 minutes to get to someone, and I think the longest chat I've ever had was about 10 minutes, mainly because I had to walk to another part of the office to check something.
The key is to know what the problem is, and know the steps you've already taken to try and fix it. If the power supply is bad, tell them you've tried another power supply in this machine and it works fine. Tell them you've tried this power supply in another machine and it didn't turn on. Pretty cut and dried, you need a new power supply. Then, per your warranty they will either send you a new power supply or send you someone with a power supply to swap it out.
I had an issue with a system critical server that the original purchaser felt only needed next day on-site hardware service. The system board went bad at 10am, and next day wouldn't cut it. The nice tech support person I had called, set up a 4 hour service call for me anyway, and transferred me to some billing department to buy 4 hour response retroactively. I waited on hold for these billing people for about 30 minutes (OK, that bit of the story sucks), but couldn't stand the music any longer and hung up. I went to notify our front desk that a system board and Dell tech would be arriving by 2pm to fix a server for us. The system board had already been delivered, and the tech was about 10 minutes behind. 15 minutes later my server was back up and running, and all my users happy again.
I might be biased, but HP would have to do a lot for me to replace Dell as my hardware manufacturer of choice.
Hands up who has had a house fire? OK, now hands up who has had a HDD fail?
We use RightFax also, we have 400 DIDs piped into it. We get probably 2 spam faxes a day per DID. Yes we can delete them, but they still take up times and space on the 8 channels we have coming in. They all come from one specific spammer (currently called My Hot Leads) who, according to (http://www.junkfax.org/fax/profiles/MyHotLeads.ht m) have been sued, are being sued, have been threatened with jail time, but still will not quit.
I hate email spammers as much as the next guy, but I can do a lot to stop email spam before it costs me any significant time, money or resources. Fax spam however, by it's very nature has already cost me all of these for it to come into the building. I've never been an angry person, but if I ever find myself in Addison, Texas, I may have to stop in and see these guys. Just to say hi you understand, nothing else, certainly no fiber cutting involved at all...
It's been a few years since I powered up my PC1512 (DD!), but I bet it still runs like a champion. I still remember installing Wordstar from ~30 5 1/4 inch floppies. Best word processor ever!
I used to run, if I remember rightly, Gem (GEM?) as the GUI on my PC1512, anyone know if it was possible to get Windows 1.0 running on it?
I went to school in the UK, and didn't have the luxury of one computer per classroom, we had 3 BBC B Micros (with floppy disk!) between the entire student body, up to the age of 11. We were lucky to get 30 minutes a week on the computer, and usually in groups of 3. Despite that, some of turned out to be quite handy with computers!
To address your list one by one;
'trudging to the library to get info for a report' - Gives children exercise, a certain amount of social interaction, as well as increasing reading, comprehension and problem solving skills (Dewey Decimal System).
'hand writing essays' - Helps improve a writing ability (natch!) as well as increases comprehension of a subject by giving a more hands-on feel to the content, and avoids simply cutting and pasting from existing documents.
'typewriters' - Not sure what you mean by this, no school I went to would have allowed using a typewriter except for learning typing skills. In which case, yes, Mavis Beacon kicks a typewriters ass any day of the week.
'snail mail' - Not school related, so I'm not sure how it relates to computers in school. However, the same advantages for hand written essays can be given to postal mail. Also, it's sometimes nice to receive a letter from somewhere over-seas, with it's funny stamp and strange postal marks, and be able to put it in an album.
'print newspapers' - From a personal anecdote, I read at least 1 newspaper a day from the age of 4 upwards, both broad-sheet and 'rag'. Thanks to this I have a much better grasp of the English language, and a much better understanding of the world around me. Newspapers are a great source of information and entertainment, that online news sources are not really able to compete with.
'lack of instant free porn' - I'm sure this was put in as a joke, but has a serious undertone. Whether you agree with sex education in school or not, second grade is definitely too young to be educating students on these matters. At this age sex education, and by extension porn education, should be handled in the home, and schools should do their best to 'protect' students.
You don't specify in your question if all 3500 current PCs are local or distributed. As someone who currently supports multiple remote locations, furthest being about 3000 miles from our main data center, I would say this is a VERY important distinction. We use Windows Terminal Services hosted on multiple Windows 2003 servers to give access to some fairly basic but unique CRM functionality. We have more than enough horse-power for each user, and my local users love it. However, remote users who have high-speed, high cost WAN connections, with pings between 8ms and 90ms, hate it.
Even with a ping time like that, it can get frustrating. A slight lag in a mouse movement or key stroke can have a huge effect on productivity. Even a slight drop in the connection, which seems to be happening WAAAY to frequently for the price we pay for our T's (damn Global Crossing...), destroys productivity. Of course, if the WAN connection goes down for any length of time, an entire office of people has zero productivity. We have back up connections, but usually if someone chops the fiber that supplies the T, the DSL goes down as well.
It's wonderful to be able to buy cheap hardware, and know it's going to run everything I need. It's wonderful being able to install an application once and know all my users have it. It's wonderful to update one config file, and know all my users have the new setting. However, it's horrible to get phone calls 24/7, from frustrated users because a thunderstorm in Texas is bouncing a WAN connection. I would think seriously before making a move like this, be sure the saving in time, energy and money supporting and running thin clients, make up for the increased user frustration and potential loss of productivity.
It's the Lathem TouchStation isn't it? We in IT were asked for recommendations on an updated time clock system. We have several, from simple manual cards, to a custom web based system. None of them involved a crappy USB fingerprint reader, and even crappier software. However, HR decided to buy two of them, and stick IT with the responsibility of making them work, and getting pissed when they didn't.
The fingerprint reader had a 50% success rate, on a good day. The manual specifically suggests that you rub your finger on your temple to make it greasy, and give you a better chance of being read. It didn't really help with the success rate, just made the next person to use it feel kind of queasy.
We had to move the software from one machine to another in an attempt to make it a little more stable, and not need to be rebooted 3 or 4 times every day. We had had them both for about 2 months, with 1 year of support. When installing on the new machine it asked for a registration code or similar, with a phone number to call. It cost, if I remember rightly, $50 for the new code. It didn't fix the problem.
Guess who got the blame... Of course, it was ITs fault, after all, it's an IT product...
What happens if Joe User comes to me and says he wants that file he deleted 6 months ago? I tell him if he wanted it, he shouldn't have deleted it. I'm not sure about other companies, but the amount of crap created every day in my organization would take a truck load of tapes to archive. If something is important it gets put in a specific group of network shares which get archived, everything else is under a daily backup schedule, with a retention of 1 month.
I too use a HDD backup system, although with more than 1 device, and with off-site storage. I've had one HDD go bad on me, but luckily, thanks to my daily backups, I didn't lose any data. We used to use tapes but when our data footprint exceeded the capacity of a tape, it became exponentially harder to maintain. I've now tripled my daily backup size in less than 6 months, without having to change process or (forget to) swap tapes, mid-backup.
Can I get an ahem to that? You can write the most lucid, rational, educative, polite but firm email, with step by step instructions and even screen shots and diagrams, and users still do not get it. I would say 50% reading it is about right. However, as far as understanding goes, it seems most people don't want to understand. They are with happy doing things the way they always have, and don't want to use any brain power to change. Heaven forbid though you have to take their machine away to clean up the resultant mess of them ignoring your directions. "What do you mean its going to take 2 hours to get it back up and running?! It only took me 30 seconds to break it!"
And yes, I am bitter.
Yup, I remember that, I did Tech Support for IBM back in the day. The only thing I really remember about it was sometimes it got 'stuck' during the resume process. We had to do some thing like, turn it off, hold down both mouse buttons, turn it on, turn it off and then let it boot.
Or maybe that was part of some weird, Tech Support nightmare I had.
IANAL either, but I've at least been through a credit check for employment. Here in Florida if you agree to it (signed paperwork) potential employers can do a credit check on interviewees. I'm not sure they can directly use a credit score as a reason for hiring/not hiring, but its easy enough for the hiring manager to see a credit score they don't like, decline the candidate, but then record the reason as being something generic, and legal.
In my case I was interviewing (and passed!) for an IT Manager position at a sub-prime auto lending company. The thinking behind it is, if staff can't handle their own bills, how can they be expected to help customers handle theirs? While I don't think blinding taking a credit score as a reason to hire/fire someone (700 or below not hired, 701 or above hired) it does at least show something about a person. It should be carefully considered though, someone who has a low credit score because of a divorce and forced bankruptcy, but has otherwise perfect payment history, shouldn't be penalized for having an evil ex-wife or husband.
Erm, can you actually give some reasoning or thought behind your apparent loathing of SG and its staff? You use the word scum, then compare them to MySpace? MySpace allows for painful page design, hideous colors and mind-numbingly repetative 8 second music clips, as well giving every damn angst-ridden Emo teen out there a place to write "poetry" about slashing their wrists. All of these traits are definitely obnoxious, but I wouldn't say scummy.
I've been reading all the posts on this thread, and wanted to reply to each and every one of them. I don't think I've been this wound up in a long time, some posts on here really made my blood boil. Whether its the ignorance, the stupidity, or just plain naivety, I don't know. In my mind it really comes down to two different work (worker?) types, of course with variations and exceptions.
The first type are what I call the "John 'Maddog' Hall-ites", no offense meant to the big man. Whether it be by luck, education, hard work or something else, a person has found themselves to be in a position where they can (and do) earn big money, just to basically be themselves. I.e. if they want to hack on the latest up and coming file system for Linux on a beach in Brazil, they can. If they want to work on their website, blogging about their latest skiing trip, they can. If they want to take a 2 week contacting job, run a few ethereal scans on a companies network, then tell the SysAdmin he needs to get rid of his Windows servers and replace them with Linux, they can. dada21 at the top of this page seems to be an example of this taken to the Nth degree, with an extra scoop of arrogance, and some asshole sprinkles.
The second type is the larger of the two groups. Those of us who work in the real world, doing real jobs, to make real money, for real reasons. We have houses, cars, significant others, children even, all of which are wonderful in their own way, but require money for up-keep. It would be nice to be able to tell a 3 year old that she doesn't get any food this week because Daddy wanted a couple of days in the Mountains, but it just doesn't work out so well (they cry when hungry, who knew?!). I don't know about your Bank but mine tends to get a little upset when I miss a couple of mortgage payments. The argument "but I just HAD to go boating for a week!" doesn't seem to hold much water with the Bank Manger these days (Bastard!).
Some people will come back with an argument that gets me even more angry. They will say, if you aren't earning enough money to be able to survive for a couple of weeks without income, what are you doing still working at that job? For every CIO out there, there are thousands of Web Developers, Tech Support Agents, and entry level Code Monkeys. It would be nice if we could all take a quick run up the Corporate ladder and get the big corner office and the 7 figure salary or the prime Consulting positions, but whether its by lack of skill or lack of opportunity, not all of us can.
I don't want to sound bitter, because I'm not, I've been lucky enough to get myself in at the birth of a rapidly growing company with lots of potential, so I foresee in the next few years I'll be able to take a trip or two back to the old country. However, it does seem a little rich (pun intended) for someone to criticize, be-little and downright insult someone else, just because they weren't born as smart, haven't had the same breaks or made the same life decisions.
And on my not so modern Centrino laptop, my latest Ubuntu install took less than 45 minutes from boot to X up and running, and DVD/MP3 Playback, and Wireless access...
In fact thats how long it took on my ancient P3, and an even more ancient AMD laptop. Not that I'm anti Gentoo, its just I like to be able to use my computers during the same season that I start an install.
Being an avid F1 fan up until the mid 90's, I'd have to disagree with that. If anyone remembers 'back in the day', drivers had the option of turning up or down their turbo boost to gain speed but at a great cost to fuel. This definitely was technology taken to the N'th degree, but it was still the drivers decision when/if to turn up or down that affected the outcome. It may not be a physical skill, but driving is as much, if not more, mental than physical.
Right now the drivers are much better than the cars, so the limiting factor is the cars. Rather than the drivers skill then deciding outcomes, its the cars lack of skill that decides who wins.
I'm all for making F1 more exciting for fans, and increasing the field sizes (remember pre-qualifying?!), but this isn't the way to do it. Compare the tapes of Senna vs Piquet, against Schumacher vs Alonso and you might as well be watching two different sports.
How do you know its not wanted? There are a large number of less technical people out there who don't know HTML from a hole in the ground. For them creating their blog from within Word would be perfect. They already know how to create a document in Word so their time to create something would be shorter and as such more rewarding. The key thing to remember is most blogs aren't created for the reader, they are created for the blogger.
But you've hit the chicken and the egg right on the head here, if that isn't mixing metaphors too much. She should have experience and a degree if she wants to progress, and I would agree. However, how are you supposed to live and pay for school on $7.00 an hour? How are you supposed to get experience if there is no one out there willing to give you experience and a decent living wage?
Having spent a certain amount of time in the IT Tech Support field, as a Tech, Supervisor, Trainer and umtimately upper management, I can honestly say 2 weeks is probably a lot these days. I've seen people get thrown on to the phones after only a couple of days, and expected to perform like seasoned veterans. Its a train wreck to say the least.
However, the people to blame aren't the Technicians or even the Call Center companies, its the Compaqs, HPs and Gateways of this world. They are not willing to pay for decent Technicians, they put too much pressure on low call times rather than problem resolution, its no wonder customers aren't happy. These companies have spent a lot of time and energy putting together "automated support tools", and they always seem to include anti-virus and ant-spyware software in an attempt to avoid support calls. That goes totally against the reason someone calls support though. People call support for exactly that, support, someone to hold their hand and be reassuring, which a piece of software just can't give them.
There ARE higher level Tech Support jobs out there that pay more, thats true. However, there are a very limited number, how is everyone who is currently in a minimum wage Tech Support position supposed to get one, skilled or not?
Your comment is like you going into McDonalds and asking the fry-cook why they aren't Head Chef at Mesa Grill, and didn't they know it pays a bunch more than McDonalds.
How can he, and by extension you, say that? Why should one persons range (or lack thereof) of friends dictate which websites they can otherwise access? How about we put a CAPTCHA in Kanji on SlashDot? After all, anyone who doesn't have a Japanese friend doesn't belong on the website.