Yeah, my point was not about the desktop/set-top-box format itself, but about the roles people use computers for. If Valve can get a substantial portion of their games to run on their distribution, then they may very well succeed in bringing Linux to people who use their computers primarily for gaming. And that's no small accomplishment.
However, when it comes to computers used for business/productivity, this probably won't have a big impact. If you could bring Outlook and Adobe CS to Linux, then you might really see something. And no, Thunderbird and GIMP don't count.
Or to put it all another way, why would you say, "Gee, I have this girl who's awesome and I love spending time with. The sex is great and being with her makes me happy. But I must break it off. She believes something incorrect about dinosaurs!"
I think it doesn't matter whether people are really reselling them, because the problem of selling used MP3s highlights the difficult and paradoxical nature of copyrights in a digital society.
Normally, when you buy something, you then own it and are allowed to do anything you like with it. You can sell it. You can destroy it. You can lend it to other people. You can give it to someone else. If you die, someone inherits it. You're responsible for its upkeep, and when it wears out, you're responsible for its disposal. All of that makes sense when you're talking about "things"-- i.e. cars, books, furniture.
But when you're talking about "intellectual property", some of those things aren't allowed, and some of them don't really make sense. "Selling" an MP3 that you've bought is a bit weird, because what you hand over will probably be a *copy* of the MP3 file you bought. A perfect and identical copy, sure, but a copy. You can then destroy the original, but then what are you really selling?
Some people would say that you're being sold that copy of the MP3, and you're not supposed to copy it, but that's nonsense. Most likely, even your "original copy" is not the original copy that you bought. Most likely, you've copied it from one directory to another, one hard drive to another, etc. Maybe at some point you copied it to an external hard drive, reformatted your system drive, and then copied it back. If you ever listen to the MP3, it's being copied into some cache, transcoded into another form, copied into RAM, etc. You're making copies all the time, so what you're buying isn't a "copy" that you aren't allowed to reproduce. It must be that you're purchasing some kind of "right to possess and make use of the MP3". So it's a license.
Unfortunately, digital purchases are always framed in terms of licensing, and that licensing can be "any arbitrary thing that the licensor makes up." They bury the terms in complex contracts that the licensee never reads, partially because they release a 200-page revision every 3 days. The reason I say it's unfortunate is that is has the effect of subverting consumer protection laws as well as freedoms like the "first-sale doctrine". Consumers are left with no rights and no protections, and the licenses usually boil down to "the licensor can do whatever he wants and is responsible for nothing."
Well those aren't really great examples. People have known that the earth was round for thousands of years. There have been people who have suspected and suggested that the earth may be spinning and moving around the sun for almost as long. Ptolemy even talks about the idea, concluding that we may be moving and it would help make sense of certain things, but he's just not convinced.
I'm not sure what it is that you're trying to say, but I'm pretty sure you're not correct.
What Einstein taught us about time and space is that you *cannot* go faster than light. Pushing something up to the speed of light would take an infinite amount of energy. However, if you *could* go faster than light, it would allow you to leave a point at a certain time, and then return to that same point in space at a time earlier than when you left. If you could send a message faster than light, and the recipient could respond with a faster-than-light response, then you could receive the response before you send the message.
But believing people rode dinosaurs is hardly an inconsequential thing. It belies a deep, deep disfunction in a persons cognitive processes. If you're that incredibly misinformed about such a basic and easily verifiable fact of the world we live in, there is something wrong with your brain.
Here's the thing: I would bet that there is at least one thing which you believe that is *very* false. And when I say "very false", I mean it to include some combination of "scientifically proven to be false" and "commonly known to be false" as well as "obviously false". I don't say that to insult you, I say that because it's true of everyone. I'm sure that I have some intellectual and emotional blind-spots that keep me from seeing things clearly, that keep me from understanding everything correctly.
For each of us, there are some things that we're in denial about. There are some things that we don't adequately understand. There are some things that we never questioned enough to realize how stupid our beliefs are. We are all misinformed about basic and easily verifiable facts.
So I say, "get off your high horse." This girl might be wrong about the chronology of dinosaurs. Your mother might think that all of her computer files are in the monitor, while failing to understand what 'that box under the desk' does. You might be one of those people who think most of the physical material of plants come from the soil they sit in. I might think that 'George Washington Carver' was the butcher employed by the first President of the United States. We're all pretty stupid sometimes. If you think you're above all that, then that's just another example of you being stupid.
This is the essentially the right answer. Your girlfriend is going to be wrong about a lot of things, because each of us is wrong about a lot of things. Many of them will are so incredibly inconsequential and irrelevant that it's not worth wasting your breath, and I'd suggest this is one of them. Because really, in the entire scope of things, facts about dinosaurs hardly matter. They won't change your day to day behavior.
Pick your battles. Over the span of your relationship, your girlfriend will be wrong about a lot of things, and so will you. Instead of thinking it's your job to make sure your girlfriend is correct in all her beliefs, you should decide that there are some times when you'll let it go. I'm sure there will be times when she's convinced that you're wrong, and you wish she'd just let it go. And believe it or not, sometimes it might be worth backing her up even when she's wrong, just because you have her back.
(I don't mean "you have her back" in a dirty way, though there's that too.)
And as far as him being a myth, I'll admit that I'm glossing over some stuff. He wasn't some magical being who actually made all obstacles go away. He was arguably a bit of a redneck who made dirty jokes and said inappropriate things.
He generally *tried* to remove all the obstacles, but of course there were times where I had to deal with some nonsense outside of my job description. But most of the time, he managed to create a low-stress environment in a company that was full of chaos. In my opinion, he did a really good job.
I guess what you're saying is kind of true, but...
Well, first, "trusting the people who work for you to give you good advice," might not be different from "listening too your people". More importantly, there's a lot involved in "making sure your people can do their jobs with minimal outside interference." You have to be enough of a psychologist to understand the needs of the people you're managing. You need to be enough of an efficiency expert to create an appropriate context for your people to work in. You have to be enough of a politician to navigate internal bureaucracy. You need to be enough of an accountant to squeeze everything into your budget. You need to be enough of a businessman and salesman to sell this all to upper-management.
That's because it should be, and will be, after the field matures. Most computers are used as glorified typewriters and calculators, there is no reason they shouldn't "just work".
Sure. And accountants just collect receipts. And salespeople just tell customers about your products. When you think about things this way, nobody does real work.
But when you understand any of these jobs, you realize there's a lot more to it. Believe me, if all businesses were using was word processors and spreadsheets, then IT would be really easy. In my experience, even the person running a company is likely to underestimate the complexity of what they're doing on computers.
The problem is, you'll talk to the GM of a company, and they'll say, "Oh, we're just using Microsoft Office. We have a bunch of servers, but I don't even know what they do."
You start to show them what's going on with those servers, and suddenly it's like, "Oh, right. We do run several custom-build business-critical applications that haven't been updated in 10 years. But you don't need to worry about it. They work fine."
Then you start to support that client, and suddenly it's like, "Oh, right. We have constant problems with those custom-built business-critical applications that haven't been updated in 10 years. I forgot about all the problems we have. But you can just fix those, right? Can't you, like, put it in the cloud? I hear the cloud fixes everything." And there's approximately zero documentation.
No, sorry, this stuff isn't simple, and it's not "glorified typewriters and calculators". Your mom might just be using her computer to play solitaire, but lots of businesses are using them for real stuff.
Some drivers do break trucks more than others. Mechanics are simple folks, just like it staff. They will cry whatever you do.
Yeah, so I'm guessing that, not only are you not in IT and not in trucking, but you've never actually run a business.
It's almost impossible to produce results like "Our tech optimized the computer, making the user 12% more productive and increasing revenue by $1,287 per month."
It's difficult/impossible to *measure* those kinds of results, but it's not impossible to produce those results. If IT isn't making money on paper, that's an problem of accounting not reflecting reality. If your business is using computers to make money, then IT is making money.
Yeah, that's just stupid. Having a 500MB-1GB mailbox isn't too unreasonable *if* you also provide an archive for all the old email that will need to be deleted to get below that limit.
It's a myth? I'm telling you that I actually, in reality, had a manager like that. When you talked to him for any amount of time, you realized that he didn't really see his job as "You work for me! Do what I say!" but more like, "Even though I'm your manager, I work for you. My job is to remove the obstacles that keep you from doing your job." And it wasn't all talk. He actually did that.
Like if he saw you looking frustrated, he'd come up and ask if there was something wrong. He'd listen to you. If it was like, "Well I'm trying to finish this project, but [whoever] in [some other department] is dragging his feet and not providing enough information," then he'd go, "Ok, let me see what I can do."
He'd disappear for a little bit, and come back, saying, "[whoever] in [some other department] will have the information by the end of the day. If he doesn't, let me know." And that was the end of it. I don't even know how he got it done, because [whoever] in [some other department] was a lazy bastard who never did anything.
Look, if you've just had bad managers your entire life, then I understand your cynicism. There are a lot of crappy managers out there. But think about it this way: take any job in the world, and the majority of people doing that job are bad at it. It's hard to find a good doctor. It's hard to find a good contractor. It's hard to find a good IT person. And it's hard to find a good manager.
But management is a real job with a real skill-set, and a good manager is worth his/her weight in gold.
MSP sales teams go out and say "We're 24/7 available." That means they wake you up late at night via some phone system
Yup. Your MSP may be offering 24/7 support, but they do not have anyone working 2nd shift or 3rd shift. They do not have staff waiting by the phone, ready to take your phone call.
And it's not just about "the best IT people work during the day". Essentially, every time you call on nights or weekends, you're harassing some poor schmuck on his off-hours, ruining his personal life, because you can't wait until business hours. I hope you ask yourself, "Can this not wait? Do I really need help *right now*?"
What's more, you'll get worse support during the day if you keep calling at night. Because the "best IT people" who work during the day are exhausted from answering your stupid questions on their off time.
If I'm the head of the department you work in, then my No. 1 job is to clear obstacles out of your way so you can do yours.
The best boss I ever had once told me, "My job is to make sure that you don't have to worry about anything except doing your job."
That is, if your job is to make sure the server has zero downtime, his job is to take care of the office politics, budgeting, etc. so that you can focus on keeping the servers running. Some other manager within the company decides he doesn't like you? Well that's your his job to deal with. You need a piece of equipment that won't fit into the budget? His job. HR has stupid requirements for filling out timesheets? His job. Any goddamn thing other than showing up in the morning and keeping the servers running? His job.
Keeping the servers running? Your job.
And he fulfilled his job description. My job at the time was a fair bit more complicated than "keeping the servers running," but the point is that I had a job description, and I didn't have to deal with anything that fell outside of that job description. And do you know how I knew what my job description was? My manager made it very clear, because it was his job. He didn't want me to spend my time trying to figure out what I should and should not do. He made it clear that if I was unsure what I should be doing, I should ask him because if I'm confused, then he's not doing his job.
It is strange, when you think about it, the way that the IT department tends to get segregated off from the rest of operations. You have companies where people do 100% of their work on a computer, where the company *can not function* when the Internet goes out, and yet IT is treated as an afterthought. The people running these companies think that running an IT department is as easy as "running out to Best Buy and picking up a computer," and then they get annoyed when their IT services are unreliable.
I would have thought that, with as ubiquitous as computers are in business, IT work would be considered valuable. It's as though you have a company that ships things across the country by truck, but they don't think their mechanics are important, and they freak out when the mechanics want to have proper equipment for fixing the trucks. And worse, they don't think any of their truck drivers need to know how to drive. When their drivers put the truck in a ditch, they complain that the mechanics haven't made the truck crash-proof.
It seems to me that it's a little worse with IT support than with many other comparably skilled jobs. In recent years, there's been a competitive race-to-the-bottom. No one wants to pay for IT, and so there's been a trend towards MSPs instead of in-house IT. Those MSPs are competing by promising clients the moon. They can't deliver on the moon, obviously, but they push their employees to try. Meanwhile, the MSPs are making their money by being understaffed.
At least that's what I'm seeing. It seems like the MSPs are going in saying, "We'll provide full support 24/7 365 days a year." Meanwhile they have 3 employees, all of whom work full time during business hours, but are asked to also be on call 24/7 without taking real vacations.
I'm not saying that's unique to IT support workers, but it doesn't seem to be the norm.
Then let me rephrase: I'm happy with my older laptop; it does what I need. But older hardware will eventually break. What should I use once it breaks?
This is an entirely different problem than what we're talking about. I could just as easily say that I like my current pair of jeans, but the GAP doesn't offer that cut anymore, so what should I do when they rip?
It's not a technological issue. Just because you like a product does not mean that someone will continue to produce it.
Which U.S. carrier is otherwise?
I don't know. I'm not going around researching every carrier around the US to see what all their plans are right now. I know there are some cheap plans out there. Not necessarily good service, but cheap.
Unlocked phones work only with GSM carriers, not CDMA2000 carriers.
So then don't go with a CDMA carrier.
Look, you can't necessarily have everything you want. Really, you're conflating a bunch of different-- though related-- issues. You seem to be saying, "It's bad to integrate cell phones with PDAs because I can't get the plan that I want on the carrier that I want." And you know, maybe you should be able to get the plan you want on the carrier you want. Maybe cell phone carriers are horrible and corrupt companies, and we should do something about them. But even if I grant all that, it doesn't mean that smartphones are inherently a bad idea.
You might be imagining that location is irrelevant for datacenters. I mean, your computer is on the same Internet, right? Who cares where they're physically located?
Well, for one thing, there's the issue of latency. If you're working in NYC (as many businesses are), then you'll get lower latency going to a server in NYC than a server halfway around the world. This is especially important in the world of high-frequency trading, but it can also be a big deal for businesses that are operating in the cloud (instead of having local servers).
Second, there's the issue of physical access. If you're colocating servers in a datacenter, you might still want to get physical access to them at some point, and you'll want it to be easy to get to.
Then, for the datacenters, there's an issue of having access to resources. NYC has tremendous infrastructure, which can help all kinds of businesses operate more efficiently. But these resources aren't just about getting access to fast internet and reliable power, but also about things like staffing, business contacts, etc. If you build your datacenter in the middle of nowhere, then your talent pool-- whether you're talking about techs or management or executives-- is restricted to those willing to live out in the middle of nowhere. Though I've never run a datacenter on this scale, I can tell you that one of the hardest parts of running IT projects is finding competent and reliable staff, including finding good managers and executives.
It's also true on mobile, where phones still being sold today can't run some of the apps on Google Play Store because the apps require Android 4.x and the devices are stuck on 2.x.
That's an issue particular to many Android phone manufacturers, who are trying to create enforced obsolescence. That is, they're trying to keep the old business models that I was referring to.
Except companies stopped making 10" laptops at the end of 2012 because they want customers to start buying a separate, higher-margin laptop and tablet instead.
This is completely irrelevant to my point.
A PDA such as the Galaxy Player or iPod touch costs $0 per month more than what one's already paying for Internet. Replacing your dumbphone with a smartphone, on the other hand, means replacing a $7/mo bill with a $35/mo bill (source: virginmobileusa.com) because a lot of carriers refuse to activate voice-only service on a smartphone.
So assuming you want to buy a smartphone *and* not have a cellular data plan *and* choose to use a carrier that doesn't offer voice-only service *and* you buy a subsidized phone rather than buying an unlocked one, then you will pay extra each month, which will be somewhat offset by the subsidy you got for your phone.
Except that then you have to carry around a lot more gear, with arguably reduced capability.
My phone takes better pictures than my canon point-and-shoot from a couple of years ago. My phone integrates my computer's address book with my phone's address book, meaning I can text, call, email, and look up addresses for the same contacts on the same device. A dumb phone can't do that, at least not well.
Plus, though you can let your camera and tablet run out of battery without losing your phone capabilities, it also means that you have more devices to keep track of the charge for, and more chargers to carry around. Considering my phone's battery lasts more than a day, I don't see why the phone isn't winning.
One of the main problems with using your one redundant link as just a regular link is your bandwidth "needs" tend to grow to include some or even all of the bandwidth available from the now non-redundant link.
Really, in most cases, there's a big difference between "bandwidth needs" and "bandwidth wants". Businesses who normally use a 10Mb connection will frequently limp along on a backup T1 when necessary, without serious problems. Being without an Internet connection is a much bigger problem.
But then the question frequently comes up: We have an 10Mb connection, and then a 1.5Mb backup connection that sits around doing nothing all day. Can we somehow combine them into a 11.5Mb connection?
And the answer is generally "no". You can do a few kinds of load balancing, but each of them have some non-trivial drawbacks.
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Yeah, my point was not about the desktop/set-top-box format itself, but about the roles people use computers for. If Valve can get a substantial portion of their games to run on their distribution, then they may very well succeed in bringing Linux to people who use their computers primarily for gaming. And that's no small accomplishment.
However, when it comes to computers used for business/productivity, this probably won't have a big impact. If you could bring Outlook and Adobe CS to Linux, then you might really see something. And no, Thunderbird and GIMP don't count.
Or to put it all another way, why would you say, "Gee, I have this girl who's awesome and I love spending time with. The sex is great and being with her makes me happy. But I must break it off. She believes something incorrect about dinosaurs!"
It reminds me of this comic.
Maybe not the year of the Linux desktop, but instead the year of the Linux set-top-box.
I think it doesn't matter whether people are really reselling them, because the problem of selling used MP3s highlights the difficult and paradoxical nature of copyrights in a digital society.
Normally, when you buy something, you then own it and are allowed to do anything you like with it. You can sell it. You can destroy it. You can lend it to other people. You can give it to someone else. If you die, someone inherits it. You're responsible for its upkeep, and when it wears out, you're responsible for its disposal. All of that makes sense when you're talking about "things"-- i.e. cars, books, furniture.
But when you're talking about "intellectual property", some of those things aren't allowed, and some of them don't really make sense. "Selling" an MP3 that you've bought is a bit weird, because what you hand over will probably be a *copy* of the MP3 file you bought. A perfect and identical copy, sure, but a copy. You can then destroy the original, but then what are you really selling?
Some people would say that you're being sold that copy of the MP3, and you're not supposed to copy it, but that's nonsense. Most likely, even your "original copy" is not the original copy that you bought. Most likely, you've copied it from one directory to another, one hard drive to another, etc. Maybe at some point you copied it to an external hard drive, reformatted your system drive, and then copied it back. If you ever listen to the MP3, it's being copied into some cache, transcoded into another form, copied into RAM, etc. You're making copies all the time, so what you're buying isn't a "copy" that you aren't allowed to reproduce. It must be that you're purchasing some kind of "right to possess and make use of the MP3". So it's a license.
Unfortunately, digital purchases are always framed in terms of licensing, and that licensing can be "any arbitrary thing that the licensor makes up." They bury the terms in complex contracts that the licensee never reads, partially because they release a 200-page revision every 3 days. The reason I say it's unfortunate is that is has the effect of subverting consumer protection laws as well as freedoms like the "first-sale doctrine". Consumers are left with no rights and no protections, and the licenses usually boil down to "the licensor can do whatever he wants and is responsible for nothing."
Well those aren't really great examples. People have known that the earth was round for thousands of years. There have been people who have suspected and suggested that the earth may be spinning and moving around the sun for almost as long. Ptolemy even talks about the idea, concluding that we may be moving and it would help make sense of certain things, but he's just not convinced.
I'm not sure what it is that you're trying to say, but I'm pretty sure you're not correct.
What Einstein taught us about time and space is that you *cannot* go faster than light. Pushing something up to the speed of light would take an infinite amount of energy. However, if you *could* go faster than light, it would allow you to leave a point at a certain time, and then return to that same point in space at a time earlier than when you left. If you could send a message faster than light, and the recipient could respond with a faster-than-light response, then you could receive the response before you send the message.
But believing people rode dinosaurs is hardly an inconsequential thing. It belies a deep, deep disfunction in a persons cognitive processes. If you're that incredibly misinformed about such a basic and easily verifiable fact of the world we live in, there is something wrong with your brain.
Here's the thing: I would bet that there is at least one thing which you believe that is *very* false. And when I say "very false", I mean it to include some combination of "scientifically proven to be false" and "commonly known to be false" as well as "obviously false". I don't say that to insult you, I say that because it's true of everyone. I'm sure that I have some intellectual and emotional blind-spots that keep me from seeing things clearly, that keep me from understanding everything correctly.
For each of us, there are some things that we're in denial about. There are some things that we don't adequately understand. There are some things that we never questioned enough to realize how stupid our beliefs are. We are all misinformed about basic and easily verifiable facts.
So I say, "get off your high horse." This girl might be wrong about the chronology of dinosaurs. Your mother might think that all of her computer files are in the monitor, while failing to understand what 'that box under the desk' does. You might be one of those people who think most of the physical material of plants come from the soil they sit in. I might think that 'George Washington Carver' was the butcher employed by the first President of the United States. We're all pretty stupid sometimes. If you think you're above all that, then that's just another example of you being stupid.
This is the essentially the right answer. Your girlfriend is going to be wrong about a lot of things, because each of us is wrong about a lot of things. Many of them will are so incredibly inconsequential and irrelevant that it's not worth wasting your breath, and I'd suggest this is one of them. Because really, in the entire scope of things, facts about dinosaurs hardly matter. They won't change your day to day behavior.
Pick your battles. Over the span of your relationship, your girlfriend will be wrong about a lot of things, and so will you. Instead of thinking it's your job to make sure your girlfriend is correct in all her beliefs, you should decide that there are some times when you'll let it go. I'm sure there will be times when she's convinced that you're wrong, and you wish she'd just let it go. And believe it or not, sometimes it might be worth backing her up even when she's wrong, just because you have her back.
(I don't mean "you have her back" in a dirty way, though there's that too.)
No. There are no April Fools jokes that are "actually funny".
And as far as him being a myth, I'll admit that I'm glossing over some stuff. He wasn't some magical being who actually made all obstacles go away. He was arguably a bit of a redneck who made dirty jokes and said inappropriate things.
He generally *tried* to remove all the obstacles, but of course there were times where I had to deal with some nonsense outside of my job description. But most of the time, he managed to create a low-stress environment in a company that was full of chaos. In my opinion, he did a really good job.
I guess what you're saying is kind of true, but...
Well, first, "trusting the people who work for you to give you good advice," might not be different from "listening too your people". More importantly, there's a lot involved in "making sure your people can do their jobs with minimal outside interference." You have to be enough of a psychologist to understand the needs of the people you're managing. You need to be enough of an efficiency expert to create an appropriate context for your people to work in. You have to be enough of a politician to navigate internal bureaucracy. You need to be enough of an accountant to squeeze everything into your budget. You need to be enough of a businessman and salesman to sell this all to upper-management.
That's because it should be, and will be, after the field matures. Most computers are used as glorified typewriters and calculators, there is no reason they shouldn't "just work".
Sure. And accountants just collect receipts. And salespeople just tell customers about your products. When you think about things this way, nobody does real work.
But when you understand any of these jobs, you realize there's a lot more to it. Believe me, if all businesses were using was word processors and spreadsheets, then IT would be really easy. In my experience, even the person running a company is likely to underestimate the complexity of what they're doing on computers.
The problem is, you'll talk to the GM of a company, and they'll say, "Oh, we're just using Microsoft Office. We have a bunch of servers, but I don't even know what they do."
You start to show them what's going on with those servers, and suddenly it's like, "Oh, right. We do run several custom-build business-critical applications that haven't been updated in 10 years. But you don't need to worry about it. They work fine."
Then you start to support that client, and suddenly it's like, "Oh, right. We have constant problems with those custom-built business-critical applications that haven't been updated in 10 years. I forgot about all the problems we have. But you can just fix those, right? Can't you, like, put it in the cloud? I hear the cloud fixes everything." And there's approximately zero documentation.
No, sorry, this stuff isn't simple, and it's not "glorified typewriters and calculators". Your mom might just be using her computer to play solitaire, but lots of businesses are using them for real stuff.
Some drivers do break trucks more than others. Mechanics are simple folks, just like it staff. They will cry whatever you do.
Yeah, so I'm guessing that, not only are you not in IT and not in trucking, but you've never actually run a business.
It's almost impossible to produce results like "Our tech optimized the computer, making the user 12% more productive and increasing revenue by $1,287 per month."
It's difficult/impossible to *measure* those kinds of results, but it's not impossible to produce those results. If IT isn't making money on paper, that's an problem of accounting not reflecting reality. If your business is using computers to make money, then IT is making money.
Yeah, that's just stupid. Having a 500MB-1GB mailbox isn't too unreasonable *if* you also provide an archive for all the old email that will need to be deleted to get below that limit.
It's a myth? I'm telling you that I actually, in reality, had a manager like that. When you talked to him for any amount of time, you realized that he didn't really see his job as "You work for me! Do what I say!" but more like, "Even though I'm your manager, I work for you. My job is to remove the obstacles that keep you from doing your job." And it wasn't all talk. He actually did that.
Like if he saw you looking frustrated, he'd come up and ask if there was something wrong. He'd listen to you. If it was like, "Well I'm trying to finish this project, but [whoever] in [some other department] is dragging his feet and not providing enough information," then he'd go, "Ok, let me see what I can do."
He'd disappear for a little bit, and come back, saying, "[whoever] in [some other department] will have the information by the end of the day. If he doesn't, let me know." And that was the end of it. I don't even know how he got it done, because [whoever] in [some other department] was a lazy bastard who never did anything.
Look, if you've just had bad managers your entire life, then I understand your cynicism. There are a lot of crappy managers out there. But think about it this way: take any job in the world, and the majority of people doing that job are bad at it. It's hard to find a good doctor. It's hard to find a good contractor. It's hard to find a good IT person. And it's hard to find a good manager.
But management is a real job with a real skill-set, and a good manager is worth his/her weight in gold.
MSP sales teams go out and say "We're 24/7 available." That means they wake you up late at night via some phone system
Yup. Your MSP may be offering 24/7 support, but they do not have anyone working 2nd shift or 3rd shift. They do not have staff waiting by the phone, ready to take your phone call.
And it's not just about "the best IT people work during the day". Essentially, every time you call on nights or weekends, you're harassing some poor schmuck on his off-hours, ruining his personal life, because you can't wait until business hours. I hope you ask yourself, "Can this not wait? Do I really need help *right now*?"
What's more, you'll get worse support during the day if you keep calling at night. Because the "best IT people" who work during the day are exhausted from answering your stupid questions on their off time.
Sorry. I've had that job, and it sucks.
If I'm the head of the department you work in, then my No. 1 job is to clear obstacles out of your way so you can do yours.
The best boss I ever had once told me, "My job is to make sure that you don't have to worry about anything except doing your job."
That is, if your job is to make sure the server has zero downtime, his job is to take care of the office politics, budgeting, etc. so that you can focus on keeping the servers running. Some other manager within the company decides he doesn't like you? Well that's your his job to deal with. You need a piece of equipment that won't fit into the budget? His job. HR has stupid requirements for filling out timesheets? His job. Any goddamn thing other than showing up in the morning and keeping the servers running? His job.
Keeping the servers running? Your job.
And he fulfilled his job description. My job at the time was a fair bit more complicated than "keeping the servers running," but the point is that I had a job description, and I didn't have to deal with anything that fell outside of that job description. And do you know how I knew what my job description was? My manager made it very clear, because it was his job. He didn't want me to spend my time trying to figure out what I should and should not do. He made it clear that if I was unsure what I should be doing, I should ask him because if I'm confused, then he's not doing his job.
Now that's a goddamn manager. I miss that guy.
It is strange, when you think about it, the way that the IT department tends to get segregated off from the rest of operations. You have companies where people do 100% of their work on a computer, where the company *can not function* when the Internet goes out, and yet IT is treated as an afterthought. The people running these companies think that running an IT department is as easy as "running out to Best Buy and picking up a computer," and then they get annoyed when their IT services are unreliable.
I would have thought that, with as ubiquitous as computers are in business, IT work would be considered valuable. It's as though you have a company that ships things across the country by truck, but they don't think their mechanics are important, and they freak out when the mechanics want to have proper equipment for fixing the trucks. And worse, they don't think any of their truck drivers need to know how to drive. When their drivers put the truck in a ditch, they complain that the mechanics haven't made the truck crash-proof.
It seems to me that it's a little worse with IT support than with many other comparably skilled jobs. In recent years, there's been a competitive race-to-the-bottom. No one wants to pay for IT, and so there's been a trend towards MSPs instead of in-house IT. Those MSPs are competing by promising clients the moon. They can't deliver on the moon, obviously, but they push their employees to try. Meanwhile, the MSPs are making their money by being understaffed.
At least that's what I'm seeing. It seems like the MSPs are going in saying, "We'll provide full support 24/7 365 days a year." Meanwhile they have 3 employees, all of whom work full time during business hours, but are asked to also be on call 24/7 without taking real vacations.
I'm not saying that's unique to IT support workers, but it doesn't seem to be the norm.
They spent all that money, and they still couldn't get the right uniforms.
Then let me rephrase: I'm happy with my older laptop; it does what I need. But older hardware will eventually break. What should I use once it breaks?
This is an entirely different problem than what we're talking about. I could just as easily say that I like my current pair of jeans, but the GAP doesn't offer that cut anymore, so what should I do when they rip?
It's not a technological issue. Just because you like a product does not mean that someone will continue to produce it.
Which U.S. carrier is otherwise?
I don't know. I'm not going around researching every carrier around the US to see what all their plans are right now. I know there are some cheap plans out there. Not necessarily good service, but cheap.
Unlocked phones work only with GSM carriers, not CDMA2000 carriers.
So then don't go with a CDMA carrier. Look, you can't necessarily have everything you want. Really, you're conflating a bunch of different-- though related-- issues. You seem to be saying, "It's bad to integrate cell phones with PDAs because I can't get the plan that I want on the carrier that I want." And you know, maybe you should be able to get the plan you want on the carrier you want. Maybe cell phone carriers are horrible and corrupt companies, and we should do something about them. But even if I grant all that, it doesn't mean that smartphones are inherently a bad idea.
You might be imagining that location is irrelevant for datacenters. I mean, your computer is on the same Internet, right? Who cares where they're physically located?
Well, for one thing, there's the issue of latency. If you're working in NYC (as many businesses are), then you'll get lower latency going to a server in NYC than a server halfway around the world. This is especially important in the world of high-frequency trading, but it can also be a big deal for businesses that are operating in the cloud (instead of having local servers).
Second, there's the issue of physical access. If you're colocating servers in a datacenter, you might still want to get physical access to them at some point, and you'll want it to be easy to get to.
Then, for the datacenters, there's an issue of having access to resources. NYC has tremendous infrastructure, which can help all kinds of businesses operate more efficiently. But these resources aren't just about getting access to fast internet and reliable power, but also about things like staffing, business contacts, etc. If you build your datacenter in the middle of nowhere, then your talent pool-- whether you're talking about techs or management or executives-- is restricted to those willing to live out in the middle of nowhere. Though I've never run a datacenter on this scale, I can tell you that one of the hardest parts of running IT projects is finding competent and reliable staff, including finding good managers and executives.
It's also true on mobile, where phones still being sold today can't run some of the apps on Google Play Store because the apps require Android 4.x and the devices are stuck on 2.x.
That's an issue particular to many Android phone manufacturers, who are trying to create enforced obsolescence. That is, they're trying to keep the old business models that I was referring to.
Except companies stopped making 10" laptops at the end of 2012 because they want customers to start buying a separate, higher-margin laptop and tablet instead.
This is completely irrelevant to my point.
A PDA such as the Galaxy Player or iPod touch costs $0 per month more than what one's already paying for Internet. Replacing your dumbphone with a smartphone, on the other hand, means replacing a $7/mo bill with a $35/mo bill (source: virginmobileusa.com) because a lot of carriers refuse to activate voice-only service on a smartphone.
So assuming you want to buy a smartphone *and* not have a cellular data plan *and* choose to use a carrier that doesn't offer voice-only service *and* you buy a subsidized phone rather than buying an unlocked one, then you will pay extra each month, which will be somewhat offset by the subsidy you got for your phone.
Except that then you have to carry around a lot more gear, with arguably reduced capability.
My phone takes better pictures than my canon point-and-shoot from a couple of years ago. My phone integrates my computer's address book with my phone's address book, meaning I can text, call, email, and look up addresses for the same contacts on the same device. A dumb phone can't do that, at least not well.
Plus, though you can let your camera and tablet run out of battery without losing your phone capabilities, it also means that you have more devices to keep track of the charge for, and more chargers to carry around. Considering my phone's battery lasts more than a day, I don't see why the phone isn't winning.
One of the main problems with using your one redundant link as just a regular link is your bandwidth "needs" tend to grow to include some or even all of the bandwidth available from the now non-redundant link.
Really, in most cases, there's a big difference between "bandwidth needs" and "bandwidth wants". Businesses who normally use a 10Mb connection will frequently limp along on a backup T1 when necessary, without serious problems. Being without an Internet connection is a much bigger problem.
But then the question frequently comes up: We have an 10Mb connection, and then a 1.5Mb backup connection that sits around doing nothing all day. Can we somehow combine them into a 11.5Mb connection?
And the answer is generally "no". You can do a few kinds of load balancing, but each of them have some non-trivial drawbacks.