Sure, those people who are causing problems may not view their actions as being "mistakes", but what about the people who hired them? What about the people who hired those people? What about you, who hands your money over to those sociopaths when you invest in stock or open a bank account?
Color laser printers aren't cheap upfront; they're incredibly cheap over the long run
Toner and paper still cost money. If you lease, leasing companies charge by the page. Those prices aren't necessarily inconsequential, and not all laser printers are created equal.
I've been through similar situations a number of times. For the people who are telling you to get out of this job, I say: not necessarily. If you manage to fix these things, it can be a great learning experience and it can help you earn a name for yourself.
So my advice is to start out bringing these problems to the attention of management. You don't need to be pushy, but be very clear that you have found these problems, that you think they're serious problems, and that the problems may endanger the success of the company. Give them a little leeway on how to direct you. They probably won't want to throw lots of money at the problem, but if they don't seem genuinely concerned and looking for solutions, then start looking for a new job.
Second, get ready to learn about project management, because you're not fixing all of this at once. Make a list of what needs to be done. Prioritize that list. Estimate the time needed to do each task. If there's something extremely high priority that will run up against a specific deadline, then figure out what's necessary to meet that deadline. Start working on a budget.
Start setting schedules for each thing that needs to be done, but recognize that the schedule will have to be flexible. In fact, don't bother scheduling things that are low priority until you've put out some fires. Keep them on your todo list, but consider making a separate "to do eventually, but I'm not going to bother thinking about it right now" list. When you have a schedule set, get to work. Keep track of your progress, and keep management informed of your progress. Keep them informed about problems and obstacles that you encounter along the way, especially if they'll cause an increase in your budget or a delay in your schedule.
You'll want to gather some good project management tools along the way. At a bare minimum, these tools will include a calendar, a todo list, and a way to keep organized notes. Set aside time every week to review your notes, your calendar, your todo list.
You can take project management classes, but most of what they teach you comes down to this: Make sure you understand what you're trying to accomplish, and that what you're doing is actually the best way to accomplish it. Keep your stakeholders informed, and listen to their feedback on your progress.
In fairness, it depends on the work environment. Who's copying/printing what in what quantities on what kinds of printers? Color lasers aren't necessarily cheap, either.
Well... If you ask me, "netbooks" are a funny class of products. The problem is basically that the "netbook" class was developed to be the smallest, cheapest thing that can browse the Internet and display a web page. Literally, that's all. Early netbooks were super-weak and had almost no hard drive space. That was the concept of a "netbook" and they were actually in many ways less capable than iPads.
But the problem is, people didn't want that. They got caught up in the netbook hype, bought one, and then got pissed off that it wasn't a fully functional computer. They were very unhappy, so manufacturers started adding bigger hard drives and making them more capable, bigger, and often more expensive. "Netbook" went from being its own class of products to being code for a cheap, crappy laptop. Meanwhile normal laptops are getting thinner, lighter, and cheaper. The term "netbook" is almost meaningless anymore, except that it indicates that the laptop is probably powered by an Atom processor instead of a Pentium or Core processor. Although people buy them, they still are frequently disappointed by the poor performance-- at least, that's been my experience in dealing with clients who have purchased them.
So I think that as a product class, they're kind of doomed. You're starting to see a new class of products that people are calling "ultrabooks" (e.g. Macbook Air) that are fully functional laptops, but small, thin, and lightweight. My guess is you'll start to see this product class take over laptop design and get cheaper as time goes on.
But tablets are really another issue entirely. The current tablet market is basically selling appliance computing instead of general computing.
Good point. My experience on the support side of things (desktop/network support) is that your best move is to put people on salary, make them fix everything that comes up, but if everything is working and there are no problems, let them have some of that free time to themselves to screw around and experiment. If you want to motivate someone to do a good job building something, make it really clear that they'll have to spend time that would otherwise be "free time" fixing it if it breaks.
Basically, if you can, make laziness work in your favor. But I don't know how to do that if you're outsourcing programming work.
A company can only get burned like this so many times before cooler heads prevail.
That has not been my experience. I have seen businesses make the same mistakes over and over again, and cooler heads just never prevail. Aside from my personal experience, we see it all the time that some CEO gets hired to a company, they totally screw things up and leave in some level of disgrace, and then they're hired by another company to be the CEO and repeat the whole thing over again. We've seen "geniuses" at Wall Street almost destroy the world's economic system, get away with it and stay in their positions of power, and then they turn around and engage in the same behavior.
People often aren't rational, and people often don't learn from their mistakes.
I think you're overestimating the rationality of people when it comes to economics. People don't actually do things that are cheaper and more efficient. Most people in management will spend $100 chasing $2, and they'll get rewarded with raises and bonuses for doing it.
That being said, I did cancel my cable and instead pay for Netflix, Hulu Plus, and occasionally buy TV shows from iTunes. All told, it's still significantly cheaper, and I can watch most of what I want to.
Apple TV already has no reason to support CableCARD - They are already on the a la carte model. You can buy/rent episodes and season passes for current shows from iTunes.
The problem with these solutions, whether they be ad-supported (Hulu), renting (iTunes), or subscription (Netflix), are basically sabotaged by the cable companies and TV networks. The content libraries are often lacking, or else the terms they offer are poor. iTunes has a pretty good selection, but they require that you purchase, and not rent, most TV shows. In addition, a lot of shows come to iTunes late, and a few don't show up at all. Not only has Apple tried unsuccessfully to get content owners to allow TV shows to be rented uniformly, but they also haven't been able to get any of them to agree to any kind of "package subscription" deal that would allow you to bundle your subscripts together to save money.
Netflix similarly can't get rights to new shows (i.e. showing episodes from the current season), and Hulu... well even when they have you pay money to watch ad-supported shows on your television, they still don't let you watch *all* the shows in their library on your television. It's just a subset.
I agree. This is more of a regulatory problem than a technical problem. In my opinion, there should be some attempt to separate out data-infrastructure providers from data-service providers, i.e. try to make it so that if you're an ISP, you can't also sell telephone/TV services over your own network. It's a complicated issue, and right now there's a monopoly/duopoly in most places in the US, so market forces won't sort it out.
I don't really know. I mean, I would guess that VNC sessions vary, and I don't have a specific idea of how much your VNC session would take. Can you put it into a number of bytes?
But regardless of the device, I wouldn't particularly recommend using cellular data plans for high-bandwidth usage. It's bound to get expensive, and you're usually better off getting a wired connection (by which I mean cable/fiber, which may be accessed through WiFi). That's not really an iPad-specific issue.
On a side note, I'm not sure I'd recommend a tablet if your intention is to work remotely in a VNC session. IMO if you're doing work on a remote system that expects you to have a keyboard and mouse, it's better to have a keyboard and mouse on your local device. The iPad has remote-access software available, and it can work pretty well in a pinch, but I wouldn't like trying to use it for hours over a slow cellular data connection.
But that was part of my point here. You're talking about two different kinds of devices with different form factors. Tablets are nice for certain kinds of things, and for others they're not-so-great.
Honestly, I kind of wish I had an email client that did this for me. Or maybe more to the point, I wish I had an email server that did this for me. What I have in mind is, instead of the normal attachment system, have the server automatically strip out attachments and store them where they can be accessed by webdav/http. Where the attachment was, substitute in a link to the attachment instead. that way, I could browse my attachments like a normal file system, delete stuff as I like, but the email message is only as large as the text.
Somehow we've gotten ourselves to the point where people are using email as a filesystem, and it's not very well suited for that.
THAT's what's broken about TV - and I don't see Apple TV or any of these other gizmos fixing that, unless they accept CableCard.
I think you're so close on this one, but what's broken about TVs will not be fixed when the AppleTV supports CableCard, but when the AppleTV has no reason to support CableCard. In my view, the problem is the cable companies themselves, or rather the whole setup of having a "cable company".
With digital video and the Internet working the way it does, why on earth should I be locked into a specific provider by my geographic location? Why should I need to buy/rent specific hardware for that provider? Why should that provider be broadcasting video on channels, where I'm locked into watching shows on specific channels in a specific order at a specific time of day?
Now I won't be shocked if some people disagree with me here, but in my view, this is one of those things where things were developed at some point based on the restrictions at the time, but if you were building things today, you wouldn't design it this way. Like someone comes in and says:
I have a great idea for a Netflix competitor. It's just like Netflix, but without a good recommendation engine, you have to watch things on our schedule, we force you to watch ads, and we force you into renting hardware instead of watching it on your regular set-top box. Oh, and the set-top boxes we provide are absolute crap, which makes browsing frustrating. And it's great that browsing is terrible, because you have to browse through a million terrible 'channels' of time-locked content looking for something to watch. And best of all, we'll charge 10 times as much as Netflix!
Now image that. Who listens to that and says, "Oh, that's a great idea!"
I think it just shows that trying to build IT competence into a government agency basically a waste of money because the institutional culture of government
You're not very accurate on that, either. Government organizations need to be able to keep track of their email - especially internal communications - which they would not be able to do if they outsourced email and other telecom.
I'd also like to note that the poster seems to be trying to turn this into evidence that the government is inefficient, since they don't outsource their email, but a lot of business don't outsource their email either. I help people outsource their email for a living, and I don't necessarily recommend it. There are advantages, and there are disadvantages.
Ah, ok, so you meant this. I thought this was some kind of typo/misstatement. Fair enough, although it's worth noting that the base model for the MBA is $999.
Well your prices are wrong. If you get the $500 iPad, then it's WiFi-only and your cellular data plan won't work. But it makes sense that it won't work, because if you're paying $60 a month, it's probably not an iPad data plan. At least in the US, the data plans start at $15/month. And if you do get a data plan with your iPad, it's month-to-month, so there's no 36-month obligation.
And all that aside, you're comparing two different kinds of devices with different form-factors.
Meh, someone needs to have access. If you're relying on your IT team to deny themselves access, ask yourself this: If they can't be trusted with access to your files, can they be trusted to deny themselves access without giving themselves a back door?
And further, if they don't have access and don't have a way to get access, then what do you do when you lose your password and accidentally deny yourself access. "Sorry, your data is lost. It's encrypted, and we have no way to get access." That's not ideal for most people. I mean, yeah, if you're dealing with state secrets, then you want things to be as secure as possible. But you're probably not dealing with state secrets.
I don't know, I think he has a fair point. There were IT people 30 years ago, but not on the scale that there are now, and not doing the same scope of work. With as fast as things change and technology evolves, you may not be able to look at the trends of the last 30 years and extrapolate to know what the next 30 will hold for an industry that supports that technology.
I'm a software developer and I can tell you that the average dev knows a lot more than the average support tech re: how to make a stable system.
Both of us can only speak to our own knowledge/experience, but most developers I've dealt with in a professional setting have significantly overestimated their knowledge about troubleshooting, fixing, and maintaining computers. Almost every developer I've known thinks they know more than their IT support staff, and almost every one of those have been wrong about that.
I worked at one place where the developers were very vocal about having the sort of "no restrictions" setup that you request, and eventually a compromise was reached: they would have full access to their own computers and no IT support. In short order, their subnet was in shambles and they had no idea to fix it. IT had to fix their stuff anyway. After that, the developers were each given a "work system" with no admin rights that IT supported, and a "development system" with full admin rights that IT didn't officially support. That way, when they hosed their development systems, they still had a stable system to email the IT department to beg for help.
Also if it's broken enough that you can't actually boot, but you can still get access to the files on the disk, then plaintext will be readable by any other OS. If it's a weird binary format, then you have to worry about whether you have the correct viewer installed, if there's even one available.
Slashdot Mirror
Sure, those people who are causing problems may not view their actions as being "mistakes", but what about the people who hired them? What about the people who hired those people? What about you, who hands your money over to those sociopaths when you invest in stock or open a bank account?
Someone's making a mistake.
Color laser printers aren't cheap upfront; they're incredibly cheap over the long run
Toner and paper still cost money. If you lease, leasing companies charge by the page. Those prices aren't necessarily inconsequential, and not all laser printers are created equal.
I'm talking about "people" in general. The people hiring crappy CEOs who have been public failures in past jobs are examples of "people".
That may be a problem for you, but it won't be a general problem.
I've been through similar situations a number of times. For the people who are telling you to get out of this job, I say: not necessarily. If you manage to fix these things, it can be a great learning experience and it can help you earn a name for yourself.
So my advice is to start out bringing these problems to the attention of management. You don't need to be pushy, but be very clear that you have found these problems, that you think they're serious problems, and that the problems may endanger the success of the company. Give them a little leeway on how to direct you. They probably won't want to throw lots of money at the problem, but if they don't seem genuinely concerned and looking for solutions, then start looking for a new job.
Second, get ready to learn about project management, because you're not fixing all of this at once. Make a list of what needs to be done. Prioritize that list. Estimate the time needed to do each task. If there's something extremely high priority that will run up against a specific deadline, then figure out what's necessary to meet that deadline. Start working on a budget.
Start setting schedules for each thing that needs to be done, but recognize that the schedule will have to be flexible. In fact, don't bother scheduling things that are low priority until you've put out some fires. Keep them on your todo list, but consider making a separate "to do eventually, but I'm not going to bother thinking about it right now" list. When you have a schedule set, get to work. Keep track of your progress, and keep management informed of your progress. Keep them informed about problems and obstacles that you encounter along the way, especially if they'll cause an increase in your budget or a delay in your schedule.
You'll want to gather some good project management tools along the way. At a bare minimum, these tools will include a calendar, a todo list, and a way to keep organized notes. Set aside time every week to review your notes, your calendar, your todo list.
You can take project management classes, but most of what they teach you comes down to this: Make sure you understand what you're trying to accomplish, and that what you're doing is actually the best way to accomplish it. Keep your stakeholders informed, and listen to their feedback on your progress.
In fairness, it depends on the work environment. Who's copying/printing what in what quantities on what kinds of printers? Color lasers aren't necessarily cheap, either.
I've never had a chance to try the VNC-on-a-tablet workaround before because so far, a netbook running Ubuntu has satisfied my needs at a lower price.
And just to be clear, the issue of cellular data plans being expensive is somewhat separate from your choice of platform.
Well... If you ask me, "netbooks" are a funny class of products. The problem is basically that the "netbook" class was developed to be the smallest, cheapest thing that can browse the Internet and display a web page. Literally, that's all. Early netbooks were super-weak and had almost no hard drive space. That was the concept of a "netbook" and they were actually in many ways less capable than iPads.
But the problem is, people didn't want that. They got caught up in the netbook hype, bought one, and then got pissed off that it wasn't a fully functional computer. They were very unhappy, so manufacturers started adding bigger hard drives and making them more capable, bigger, and often more expensive. "Netbook" went from being its own class of products to being code for a cheap, crappy laptop. Meanwhile normal laptops are getting thinner, lighter, and cheaper. The term "netbook" is almost meaningless anymore, except that it indicates that the laptop is probably powered by an Atom processor instead of a Pentium or Core processor. Although people buy them, they still are frequently disappointed by the poor performance-- at least, that's been my experience in dealing with clients who have purchased them.
So I think that as a product class, they're kind of doomed. You're starting to see a new class of products that people are calling "ultrabooks" (e.g. Macbook Air) that are fully functional laptops, but small, thin, and lightweight. My guess is you'll start to see this product class take over laptop design and get cheaper as time goes on.
But tablets are really another issue entirely. The current tablet market is basically selling appliance computing instead of general computing.
Good point. My experience on the support side of things (desktop/network support) is that your best move is to put people on salary, make them fix everything that comes up, but if everything is working and there are no problems, let them have some of that free time to themselves to screw around and experiment. If you want to motivate someone to do a good job building something, make it really clear that they'll have to spend time that would otherwise be "free time" fixing it if it breaks.
Basically, if you can, make laziness work in your favor. But I don't know how to do that if you're outsourcing programming work.
A company can only get burned like this so many times before cooler heads prevail.
That has not been my experience. I have seen businesses make the same mistakes over and over again, and cooler heads just never prevail. Aside from my personal experience, we see it all the time that some CEO gets hired to a company, they totally screw things up and leave in some level of disgrace, and then they're hired by another company to be the CEO and repeat the whole thing over again. We've seen "geniuses" at Wall Street almost destroy the world's economic system, get away with it and stay in their positions of power, and then they turn around and engage in the same behavior.
People often aren't rational, and people often don't learn from their mistakes.
I think you're overestimating the rationality of people when it comes to economics. People don't actually do things that are cheaper and more efficient. Most people in management will spend $100 chasing $2, and they'll get rewarded with raises and bonuses for doing it.
That being said, I did cancel my cable and instead pay for Netflix, Hulu Plus, and occasionally buy TV shows from iTunes. All told, it's still significantly cheaper, and I can watch most of what I want to.
Apple TV already has no reason to support CableCARD - They are already on the a la carte model. You can buy/rent episodes and season passes for current shows from iTunes.
The problem with these solutions, whether they be ad-supported (Hulu), renting (iTunes), or subscription (Netflix), are basically sabotaged by the cable companies and TV networks. The content libraries are often lacking, or else the terms they offer are poor. iTunes has a pretty good selection, but they require that you purchase, and not rent, most TV shows. In addition, a lot of shows come to iTunes late, and a few don't show up at all. Not only has Apple tried unsuccessfully to get content owners to allow TV shows to be rented uniformly, but they also haven't been able to get any of them to agree to any kind of "package subscription" deal that would allow you to bundle your subscripts together to save money.
Netflix similarly can't get rights to new shows (i.e. showing episodes from the current season), and Hulu... well even when they have you pay money to watch ad-supported shows on your television, they still don't let you watch *all* the shows in their library on your television. It's just a subset.
This is not a difficult technical problem.
I agree. This is more of a regulatory problem than a technical problem. In my opinion, there should be some attempt to separate out data-infrastructure providers from data-service providers, i.e. try to make it so that if you're an ISP, you can't also sell telephone/TV services over your own network. It's a complicated issue, and right now there's a monopoly/duopoly in most places in the US, so market forces won't sort it out.
I don't really know. I mean, I would guess that VNC sessions vary, and I don't have a specific idea of how much your VNC session would take. Can you put it into a number of bytes?
But regardless of the device, I wouldn't particularly recommend using cellular data plans for high-bandwidth usage. It's bound to get expensive, and you're usually better off getting a wired connection (by which I mean cable/fiber, which may be accessed through WiFi). That's not really an iPad-specific issue.
On a side note, I'm not sure I'd recommend a tablet if your intention is to work remotely in a VNC session. IMO if you're doing work on a remote system that expects you to have a keyboard and mouse, it's better to have a keyboard and mouse on your local device. The iPad has remote-access software available, and it can work pretty well in a pinch, but I wouldn't like trying to use it for hours over a slow cellular data connection.
But that was part of my point here. You're talking about two different kinds of devices with different form factors. Tablets are nice for certain kinds of things, and for others they're not-so-great.
Honestly, I kind of wish I had an email client that did this for me. Or maybe more to the point, I wish I had an email server that did this for me. What I have in mind is, instead of the normal attachment system, have the server automatically strip out attachments and store them where they can be accessed by webdav/http. Where the attachment was, substitute in a link to the attachment instead. that way, I could browse my attachments like a normal file system, delete stuff as I like, but the email message is only as large as the text.
Somehow we've gotten ourselves to the point where people are using email as a filesystem, and it's not very well suited for that.
THAT's what's broken about TV - and I don't see Apple TV or any of these other gizmos fixing that, unless they accept CableCard.
I think you're so close on this one, but what's broken about TVs will not be fixed when the AppleTV supports CableCard, but when the AppleTV has no reason to support CableCard. In my view, the problem is the cable companies themselves, or rather the whole setup of having a "cable company".
With digital video and the Internet working the way it does, why on earth should I be locked into a specific provider by my geographic location? Why should I need to buy/rent specific hardware for that provider? Why should that provider be broadcasting video on channels, where I'm locked into watching shows on specific channels in a specific order at a specific time of day?
Now I won't be shocked if some people disagree with me here, but in my view, this is one of those things where things were developed at some point based on the restrictions at the time, but if you were building things today, you wouldn't design it this way. Like someone comes in and says:
I have a great idea for a Netflix competitor. It's just like Netflix, but without a good recommendation engine, you have to watch things on our schedule, we force you to watch ads, and we force you into renting hardware instead of watching it on your regular set-top box. Oh, and the set-top boxes we provide are absolute crap, which makes browsing frustrating. And it's great that browsing is terrible, because you have to browse through a million terrible 'channels' of time-locked content looking for something to watch. And best of all, we'll charge 10 times as much as Netflix!
Now image that. Who listens to that and says, "Oh, that's a great idea!"
I think it just shows that trying to build IT competence into a government agency basically a waste of money because the institutional culture of government
You're not very accurate on that, either. Government organizations need to be able to keep track of their email - especially internal communications - which they would not be able to do if they outsourced email and other telecom.
I'd also like to note that the poster seems to be trying to turn this into evidence that the government is inefficient, since they don't outsource their email, but a lot of business don't outsource their email either. I help people outsource their email for a living, and I don't necessarily recommend it. There are advantages, and there are disadvantages.
Ah, ok, so you meant this. I thought this was some kind of typo/misstatement. Fair enough, although it's worth noting that the base model for the MBA is $999.
Well your prices are wrong. If you get the $500 iPad, then it's WiFi-only and your cellular data plan won't work. But it makes sense that it won't work, because if you're paying $60 a month, it's probably not an iPad data plan. At least in the US, the data plans start at $15/month. And if you do get a data plan with your iPad, it's month-to-month, so there's no 36-month obligation.
And all that aside, you're comparing two different kinds of devices with different form-factors.
They're less expensive than a Macbook Air, but so is a Porsche 914.
I'm not sure where that sentence went wrong, but I'm pretty sure a Porsche 914 isn't less expensive than a Macbook Air.
Meh, someone needs to have access. If you're relying on your IT team to deny themselves access, ask yourself this: If they can't be trusted with access to your files, can they be trusted to deny themselves access without giving themselves a back door?
And further, if they don't have access and don't have a way to get access, then what do you do when you lose your password and accidentally deny yourself access. "Sorry, your data is lost. It's encrypted, and we have no way to get access." That's not ideal for most people. I mean, yeah, if you're dealing with state secrets, then you want things to be as secure as possible. But you're probably not dealing with state secrets.
I don't know, I think he has a fair point. There were IT people 30 years ago, but not on the scale that there are now, and not doing the same scope of work. With as fast as things change and technology evolves, you may not be able to look at the trends of the last 30 years and extrapolate to know what the next 30 will hold for an industry that supports that technology.
I'm a software developer and I can tell you that the average dev knows a lot more than the average support tech re: how to make a stable system.
Both of us can only speak to our own knowledge/experience, but most developers I've dealt with in a professional setting have significantly overestimated their knowledge about troubleshooting, fixing, and maintaining computers. Almost every developer I've known thinks they know more than their IT support staff, and almost every one of those have been wrong about that.
I worked at one place where the developers were very vocal about having the sort of "no restrictions" setup that you request, and eventually a compromise was reached: they would have full access to their own computers and no IT support. In short order, their subnet was in shambles and they had no idea to fix it. IT had to fix their stuff anyway. After that, the developers were each given a "work system" with no admin rights that IT supported, and a "development system" with full admin rights that IT didn't officially support. That way, when they hosed their development systems, they still had a stable system to email the IT department to beg for help.
Also if it's broken enough that you can't actually boot, but you can still get access to the files on the disk, then plaintext will be readable by any other OS. If it's a weird binary format, then you have to worry about whether you have the correct viewer installed, if there's even one available.