who says they have to support anything they don't support now? the issue is giving someone the right to do what they want with their purchase. if i purchase a toaster and want it to make coffee, i have a right to modify it, bend it, shape it, etc. if i fail i don't blame the toaster company, but in turn the toaster company shouldn't be able to sue me for my attempts, successful or not.
it became acceptable not because the issues can't be fixed otherwise, but often because the fix requires 20 steps and several hours of time. we have our users' profiles backed up and have an sms image ready to roll whenever there's a major issue. our users are encouraged to back up their personal files, etc as they see fit. it probably take 20 minutes to re-image a machine and another ten to put their profile back on. if it's some obscure error that take an hour of research to figure out and another hour or two to get rolling it's waaaaay faster to re-image the machine. just my 2 cents.
maybe the answer is not to help the blind "see" a website by having software try to parse out the text, but rather focus on a hardware solution that could "see" the page. maybe something attached to the monitor that could read text?
so then linux isn't ready for the casual user? or it's only ready if pre-installed? i'm obviously missing something with ubuntudupe's posts as everyone else seems highly familiar with his situation, but i'd definitely argue it's easier to install and set-up windows than ubuntu. i've done both probably a hundred times and although the instructions for both pretty much include just clicking "next, next next" i've run into way more issues with something going wrong in an ubuntu install, searching google for an hour only to find some post on a random messageboard from three years ago giving a ten step process to fixing the issue. in my experience that happens significantly less when installing xp.
that said, all of my machines at home are ubuntu and after getting things set up it's absolutely a preferable experience, but all the talk of the casual user installing it on a grand scale are laughable. you're talking an average user who can't set up their email. just sayin, ymmv, my 2 cents, etc.
#1)a - i deal with b regularly and what happens is well-meaning-member-of-staff sets up the printer, doesn't add the other three printers the user needs, the user now has the wrong printer set as default, there are two programs that need the printer added to their set-up, so now i get the help desk ticket saying "my program xxx won't print" without including "guy from sales tried to set things up earlier"...it causes a lot of headache.
i've been some variant of a sys admin for eleven years. my experience has shown by far that the worst user isn't the guy trying to set up his own wifi or hack his iphone to work with exchange, it's the ones that really have no idea what they're doing but don't want to bother IT with their requests. they try to find work-arounds, don't report when things stop functioning, and just generally cause ten times more harm than good by not following any guidelines, all in the name of "well i know how busy you guys are". yeah, i'm busy and it's certainly not my fault that we have an IT staff of two for 130 users, but letting me know on monday that something broke last wednesday but you have to have it up and running today is the cause of half of the problem.
i just see a lot of complaints about protocol from people who never follow it in the first place. i can't fix your network/hardware/software or the way we do things if i don't know it's broken.
i hope "robustness" translates to "apps start working more consistently". the first install i blamed on my penchant for playing around with installs/configs too much, but the next two i did i left basically "as-is" and i have to restart the machines at least once a day for various issues: evolution stops showing incoming mail, gdesklets has never worked correctly on my x64 system, wireless card on my laptop periodically stops responding, and a host of other issues that usually start as an app not functioning then cascades into chaos. bsod vs wsonsuiaw (white screen of nothing showing up in a window). just sayin'.
what if you just said you didn't do it. can they really win a lawsuit against you based on your ip address with no physical evidence that you did what they said you did? their "evidence" is that your isp says you had that particular ip address at that time and they say that ip address was involved in infringing a movie from a bittorrent site. don't they have some sort of obligation to find the copyrighted work in your possession before finding you guilty?
I say go for it if you've got enough people to play, just make sure you're the top-hat (it's the best piece)....oh wait, I thought this thread was called "workplace monopoly"./humor
Re: the thing you quoted - It might seem obvious, but always keep an eye out in ZoneAlarm or other firewall programs for random Windows programs trying to access the internet. If notepad needs to access the internet when you open it, you probably have a virus. On comps I service with ZoneAlarm, I set ZoneAlarm to ask permission for Windows programs to access the internet, so at least I'll get a "Notepad is trying to access the internet because the person who owns this computer gets viruses from porn sites because they think restricting active x in windows means that they won't be able to look at free boobies" (I'm bitter) type of warning.
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who says they have to support anything they don't support now? the issue is giving someone the right to do what they want with their purchase. if i purchase a toaster and want it to make coffee, i have a right to modify it, bend it, shape it, etc. if i fail i don't blame the toaster company, but in turn the toaster company shouldn't be able to sue me for my attempts, successful or not.
it became acceptable not because the issues can't be fixed otherwise, but often because the fix requires 20 steps and several hours of time. we have our users' profiles backed up and have an sms image ready to roll whenever there's a major issue. our users are encouraged to back up their personal files, etc as they see fit. it probably take 20 minutes to re-image a machine and another ten to put their profile back on. if it's some obscure error that take an hour of research to figure out and another hour or two to get rolling it's waaaaay faster to re-image the machine. just my 2 cents.
...distros are a pitta...
"pain in the taut ass" ?maybe the answer is not to help the blind "see" a website by having software try to parse out the text, but rather focus on a hardware solution that could "see" the page. maybe something attached to the monitor that could read text?
so then linux isn't ready for the casual user? or it's only ready if pre-installed? i'm obviously missing something with ubuntudupe's posts as everyone else seems highly familiar with his situation, but i'd definitely argue it's easier to install and set-up windows than ubuntu. i've done both probably a hundred times and although the instructions for both pretty much include just clicking "next, next next" i've run into way more issues with something going wrong in an ubuntu install, searching google for an hour only to find some post on a random messageboard from three years ago giving a ten step process to fixing the issue. in my experience that happens significantly less when installing xp. that said, all of my machines at home are ubuntu and after getting things set up it's absolutely a preferable experience, but all the talk of the casual user installing it on a grand scale are laughable. you're talking an average user who can't set up their email. just sayin, ymmv, my 2 cents, etc.
they're also the reason that most of the internet is free. have fun paying 50c per search to use google.
#1)a - i deal with b regularly and what happens is well-meaning-member-of-staff sets up the printer, doesn't add the other three printers the user needs, the user now has the wrong printer set as default, there are two programs that need the printer added to their set-up, so now i get the help desk ticket saying "my program xxx won't print" without including "guy from sales tried to set things up earlier"...it causes a lot of headache.
i've been some variant of a sys admin for eleven years. my experience has shown by far that the worst user isn't the guy trying to set up his own wifi or hack his iphone to work with exchange, it's the ones that really have no idea what they're doing but don't want to bother IT with their requests. they try to find work-arounds, don't report when things stop functioning, and just generally cause ten times more harm than good by not following any guidelines, all in the name of "well i know how busy you guys are". yeah, i'm busy and it's certainly not my fault that we have an IT staff of two for 130 users, but letting me know on monday that something broke last wednesday but you have to have it up and running today is the cause of half of the problem. i just see a lot of complaints about protocol from people who never follow it in the first place. i can't fix your network/hardware/software or the way we do things if i don't know it's broken.
anyone else surprised a post about a 150 year old math proof isn't more popular? next up, a step-by-step guide to watching paint dry.
i hope "robustness" translates to "apps start working more consistently". the first install i blamed on my penchant for playing around with installs/configs too much, but the next two i did i left basically "as-is" and i have to restart the machines at least once a day for various issues: evolution stops showing incoming mail, gdesklets has never worked correctly on my x64 system, wireless card on my laptop periodically stops responding, and a host of other issues that usually start as an app not functioning then cascades into chaos. bsod vs wsonsuiaw (white screen of nothing showing up in a window). just sayin'.
what if you just said you didn't do it. can they really win a lawsuit against you based on your ip address with no physical evidence that you did what they said you did? their "evidence" is that your isp says you had that particular ip address at that time and they say that ip address was involved in infringing a movie from a bittorrent site. don't they have some sort of obligation to find the copyrighted work in your possession before finding you guilty?
I say go for it if you've got enough people to play, just make sure you're the top-hat (it's the best piece)....oh wait, I thought this thread was called "workplace monopoly". /humor
Re: the thing you quoted - It might seem obvious, but always keep an eye out in ZoneAlarm or other firewall programs for random Windows programs trying to access the internet. If notepad needs to access the internet when you open it, you probably have a virus. On comps I service with ZoneAlarm, I set ZoneAlarm to ask permission for Windows programs to access the internet, so at least I'll get a "Notepad is trying to access the internet because the person who owns this computer gets viruses from porn sites because they think restricting active x in windows means that they won't be able to look at free boobies" (I'm bitter) type of warning.