Basically quite true, but frankly, the dot-com era died mostly because of the belief put in the flawed idea that it made good business sense to grow market share at all costs (worrying about the quality of the product or service offered secondarily, if at all).
There were plenty of "rich idiots" around - but I don't think it's fair to act "holier than thou" about it, claiming to have known all along it was all just a bunch of idiots giving money to other idiots. If this were true, you'd have to ask why eBay is still useful and successful today, or Amazon.com for that matter.
Some of these dot-coms had viable concepts that "made it" - but they were the minority. Probably, a number of them were even really good business ideas that *should* have made it, but got drug down with the rest of the startups as stockholders decided they were pretty much all a ripoff. In other cases, they just didn't know how to make the good idea succeed in the long term. Better management might have saved them.
(For example, I still think those "we deliver groceries to your door" ideas like peapod, webvan, etc. were viable. People just didn't quite figure out a profitable way to pull them off. I could see a large food service corp. launching one of these on a nationwide scale (say Pepsi Co. or Frito-Lay or somebody?), and maybe even subcontracting deliveries out to local courier services?)
You might be right about Windows users tending to maximize their apps on the screen, but I can assure you it's often NOT just because they bought poor quality monitors.
Rather, it's often because the apps put enough controls and toolbars up that maximizing is the only way to comfortably work in the software.
(With most of the MIDI/music sequencers and hard disk recording packages, it feels like you never have enough room for the mixer sliders, time counter window, musical notation window, and so on. They may as well hard code maximizing windows into those things!)
Even if you own a top-notch flat panel that does 1600x1200 resolution - the fonts are going to look awfully small at that point. (And yes, you can select "large fonts" in the Windows control panel, but that tends to be self-defeating -- sacrificing most of the screen real-estate you gained by going to a higher resolution in the first place.) 1024x768 is pretty much the "most common" resolution I see Windows desktops running in (assuming you don't have a wide-screen type display) - and I think it's because it's roughly the best compromise between resolution and overall font size. (Especially for older PC users, they really struggle with apps like Excel when you crank the resolution up higher - regardless of monitor sharpness.)
Actually, we did raise our rates at the beginning of the year. And I do earn a little bit more per hour now than I did.
My point is, there's a difference between being paid fairly for your work, and "getting rich" from it.
Also, we're not necessarily "unwilling" to bring in an apprentice. The problem with that line of thinking is, you can't do it properly without being able to set aside a good bit of your own time getting the new person up to speed. In the current situation, I can only see that going poorly. (New tech would start, and we'd end up only teaching him/her 50% of what they needed to know just because we'd be feeding the info piece-meal between calls we were doing ourselves.) Might be a good strategy after we hire one more tech with experience though, so things could settle down a bit.
Lastly though, getting "more customers than we can handle" doesn't automatically mean raising prices is the best solution. That can backfire, driving large numbers of your former customers to competitors. A lost customer is pretty tough to get back again. Right now, we're billing $89/hr. plus a trip charge for each call. To do something like a virus/spyware cleanup the *right way*, you're normally looking at 2 to 2 1/2 hours of time. That means a customer is going to be paying in the neighborhood of $200 to get that problem fixed.
Sure, we could charge more - but when a brand new Dell PC costs as little as $399, where's the incentive for anyone to pay $200+ to clean up their 2-4 year old PC? Not only that, but you up your own stress levels - because customers become "clock watchers", constantly nagging you with "Are you almost done yet?" This leads to cutting corners to speed things along, and more dissatisfaction. (EG. Upgrade their XP to Service Pack 2? Maybe not... since it'll take 30 minutes more to finish updating. But then, you might be leaving them open to more problems.)
I, too, have had the experience of working with several female software developers who definitely knew what they were doing.
Unfortunately, in 14 years of working in I.T. and computers, I have yet to see even *one* woman who was what I'd call a "seasoned, competent tech". In fact, I can count on one hand the number of female techs I've run across, period! (One was a lady sent out to our company by HP, to service a rack-mount NetServer. She had to ask our I.T. manager for help figuring out how to take it apart properly.) Another is a gal I met in an IRC chat room who got a job as a CompUSA technician. Frankly, she's an intellgent woman with good "people skills", and at least shows some interest in keeping a job in the "tech sector". But her skills as a PC tech are basically "I crash-course studied and finally passed my A-Plus certification, and my boyfriend taught me a bunch of stuff in the last year or so."
Again, I'm not in a position to offer some sort of "concrete numbers" on any of this. (Hey, sorry, but I don't happen to run a marketing research firm or anything!) But neither am I willing to just discount "anecdotal evidence" as meaningless, when it's what I've seen over this long a time period working in this particular field.
Truthfully, I think in fields where women are the minority, they've got a bit of an unfair advantage if they really want to stick with things and become good at what they do. (I learned this lesson way back in high-school when I took a "power tech" class. There was only one woman in the class, and though she came into it knowing pretty much zero about cars/engine work - she always had at least 5 or 6 guys more than eager to show her how something worked, or help her with assignments. Know what though? She still dropped out in the middle of the class. There's little doubt she would have gotten an A if she stuck with it.)
I think women shy away from/lack interest in the more "hands-on" jobs when they venture outside the areas they've grown up with. Like anything, there will always be exceptions - but think of what you've observered in your own lives. How many female plumbers, auto mechanics, carpenters, computer technicians, or heating and cooling techs have you run across?
Software development/programming is much less of a job physical in nature, so it makes sense to me that I'd see relatively more women in that job role.
I absolutely agree, but I'd say besides the dogged persistence, your other basic requirement becomes *quality employees*.
By this, I mean people who truly share your vision of growing the business.
I work for a guy who did an on-site PC service/support startup business. In fact, I was really only his 3rd. employee (after a part-time guy he hired for a while, and then let go of). I was very interested in this business, because it was similar to one a friend of mine started almost 10 years ago - but which unfortunately didn't make it. (I think it was an idea before its time back then... Not enough people relied on their home computers and were willing to pay someone to fix one for them on-site.) I always treat my job like I'm the business owner, and it apparently shows. (People call in all the time, confused, assuming it's my company - and wonder who my boss is!)
Sometimes I even stop and ask myself why I'm working so hard for relatively little when it's not even my own company, but then I remember that this is what I really wanted to do for a living. I spent years trying to find somebody actually doing it right. I don't have the money/resources to start something like this on my own, but I do have the know-how and experience to do the job well and please customers. So for me, it's worth doing my best to make sure this place sticks around!
Our problem now is, we've gotten to where there's too much work to do, and we need another full-time technician. But the people who keep applying for the job are too inexperienced, coming from other chain-store on-site places that do inferior work, or just the type of folks who only care about making a buck. (Sorry, but in this business - it just isn't smart to piss off a new customer because you nickel and dime them on every last minute you're out there. If they have an old PC that was barely worth paying your hourly fee to fix in the first place, you have to be a little flexible. Round down your time spent out there, etc. - so they'll be satisfied, and will call you again in the future.)
Nobody's gonna get rich doing this kind of work anyway. It's something you have to do because you really like driving around, seeing something a little different all the time - and get some satisfaction out of helping people out. I just don't know if we'll find other like-minded people to make this thing grow further, though.
I think the answer (though not really clarified) is, the taxes are supposed to cover the difference and keep it profitable.
He suggested levying a 1% tax on all new computer sales.
He didn't seem to explain how much revenue that was going to equate to, or how it would be distributed afterwards though.
Personally, I dislike that part of his plan. I think I'd much rather pay 10 or 15 cents per song than pay 5 cents, but have a new tax on all my future computer hardware purchases. Taxing people is inherently unfair - because not everyone buying a new PC plans to use it for downloading/listening to music. Some people are stuck paying for something they never take part in, while others might skirt paying the tax at all by only buying and using pre-owned equipment, yet engage in LOTS of music downloading.
In any case, this whole thing really just boils down to the recording industry needing to re-evaluate the most efficient pricing scheme for digital music. It's pretty clear to me that the 99 cents per song model currently used by Apple is only acceptable to maybe about half of the potential customers. The rest opt for illegal, free downloads instead at those prices. Is 5 cents or 10 cents the magic price-point? I dunno... But I will say, I think discounts need to be given for buying in bulk. If I want to purchase 25 songs at a time, I should get some sort of discount over the person who just signs in to get 1 particular song. (Saying there's a discount for buying an entire album doesn't cut it - because that takes away my option to pick and choose exactly what I want. In that case, why even do the digital music thing at all? I'm still being pushed towards buying a "package" of one artist's songs, good or bad, just to get a few tracks I know I want. Might not be such a deal at all....)
As much as I love Futurama, I'm also more shocked it stayed around so long than shocked it was canned.
Fact is, the networks gave it a good run primarily because The Simpsons was already so wildly popular. They figured "How can we go wrong?" with another Groenig animated series.
Only, this time, the series wasn't quite aimed at the "general public" and everyday topics anymore. In fact, the characters are bizarre enough, it took me a few episodes to really start "getting it" enough to enjoy it. (At first, I felt like I walked right into the middle of the show without a clue. Why the heck is this gal with one eye running around with this seemingly normal guy? This robot's pretty funny, but what the heck is his background? I guess he's some kind of con artist or assistant to a criminal? But wait, he seems to be a cohort with the "good guys"? Huh? Is this crew supposed to be on some sort of mission, a la Star Trek, or is it more like "Lost in Space"?)
I wasn't even sure I wanted to watch any more of it, at first. If it wasn't for my admiration of Groenig's work in general, I probably would have skipped it (and I bet many viewers did). After I gave it a few more chances, I realized most of the pieces started falling together fairly quickly - and there were loads of great puns and parodies, both obvious and "if you blink, you miss 'em" types.
I think a lot of people will finally buy some Futurama on DVD due to the recommendation of others, and discover far after the fact that "Hey, this stuff was great! Why didn't I watch this when it was on?"
It's not unlike Hollywood, where actors and actresses live in their own version of reality - pretty far removed from the daily lives most of us have.
When you earn that type of money, and spend your time around peers that do the same, how can you expect them to see these screw-ups as a "big deal", really? Like you said, it's not their own business, built from the ground up - so they're not coming into things with that background of remembering how tough it was to build it.
A lot of these big-wig corporate types pander more to such things as a peer "taking a big risk". They're going to say "Carly, that was a really bold move you made, merging with Compaq. Didn't really work out, but that's the type of thinking and attitude we like to see in a C.E.O.! I think we can find a new spot for you over here...."
In many ways, I think they approach it like gambling. Sure, the rest of us can say "I can't believe that guy just plunked down a million dollars on the roulette table and lost it all. What a moron!" But if he's got the kind of money where that isn't going to put an end to his lifestyle, and his peers are equally rich gamblers, they're just going to cheer him on. They're thinking in the back of their heads that they're "way above" all those naysayers who aren't "successful enough" to even afford to take those types of risks.
The last things I can remember HP doing right were their laser printers with single digit numbers. (EG. Laserjet II, III, 4 series, and even the 6P - which is a teriffic "small office workgroup" type printer.) The old scanners with single digit numbers were equally well-made and respectable (ScanJet 4 and so on).
But somewhere around the time they decided these products needed numbers in the thousands, quality took a nosedive and then came the parade of garbage "consumer desktop PCs".
Nowdays, I rarely recommend anything with the HP logo on it. Their inkjets have the most outdated print-nozzle technology out there for photo printing. There's still nothing noteworthy about their Pavillion PC line, and even their laptops seem like they're generally the size of bricks. (Those HP laptops with 17" displays are just HUGE compared to something like an Apple Powerbook 17".)
Uh.... yes. You see exactly what happened in a world where all those manufacturers from the 80's tried to compete with each other.... They died off and we're left with only a couple offerings.
The reason Atari, Amiga, etc. didn't end up "viable choices" in the long run is precisely because they all insisted on being proprietary. The PC clone took hold because of everyone's fascination with inter-operability and compatibility.
I remember fondly owning several Tandy/Radio-Shack Color Computers in the 80's, and finally, I was sucked into buying a first PC clone (a 286 8Mhz box). Why? Simple.... it just got too frustrating seeing the PC clones popping up all over the place, and getting cool new software packages daily, while I was stuck waiting for months for someone to implement a poor clone or similar version for my machine.
I think reality is, the marketplace has very little room for proprietary computers. If you're good enough at catering to a niche and truly offering something different, you can survive - but you're always going to have a small "piece of the pie". This is today's Apple Computer. This is also today's Sun and today's Sparc.
It might be a fun exercise to imagine what "might have been" if all these competitors were still around - but it's also futile. No matter what they offered, I believe they'd have dwindled down to pretty much the situation we see today. Computers have evolved to become tools/appliances for all except the enthusiasts. The typical computer user just wants to power it on and get their work done. They want ease of purchasing new software and peripherals too. They don't want to have to carefully look through everything to make sure it's made for their particular brand of machine.
Not sure if this is already "common knowledge" or not, but my employer runs a small mail server for several of our customers - and he's started using a technique which seems to drastically reduce incoming spam.
He set things up so whenever a new piece of email arrives from an unknown source, it sends back a "try again later" request and trashes the message. Apparently, there's a function built into the specs for SMTP/POP servers so these "try again" requests normally get processed, and the mail is resent an hour or two later (sometimes longer if from a big ISP like AOL or something).
Since much of the spam coming in is just being blasted out by a "zombie" client, or some spam-sending software package, they generally ignore the "try later" request and simply move on down their list of addresses they're trying to shoot the spam out to.
When the mail does come through after a "try later" attempt, his mail server adds that address to a "white list" database, so future email from the same place won't get the "try later" treatment (and possibly irritate the owner of that mail server at some point!).
Well, I'll be the first to say I don't have all the answers for making a Myth box work well.
But one suggestion I commonly read about that seems to cure some of these issues is making sure the BIOS of the PC you're using for Myth has all the ACPI Power Management stuff disabled. When you enable that newer method of power management, one thing it does is tells the BIOS to manage all of the IRQs itself. It allows IRQ sharing to prevent problems with running out of "free IRQs" and subsequent errors. Problem is, when the BIOS elects to do such things as say, share IRQ5 with both your sound card and TV tuner board, it doesn't take into account apps like Myth constantly dumping loads of data to both devices simultaneously. It makes the incorrect assumption that it can successfully "share" that IRQ between the two resources because they won't *both* be transferring constant streams of information.
This same technique (disable the advanced power management functions) is often used by people making hard disk recorders out of their PCs for studio use, too. Same problem... They want the lowest possible latency for MIDI and recording, and IRQ sharing interferes with it. (In the case of an OS like Windows 2000 or XP, you have to go so far as to make sure the BIOS features are disabled *before* you initially install the OS, too. Otherwise, it may see those capabilities and automatically install itself so it keeps using them/enabling them even when you disable them in the BIOS after the fact!)
Not saying that it's "bad advice" - but perhaps it's just over-simplistic?
I agree that life is too short, and there's ultimately no real point to spending most of it doing work you loathe.
But there's a flip-side to this. Job searches and the uncertainty of when you'll be able to get the bills paid can be more stressful than a job you don't particularly like.
Furthermore, it's quite possible to discover something you truly enjoy doing on your own terms and conditions, which doesn't ever seem to really translate into a "job you enjoy" when working for someone else. For example, I've always had an interest and enjoyment of music - and used to be told I had a "pleasant reading voice" and the like. Therefore, I had an idea that I'd enjoy becoming a radio DJ. Know what? After going to college and taking a few courses towards this goal - I realized there was no way I'd ever like it! The problem? Practically nobody in the commercial radio business is willing to turn over control to a DJ. The DJ is basically a "robot", playing the music pre-designated in set lists, and required to only speak for X number of seconds or minutes each hour, at pre-designated time slots in the program. That's not at all what I envisioned would make being a DJ fun!
All of that being said, I think there's nothing at all to be ashamed of to say "Look, I'm not comfortable writing your software using *this* set of tools (or for *this* platform)." Only you can really make that judgement call. To me, it's rather like being a carpenter, and suddenly being told "We're taking away your entire toolbox, because our business partnered up with Black & Decker. You can only use Black & Decker saws, drills, hand tools, etc. from here on out. Here's your new set of tools, and if you need ones they don't make - you just have to do without! Enjoy!" Some people might get by fine under those conditions, but it surely wouldn't do for every carpenter out there.
Yep! This only makes sense, really - since piracy *is* part of their competition. Like it or not, your friends who are willing to make you a copy of that new CD, or p2p sharing folks making their files available to you are perfectly valid alternate sources to obtain the material from.
As long as piracy exists, consumers have that additional choice; take a measured legal risk plus a theoretically greater risk of getting a defective/incomplete duplicate, and get the free copy rather than paying for the legal one.
Actually, the trend I've observed via news articles on Mac-centric web sites and so forth is, the schools are currently most interested in using iBook laptops - rather than buying up more eMacs.
Apple even offers a whole package with a rolling cart full of iBooks and power strips to recharge their batteries as they sit in the cart, etc. It's sort of a "mobile computer lab".
The iBooks are fairly inexpensive, and can be doled out as-needed to students to use right at their desks - instead of requiring an actual dedicated computer lab.
I also question the accuracy of Apple's marketing research if they really believe fewer than 1% of non-business Mac owners own more than 1 Macintosh! I've been to the local Mac users' groups and practically everyone who shows up there owns several Macs. When I go to the local Mac stores and talk with people, I get the same feedback from their sales staff. "Yep - I think just about everybody that comes in here has a spare, older Mac around the house someplace!"
In fact, until the fairly recent "switcher" phenomenon, most individual Mac users were pretty fanatical about the machines, and kept buying new models every so often, while hanging onto their previous models. That's one big reason you see better resale value on older Macs than older PCs. The older Macs tend to still see regular use up until the time they're finally resold, so their owners believe they should fetch a higher price. (If your old Windows PC just sat in the closet collecting dust for 2 years and you finally went to sell it, you're probably just letting it go for peanuts because you want the space back and just want to see it go "to a good home".)
Lastly - asking customers if "they're interested in purchasing additional computers" is pointless, no matter which company you are. If Dell or HP or anyone asked this in a survey, they'd get a resounding "No!" from the public. Typically, they ask this in some type of survey taken right after you make a purchase, so it's the time you're LEAST likely to be in the market for another computer. But also, you typically don't think you have any use for ANOTHER computer at home until you discover a need/use for it all of a sudden. Then and only then would you answer "Yes" to this type of question. (EG. Kid suddenly starts becoming a heavy computer user due to school assignments, so you decide it's time to buy a new one and just turn the old one over to him/her completely.)
I don't know. I think gender does play a considerable role, but not necessarily for the reasons usually mentioned.
You're absolutely right though about I.T. in general. I think the *only* reason people flocked to it a few years ago was this idea that you'd get a huge paycheck for doing relatively little actual work. (Everyone from construction workers to truck drivers were chomping at the bit to get their MCSE, A+, and so on - and to then free themselves from physical labor and boredom while doubling their take-home pay.) Unfortunately, this only lasted for a short while, at best - until the bottom fell out of the crazy dot-com era and Y2K panic subsided.
I.T. today is pretty much back to what it always was before the "general public" thought it was a career track worth pursuing... LOADS of PATIENCE and a stubborn desire to find solutions to frustrating little problems and glitches. It likely includes pulling some LONG hours, and/or researching things on your own time, off the clock, to find answers.
Male or female, this isn't usually most people's idea of a "rewarding/fun job" - but it fills the bill nicely for us long-time computer geeks who did this stuff all day long for free anyway, as a hobby/personal interest.
That's where the "gender issue" really comes in, IMHO. The vast majority of people I meet in I.T. today who are really sharp and do their job well have had an interest in computers for years before it became a career path for them. 99% of the time, women didn't have this interest - so when they get into I.T., it means they're only using knowledge they gained through school or study guides/courses. They're not applying a vast collection of real-world knowledge built up in their head from the time they were a young teen playing for hours each day with a home computer in their house, etc. etc.
I, too, haven't heard much good about Bank of America, so I've avoided them. Unfortunately, my experience is, most of the banks that are large enough to offer "conveniences" like ATM machines in multiple places in town will screw you over.
I view my banks as necessary evils, and little more. I have my primary checking account with U.S. Bank right now, and for a while, thought they were going to be "above average". They offer free, unlimited online billpay, for example - while many others want to charge monthly fees for using it. Unfortunately, they're teriffic about tossing around service charges and penalties like candy at every opportunity.
For example, a while back, they talked me into getting a VISA card with them, to go along with my checking account and debit card. (They said, if you want overdraft protection on your checking account, this is the only way you can do it. Get our VISA card, and then if your account is ever overdrawn, we'll just charge the difference to the VISA and save you all those bounced check charges, etc.) Sounded good - but it's been a nightmare. When I got divorced, I asked to have my card numbers changed for security reasons. They did, but that broke the relationship between the VISA card and my new bank acct. # - and it took me almost a week to get it resolved. (It was still providing the overdraft protection on the old account number!)
After that, I started having problems where every time my checking account came within $75 or so of being overdrawn, they'd automatically transfer hundreds of dollars over from the VISA, plus service charges, even though I never actually overdrew it at all.
Last week, I rushed to deposit my paycheck before several online billpay payments were due to process. Even though the check cleared on the same day the outgoing payments were scheduled for - they overdrew my account first, and THEN credited the deposit to it. Again, a tactic to maximize their service fees.
Actually, it's interesting this is brought up - because not too long ago, I recall reading a number of messages on Apple's own message forums from users encountering problems with their iPod syncing properly on Macs via firewire.
After much testing and speculation, folks seemed to pretty much determine it was a problem caused by Apple's iSight firewire camera combined with an iPod on the firewire interface. Apparently, the iSight, when turned on, consumes the majority of the bandwidth on the firewire 400 bus. Trying to xfer large amounts of data to an iPod while it's on can lead to crashes/freezes.
This is probably made even worse when people have an external firewire drive attached and use it as part of this equation.
Considering how often Mac users opt for an iSight camera to go with their system, this seems like an issue worth addressing. I almost wonder if Apple thought about this one too - and figured a migration of iPods to USB might be an easy work-around?
Yep - makes pretty much sense to me. The thing is though, when you've got an employee playing Freecel or Solitaire all day long on their computer, that should be telling you something as their manager..... I would take that to mean either A.) I'm not giving this employee enough useful work to do, so I need to rethink what duties/responsibilities I'm assigning my staff, or B.) This person would rather screw around and play games than get their work done that they're paid to do here. Either way, "band-aiding" the problem by removing the game from the PC is probably NOT the real solution. These are the same people who will go take 30 minutes coffee or smoke breaks, wander the halls trying to look useful, or waste time on the phone all day long if they can.
Good to see an admin with some (surprisingly uncommon) common sense!
I don't work in corporate I.T. anymore (thankfully... pretty tired of the "cube farm" and useless meetings, etc.) -- but when I did, this type of thing was always a battle.
The quickest way to turn the entire company's perception of I.T. from positive to negative is to keep putting up barriers to their computer usage under the auspices of being "for their own good".
My take on it is; Your job as an I.T. worker is to provide customer service to the rest of your company's employees. Sometimes, that means not taking the "easy way out" of blocking a bunch of things to prevent a potential problem. Rather, it's your job as admin to make sure you've got an environment in place where you can easily rebuild a corrupted system, and where you can screen out as much known junk as possible without resorting to interfering with valid data/documents.
Same goes for monitoring web usage, IMHO. It's fine to put a system in place to filter illegal sites, pornography, and so forth. But it should be fully automated, with an easy option to open a given URL back up if someone calls saying they need access to it. Otherwise, you put on the "I.T. police" hat when you start trying to tattle on co-workers for surfing the net for "too long" or going to "improper web sites". (I'd much rather be able to say "Sorry... the automated filter blocked you out." than "Yep - I purposely set things up so you guys couldn't go to that page." Why take on the responsibility of deciding for yourself what they can and can't see and do?)
Seriously, this may be a case of "score one for the mom and pop ISPs" here. Before I could get DSL or a cable modem connection here, I was stuck with dial-up and wanted an "always-on" connection.
I simply called a guy I knew personally who owned a small regional ISP and explained my situation to him. Despite him having the usual "terms of service" agreement telling you that "unlimited" didn't really mean the same thing as "always on" - he was happy to overlook my always-on modem connection in return for the business.
Especially nowdays, with more competition from the large, nation-wide ISPs and with so many people converting to broadband, the little guys left in the business *should* be willing to make some concessions at this point. (Hey, an always tied-up modem port by a paying customer beats an always unused modem port and no customer.) It really depends on if the ISP in question has more capacity than they're able to fill up, I suppose -- but never hurts to ask.
It's one thing to endlessly chase the "latest thing", but this guy's saying he bought a dual CPU PIII system roughly *twice* as long ago as the average business would keep a system before depreciating it to $0 value - and he's *still* waiting for prices to drop on new machines??
Sorry, but I don't buy that excuse. It's fine to say "I don't see a need to upgrade my outdated PC yet." Maybe you only run 5+ year old apps on it and it's all you need? But I grow tired of the lame excuse of "I need a new computer, but I'm waiting for a better deal." Come on! This is the first time in the history of computers that anyone can grab a 2Ghz system with at least 512MB of RAM in it and 80GB or more of disk space for only $500 or so. (Heck, it's the first time in history you can buy an Apple *Mac* for that price range, brand new!)
In all fairness, don't you think the same could be said for many (perhaps even the majority) of mental illnesses?
I'd say it's natural to be depressed every so often, but we still have such a thing as "clinical depression". I'd wager that lots of people falsely decide they need treatment/medication for their depression too, when they don't really have a mental problem.
Even defining an "alcoholic" seems to be rather difficult. I remember reading the list of "signs" back in school, and the running joke was that "Hey, we're almost ALL alcoholics and we didn't even know it!"
It seems to me, Aspergers is just a definition of extremely mild autism -- and the diagnostic criteria have to be broad, because it's nearly impossible to draw an absolute "line" as when this transcends "slightly geeky" and crosses over into the territory of an actual disease/illness.
Truth is, these things only become "problems" for an individual when they interfere with their daily lives to the point where they're unable to overcome them on their own.
So yeah - if you're simply not making an effort to overcome some problem you're having, then you're correct. It's time to stop with the excuses and time to take a little responsibility to change.
But I can certainly see value in parents being made aware that something like Asperger's exists. I'm pretty sure I have a touch of it myself, actually, but nobody ever brought it up as I was growing up. I struggled quite a bit with social skills and to some extent, with physical clumsiness. To this day, I have a habit of rocking back and forth in my chair while thinking, reading, or trying to work on a project, and I have a tendency to twiddle pens or pencils and so forth. I also tend to "hyper-focus" on specific problems or items of interest. I put up with a lot of teasing in school, until I got much of the way through high-school, and started making a real conscious effort to "fit in" and to succeed in being more "social" with other people.
To this day, I naturally want to avoid eye-contact with people when I talk to them, and I have to pretty much force myself not to do that (reminding myself each time about it).
I suspect that what I've really done over the years is teach myself how to cope with and work-around my own problems. That's fine, but I might have gotten to this point a lot more quickly if someone helped me along a little bit when I was a kid. About the only "advice" I got was that I was "shy".
True, but I always felt that the "5 senses" were intended to be pretty general. Therefore, I'd group a sense of touch/feel as encompassing all those "internal senses" anyway. (You can "feel" that your bladder is full, just as you can "feel" pain or "feel" hunger.)
It still seems like a very valid point that it's flawed when it comes to not mentioning our sense of "balance" though. The sense of body position is an interesting one... Amputees often report having sensations that their missing appendage is still there, so this "sense" appears to be rather "hard-wired" to provide "static" feedback to the brain, which may not be accurate at all if the "givens" of having all of one's body parts in place isn't met.
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Basically quite true, but frankly, the dot-com era died mostly because of the belief put in the flawed idea that it made good business sense to grow market share at all costs (worrying about the quality of the product or service offered secondarily, if at all).
There were plenty of "rich idiots" around - but I don't think it's fair to act "holier than thou" about it, claiming to have known all along it was all just a bunch of idiots giving money to other idiots. If this were true, you'd have to ask why eBay is still useful and successful today, or Amazon.com for that matter.
Some of these dot-coms had viable concepts that "made it" - but they were the minority. Probably, a number of them were even really good business ideas that *should* have made it, but got drug down with the rest of the startups as stockholders decided they were pretty much all a ripoff. In other cases, they just didn't know how to make the good idea succeed in the long term. Better management might have saved them.
(For example, I still think those "we deliver groceries to your door" ideas like peapod, webvan, etc. were viable. People just didn't quite figure out a profitable way to pull them off. I could see a large food service corp. launching one of these on a nationwide scale (say Pepsi Co. or Frito-Lay or somebody?), and maybe even subcontracting deliveries out to local courier services?)
You might be right about Windows users tending to maximize their apps on the screen, but I can assure you it's often NOT just because they bought poor quality monitors.
Rather, it's often because the apps put enough controls and toolbars up that maximizing is the only way to comfortably work in the software.
(With most of the MIDI/music sequencers and hard disk recording packages, it feels like you never have enough room for the mixer sliders, time counter window, musical notation window, and so on. They may as well hard code maximizing windows into those things!)
Even if you own a top-notch flat panel that does 1600x1200 resolution - the fonts are going to look awfully small at that point. (And yes, you can select "large fonts" in the Windows control panel, but that tends to be self-defeating -- sacrificing most of the screen real-estate you gained by going to a higher resolution in the first place.) 1024x768 is pretty much the "most common" resolution I see Windows desktops running in (assuming you don't have a wide-screen type display) - and I think it's because it's roughly the best compromise between resolution and overall font size. (Especially for older PC users, they really struggle with apps like Excel when you crank the resolution up higher - regardless of monitor sharpness.)
Actually, we did raise our rates at the beginning of the year. And I do earn a little bit more per hour now than I did.
My point is, there's a difference between being paid fairly for your work, and "getting rich" from it.
Also, we're not necessarily "unwilling" to bring in an apprentice. The problem with that line of thinking is, you can't do it properly without being able to set aside a good bit of your own time getting the new person up to speed. In the current situation, I can only see that going poorly. (New tech would start, and we'd end up only teaching him/her 50% of what they needed to know just because we'd be feeding the info piece-meal between calls we were doing ourselves.) Might be a good strategy after we hire one more tech with experience though, so things could settle down a bit.
Lastly though, getting "more customers than we can handle" doesn't automatically mean raising prices is the best solution. That can backfire, driving large numbers of your former customers to competitors. A lost customer is pretty tough to get back again. Right now, we're billing $89/hr. plus a trip charge for each call. To do something like a virus/spyware cleanup the *right way*, you're normally looking at 2 to 2 1/2 hours of time. That means a customer is going to be paying in the neighborhood of $200 to get that problem fixed.
Sure, we could charge more - but when a brand new Dell PC costs as little as $399, where's the incentive for anyone to pay $200+ to clean up their 2-4 year old PC? Not only that, but you up your own stress levels - because customers become "clock watchers", constantly nagging you with "Are you almost done yet?" This leads to cutting corners to speed things along, and more dissatisfaction. (EG. Upgrade their XP to Service Pack 2? Maybe not... since it'll take 30 minutes more to finish updating. But then, you might be leaving them open to more problems.)
What about the other areas of I.T.?
I, too, have had the experience of working with several female software developers who definitely knew what they were doing.
Unfortunately, in 14 years of working in I.T. and computers, I have yet to see even *one* woman who was what I'd call a "seasoned, competent tech". In fact, I can count on one hand the number of female techs I've run across, period! (One was a lady sent out to our company by HP, to service a rack-mount NetServer. She had to ask our I.T. manager for help figuring out how to take it apart properly.) Another is a gal I met in an IRC chat room who got a job as a CompUSA technician. Frankly, she's an intellgent woman with good "people skills", and at least shows some interest in keeping a job in the "tech sector". But her skills as a PC tech are basically "I crash-course studied and finally passed my A-Plus certification, and my boyfriend taught me a bunch of stuff in the last year or so."
Again, I'm not in a position to offer some sort of "concrete numbers" on any of this. (Hey, sorry, but I don't happen to run a marketing research firm or anything!) But neither am I willing to just discount "anecdotal evidence" as meaningless, when it's what I've seen over this long a time period working in this particular field.
Truthfully, I think in fields where women are the minority, they've got a bit of an unfair advantage if they really want to stick with things and become good at what they do. (I learned this lesson way back in high-school when I took a "power tech" class. There was only one woman in the class, and though she came into it knowing pretty much zero about cars/engine work - she always had at least 5 or 6 guys more than eager to show her how something worked, or help her with assignments. Know what though? She still dropped out in the middle of the class. There's little doubt she would have gotten an A if she stuck with it.)
I think women shy away from/lack interest in the more "hands-on" jobs when they venture outside the areas they've grown up with. Like anything, there will always be exceptions - but think of what you've observered in your own lives. How many female plumbers, auto mechanics, carpenters, computer technicians, or heating and cooling techs have you run across?
Software development/programming is much less of a job physical in nature, so it makes sense to me that I'd see relatively more women in that job role.
I absolutely agree, but I'd say besides the dogged persistence, your other basic requirement becomes *quality employees*.
By this, I mean people who truly share your vision of growing the business.
I work for a guy who did an on-site PC service/support startup business. In fact, I was really only his 3rd. employee (after a part-time guy he hired for a while, and then let go of). I was very interested in this business, because it was similar to one a friend of mine started almost 10 years ago - but which unfortunately didn't make it. (I think it was an idea before its time back then... Not enough people relied on their home computers and were willing to pay someone to fix one for them on-site.) I always treat my job like I'm the business owner, and it apparently shows. (People call in all the time, confused, assuming it's my company - and wonder who my boss is!)
Sometimes I even stop and ask myself why I'm working so hard for relatively little when it's not even my own company, but then I remember that this is what I really wanted to do for a living. I spent years trying to find somebody actually doing it right. I don't have the money/resources to start something like this on my own, but I do have the know-how and experience to do the job well and please customers. So for me, it's worth doing my best to make sure this place sticks around!
Our problem now is, we've gotten to where there's too much work to do, and we need another full-time technician. But the people who keep applying for the job are too inexperienced, coming from other chain-store on-site places that do inferior work, or just the type of folks who only care about making a buck. (Sorry, but in this business - it just isn't smart to piss off a new customer because you nickel and dime them on every last minute you're out there. If they have an old PC that was barely worth paying your hourly fee to fix in the first place, you have to be a little flexible. Round down your time spent out there, etc. - so they'll be satisfied, and will call you again in the future.)
Nobody's gonna get rich doing this kind of work anyway. It's something you have to do because you really like driving around, seeing something a little different all the time - and get some satisfaction out of helping people out. I just don't know if we'll find other like-minded people to make this thing grow further, though.
I think the answer (though not really clarified) is, the taxes are supposed to cover the difference and keep it profitable.
He suggested levying a 1% tax on all new computer sales.
He didn't seem to explain how much revenue that was going to equate to, or how it would be distributed afterwards though.
Personally, I dislike that part of his plan. I think I'd much rather pay 10 or 15 cents per song than pay 5 cents, but have a new tax on all my future computer hardware purchases. Taxing people is inherently unfair - because not everyone buying a new PC plans to use it for downloading/listening to music. Some people are stuck paying for something they never take part in, while others might skirt paying the tax at all by only buying and using pre-owned equipment, yet engage in LOTS of music downloading.
In any case, this whole thing really just boils down to the recording industry needing to re-evaluate the most efficient pricing scheme for digital music. It's pretty clear to me that the 99 cents per song model currently used by Apple is only acceptable to maybe about half of the potential customers. The rest opt for illegal, free downloads instead at those prices. Is 5 cents or 10 cents the magic price-point? I dunno... But I will say, I think discounts need to be given for buying in bulk. If I want to purchase 25 songs at a time, I should get some sort of discount over the person who just signs in to get 1 particular song. (Saying there's a discount for buying an entire album doesn't cut it - because that takes away my option to pick and choose exactly what I want. In that case, why even do the digital music thing at all? I'm still being pushed towards buying a "package" of one artist's songs, good or bad, just to get a few tracks I know I want. Might not be such a deal at all....)
As much as I love Futurama, I'm also more shocked it stayed around so long than shocked it was canned.
Fact is, the networks gave it a good run primarily because The Simpsons was already so wildly popular. They figured "How can we go wrong?" with another Groenig animated series.
Only, this time, the series wasn't quite aimed at the "general public" and everyday topics anymore. In fact, the characters are bizarre enough, it took me a few episodes to really start "getting it" enough to enjoy it. (At first, I felt like I walked right into the middle of the show without a clue. Why the heck is this gal with one eye running around with this seemingly normal guy? This robot's pretty funny, but what the heck is his background? I guess he's some kind of con artist or assistant to a criminal? But wait, he seems to be a cohort with the "good guys"? Huh? Is this crew supposed to be on some sort of mission, a la Star Trek, or is it more like "Lost in Space"?)
I wasn't even sure I wanted to watch any more of it, at first. If it wasn't for my admiration of Groenig's work in general, I probably would have skipped it (and I bet many viewers did). After I gave it a few more chances, I realized most of the pieces started falling together fairly quickly - and there were loads of great puns and parodies, both obvious and "if you blink, you miss 'em" types.
I think a lot of people will finally buy some Futurama on DVD due to the recommendation of others, and discover far after the fact that "Hey, this stuff was great! Why didn't I watch this when it was on?"
It's not unlike Hollywood, where actors and actresses live in their own version of reality - pretty far removed from the daily lives most of us have.
When you earn that type of money, and spend your time around peers that do the same, how can you expect them to see these screw-ups as a "big deal", really? Like you said, it's not their own business, built from the ground up - so they're not coming into things with that background of remembering how tough it was to build it.
A lot of these big-wig corporate types pander more to such things as a peer "taking a big risk". They're going to say "Carly, that was a really bold move you made, merging with Compaq. Didn't really work out, but that's the type of thinking and attitude we like to see in a C.E.O.! I think we can find a new spot for you over here...."
In many ways, I think they approach it like gambling. Sure, the rest of us can say "I can't believe that guy just plunked down a million dollars on the roulette table and lost it all. What a moron!" But if he's got the kind of money where that isn't going to put an end to his lifestyle, and his peers are equally rich gamblers, they're just going to cheer him on. They're thinking in the back of their heads that they're "way above" all those naysayers who aren't "successful enough" to even afford to take those types of risks.
The last things I can remember HP doing right were their laser printers with single digit numbers. (EG. Laserjet II, III, 4 series, and even the 6P - which is a teriffic "small office workgroup" type printer.) The old scanners with single digit numbers were equally well-made and respectable (ScanJet 4 and so on).
But somewhere around the time they decided these products needed numbers in the thousands, quality took a nosedive and then came the parade of garbage "consumer desktop PCs".
Nowdays, I rarely recommend anything with the HP logo on it. Their inkjets have the most outdated print-nozzle technology out there for photo printing. There's still nothing noteworthy about their Pavillion PC line, and even their laptops seem like they're generally the size of bricks. (Those HP laptops with 17" displays are just HUGE compared to something like an Apple Powerbook 17".)
Uh.... yes. You see exactly what happened in a world where all those manufacturers from the 80's tried to compete with each other.... They died off and we're left with only a couple offerings.
The reason Atari, Amiga, etc. didn't end up "viable choices" in the long run is precisely because they all insisted on being proprietary. The PC clone took hold because of everyone's fascination with inter-operability and compatibility.
I remember fondly owning several Tandy/Radio-Shack Color Computers in the 80's, and finally, I was sucked into buying a first PC clone (a 286 8Mhz box). Why? Simple.... it just got too frustrating seeing the PC clones popping up all over the place, and getting cool new software packages daily, while I was stuck waiting for months for someone to implement a poor clone or similar version for my machine.
I think reality is, the marketplace has very little room for proprietary computers. If you're good enough at catering to a niche and truly offering something different, you can survive - but you're always going to have a small "piece of the pie". This is today's Apple Computer. This is also today's Sun and today's Sparc.
It might be a fun exercise to imagine what "might have been" if all these competitors were still around - but it's also futile. No matter what they offered, I believe they'd have dwindled down to pretty much the situation we see today. Computers have evolved to become tools/appliances for all except the enthusiasts. The typical computer user just wants to power it on and get their work done. They want ease of purchasing new software and peripherals too. They don't want to have to carefully look through everything to make sure it's made for their particular brand of machine.
Not sure if this is already "common knowledge" or not, but my employer runs a small mail server for several of our customers - and he's started using a technique which seems to drastically reduce incoming spam.
He set things up so whenever a new piece of email arrives from an unknown source, it sends back a "try again later" request and trashes the message. Apparently, there's a function built into the specs for SMTP/POP servers so these "try again" requests normally get processed, and the mail is resent an hour or two later (sometimes longer if from a big ISP like AOL or something).
Since much of the spam coming in is just being blasted out by a "zombie" client, or some spam-sending software package, they generally ignore the "try later" request and simply move on down their list of addresses they're trying to shoot the spam out to.
When the mail does come through after a "try later" attempt, his mail server adds that address to a "white list" database, so future email from the same place won't get the "try later" treatment (and possibly irritate the owner of that mail server at some point!).
Well, I'll be the first to say I don't have all the answers for making a Myth box work well.
But one suggestion I commonly read about that seems to cure some of these issues is making sure the BIOS of the PC you're using for Myth has all the ACPI Power Management stuff disabled. When you enable that newer method of power management, one thing it does is tells the BIOS to manage all of the IRQs itself. It allows IRQ sharing to prevent problems with running out of "free IRQs" and subsequent errors. Problem is, when the BIOS elects to do such things as say, share IRQ5 with both your sound card and TV tuner board, it doesn't take into account apps like Myth constantly dumping loads of data to both devices simultaneously. It makes the incorrect assumption that it can successfully "share" that IRQ between the two resources because they won't *both* be transferring constant streams of information.
This same technique (disable the advanced power management functions) is often used by people making hard disk recorders out of their PCs for studio use, too. Same problem... They want the lowest possible latency for MIDI and recording, and IRQ sharing interferes with it. (In the case of an OS like Windows 2000 or XP, you have to go so far as to make sure the BIOS features are disabled *before* you initially install the OS, too. Otherwise, it may see those capabilities and automatically install itself so it keeps using them/enabling them even when you disable them in the BIOS after the fact!)
Not saying that it's "bad advice" - but perhaps it's just over-simplistic?
I agree that life is too short, and there's ultimately no real point to spending most of it doing work you loathe.
But there's a flip-side to this. Job searches and the uncertainty of when you'll be able to get the bills paid can be more stressful than a job you don't particularly like.
Furthermore, it's quite possible to discover something you truly enjoy doing on your own terms and conditions, which doesn't ever seem to really translate into a "job you enjoy" when working for someone else. For example, I've always had an interest and enjoyment of music - and used to be told I had a "pleasant reading voice" and the like. Therefore, I had an idea that I'd enjoy becoming a radio DJ. Know what? After going to college and taking a few courses towards this goal - I realized there was no way I'd ever like it! The problem? Practically nobody in the commercial radio business is willing to turn over control to a DJ. The DJ is basically a "robot", playing the music pre-designated in set lists, and required to only speak for X number of seconds or minutes each hour, at pre-designated time slots in the program. That's not at all what I envisioned would make being a DJ fun!
All of that being said, I think there's nothing at all to be ashamed of to say "Look, I'm not comfortable writing your software using *this* set of tools (or for *this* platform)." Only you can really make that judgement call. To me, it's rather like being a carpenter, and suddenly being told "We're taking away your entire toolbox, because our business partnered up with Black & Decker. You can only use Black & Decker saws, drills, hand tools, etc. from here on out. Here's your new set of tools, and if you need ones they don't make - you just have to do without! Enjoy!" Some people might get by fine under those conditions, but it surely wouldn't do for every carpenter out there.
Yep! This only makes sense, really - since piracy *is* part of their competition. Like it or not, your friends who are willing to make you a copy of that new CD, or p2p sharing folks making their files available to you are perfectly valid alternate sources to obtain the material from.
As long as piracy exists, consumers have that additional choice; take a measured legal risk plus a theoretically greater risk of getting a defective/incomplete duplicate, and get the free copy rather than paying for the legal one.
Actually, the trend I've observed via news articles on Mac-centric web sites and so forth is, the schools are currently most interested in using iBook laptops - rather than buying up more eMacs.
Apple even offers a whole package with a rolling cart full of iBooks and power strips to recharge their batteries as they sit in the cart, etc. It's sort of a "mobile computer lab".
The iBooks are fairly inexpensive, and can be doled out as-needed to students to use right at their desks - instead of requiring an actual dedicated computer lab.
I also question the accuracy of Apple's marketing research if they really believe fewer than 1% of non-business Mac owners own more than 1 Macintosh! I've been to the local Mac users' groups and practically everyone who shows up there owns several Macs. When I go to the local Mac stores and talk with people, I get the same feedback from their sales staff. "Yep - I think just about everybody that comes in here has a spare, older Mac around the house someplace!"
In fact, until the fairly recent "switcher" phenomenon, most individual Mac users were pretty fanatical about the machines, and kept buying new models every so often, while hanging onto their previous models. That's one big reason you see better resale value on older Macs than older PCs. The older Macs tend to still see regular use up until the time they're finally resold, so their owners believe they should fetch a higher price. (If your old Windows PC just sat in the closet collecting dust for 2 years and you finally went to sell it, you're probably just letting it go for peanuts because you want the space back and just want to see it go "to a good home".)
Lastly - asking customers if "they're interested in purchasing additional computers" is pointless, no matter which company you are. If Dell or HP or anyone asked this in a survey, they'd get a resounding "No!" from the public. Typically, they ask this in some type of survey taken right after you make a purchase, so it's the time you're LEAST likely to be in the market for another computer. But also, you typically don't think you have any use for ANOTHER computer at home until you discover a need/use for it all of a sudden. Then and only then would you answer "Yes" to this type of question. (EG. Kid suddenly starts becoming a heavy computer user due to school assignments, so you decide it's time to buy a new one and just turn the old one over to him/her completely.)
I don't know. I think gender does play a considerable role, but not necessarily for the reasons usually mentioned.
You're absolutely right though about I.T. in general. I think the *only* reason people flocked to it a few years ago was this idea that you'd get a huge paycheck for doing relatively little actual work. (Everyone from construction workers to truck drivers were chomping at the bit to get their MCSE, A+, and so on - and to then free themselves from physical labor and boredom while doubling their take-home pay.) Unfortunately, this only lasted for a short while, at best - until the bottom fell out of the crazy dot-com era and Y2K panic subsided.
I.T. today is pretty much back to what it always was before the "general public" thought it was a career track worth pursuing... LOADS of PATIENCE and a stubborn desire to find solutions to frustrating little problems and glitches. It likely includes pulling some LONG hours, and/or researching things on your own time, off the clock, to find answers.
Male or female, this isn't usually most people's idea of a "rewarding/fun job" - but it fills the bill nicely for us long-time computer geeks who did this stuff all day long for free anyway, as a hobby/personal interest.
That's where the "gender issue" really comes in, IMHO. The vast majority of people I meet in I.T. today who are really sharp and do their job well have had an interest in computers for years before it became a career path for them. 99% of the time, women didn't have this interest - so when they get into I.T., it means they're only using knowledge they gained through school or study guides/courses. They're not applying a vast collection of real-world knowledge built up in their head from the time they were a young teen playing for hours each day with a home computer in their house, etc. etc.
I, too, haven't heard much good about Bank of America, so I've avoided them. Unfortunately, my experience is, most of the banks that are large enough to offer "conveniences" like ATM machines in multiple places in town will screw you over.
I view my banks as necessary evils, and little more. I have my primary checking account with U.S. Bank right now, and for a while, thought they were going to be "above average". They offer free, unlimited online billpay, for example - while many others want to charge monthly fees for using it. Unfortunately, they're teriffic about tossing around service charges and penalties like candy at every opportunity.
For example, a while back, they talked me into getting a VISA card with them, to go along with my checking account and debit card. (They said, if you want overdraft protection on your checking account, this is the only way you can do it. Get our VISA card, and then if your account is ever overdrawn, we'll just charge the difference to the VISA and save you all those bounced check charges, etc.) Sounded good - but it's been a nightmare. When I got divorced, I asked to have my card numbers changed for security reasons. They did, but that broke the relationship between the VISA card and my new bank acct. # - and it took me almost a week to get it resolved. (It was still providing the overdraft protection on the old account number!)
After that, I started having problems where every time my checking account came within $75 or so of being overdrawn, they'd automatically transfer hundreds of dollars over from the VISA, plus service charges, even though I never actually overdrew it at all.
Last week, I rushed to deposit my paycheck before several online billpay payments were due to process. Even though the check cleared on the same day the outgoing payments were scheduled for - they overdrew my account first, and THEN credited the deposit to it. Again, a tactic to maximize their service fees.
Actually, it's interesting this is brought up - because not too long ago, I recall reading a number of messages on Apple's own message forums from users encountering problems with their iPod syncing properly on Macs via firewire.
After much testing and speculation, folks seemed to pretty much determine it was a problem caused by Apple's iSight firewire camera combined with an iPod on the firewire interface. Apparently, the iSight, when turned on, consumes the majority of the bandwidth on the firewire 400 bus. Trying to xfer large amounts of data to an iPod while it's on can lead to crashes/freezes.
This is probably made even worse when people have an external firewire drive attached and use it as part of this equation.
Considering how often Mac users opt for an iSight camera to go with their system, this seems like an issue worth addressing. I almost wonder if Apple thought about this one too - and figured a migration of iPods to USB might be an easy work-around?
Yep - makes pretty much sense to me.
The thing is though, when you've got an employee playing Freecel or Solitaire all day long on their computer, that should be telling you something as their manager..... I would take that to mean either A.) I'm not giving this employee enough useful work to do, so I need to rethink what duties/responsibilities I'm assigning my staff, or B.) This person would rather screw around and play games than get their work done that they're paid to do here. Either way, "band-aiding" the problem by removing the game from the PC is probably NOT the real solution. These are the same people who will go take 30 minutes coffee or smoke breaks, wander the halls trying to look useful, or waste time on the phone all day long if they can.
Hmm.... interesting point, and I hadn't realized that was going on so widely nowdays.
The ISP I was referring to did have all of their own facilities in-house.
Good to see an admin with some (surprisingly uncommon) common sense!
I don't work in corporate I.T. anymore (thankfully... pretty tired of the "cube farm" and useless meetings, etc.) -- but when I did, this type of thing was always a battle.
The quickest way to turn the entire company's perception of I.T. from positive to negative is to keep putting up barriers to their computer usage under the auspices of being "for their own good".
My take on it is; Your job as an I.T. worker is to provide customer service to the rest of your company's employees. Sometimes, that means not taking the "easy way out" of blocking a bunch of things to prevent a potential problem. Rather, it's your job as admin to make sure you've got an environment in place where you can easily rebuild a corrupted system, and where you can screen out as much known junk as possible without resorting to interfering with valid data/documents.
Same goes for monitoring web usage, IMHO. It's fine to put a system in place to filter illegal sites, pornography, and so forth. But it should be fully automated, with an easy option to open a given URL back up if someone calls saying they need access to it. Otherwise, you put on the "I.T. police" hat when you start trying to tattle on co-workers for surfing the net for "too long" or going to "improper web sites". (I'd much rather be able to say "Sorry... the automated filter blocked you out." than "Yep - I purposely set things up so you guys couldn't go to that page." Why take on the responsibility of deciding for yourself what they can and can't see and do?)
Seriously, this may be a case of "score one for the mom and pop ISPs" here. Before I could get DSL or a cable modem connection here, I was stuck with dial-up and wanted an "always-on" connection.
I simply called a guy I knew personally who owned a small regional ISP and explained my situation to him. Despite him having the usual "terms of service" agreement telling you that "unlimited" didn't really mean the same thing as "always on" - he was happy to overlook my always-on modem connection in return for the business.
Especially nowdays, with more competition from the large, nation-wide ISPs and with so many people converting to broadband, the little guys left in the business *should* be willing to make some concessions at this point. (Hey, an always tied-up modem port by a paying customer beats an always unused modem port and no customer.) It really depends on if the ISP in question has more capacity than they're able to fill up, I suppose -- but never hurts to ask.
It's one thing to endlessly chase the "latest thing", but this guy's saying he bought a dual CPU PIII system roughly *twice* as long ago as the average business would keep a system before depreciating it to $0 value - and he's *still* waiting for prices to drop on new machines??
Sorry, but I don't buy that excuse. It's fine to say "I don't see a need to upgrade my outdated PC yet." Maybe you only run 5+ year old apps on it and it's all you need? But I grow tired of the lame excuse of "I need a new computer, but I'm waiting for a better deal." Come on! This is the first time in the history of computers that anyone can grab a 2Ghz system with at least 512MB of RAM in it and 80GB or more of disk space for only $500 or so. (Heck, it's the first time in history you can buy an Apple *Mac* for that price range, brand new!)
In all fairness, don't you think the same could be said for many (perhaps even the majority) of mental illnesses?
I'd say it's natural to be depressed every so often, but we still have such a thing as "clinical depression". I'd wager that lots of people falsely decide they need treatment/medication for their depression too, when they don't really have a mental problem.
Even defining an "alcoholic" seems to be rather difficult. I remember reading the list of "signs" back in school, and the running joke was that "Hey, we're almost ALL alcoholics and we didn't even know it!"
It seems to me, Aspergers is just a definition of extremely mild autism -- and the diagnostic criteria have to be broad, because it's nearly impossible to draw an absolute "line" as when this transcends "slightly geeky" and crosses over into the territory of an actual disease/illness.
Truth is, these things only become "problems" for an individual when they interfere with their daily lives to the point where they're unable to overcome them on their own.
So yeah - if you're simply not making an effort to overcome some problem you're having, then you're correct. It's time to stop with the excuses and time to take a little responsibility to change.
But I can certainly see value in parents being made aware that something like Asperger's exists. I'm pretty sure I have a touch of it myself, actually, but nobody ever brought it up as I was growing up. I struggled quite a bit with social skills and to some extent, with physical clumsiness. To this day, I have a habit of rocking back and forth in my chair while thinking, reading, or trying to work on a project, and I have a tendency to twiddle pens or pencils and so forth. I also tend to "hyper-focus" on specific problems or items of interest. I put up with a lot of teasing in school, until I got much of the way through high-school, and started making a real conscious effort to "fit in" and to succeed in being more "social" with other people.
To this day, I naturally want to avoid eye-contact with people when I talk to them, and I have to pretty much force myself not to do that (reminding myself each time about it).
I suspect that what I've really done over the years is teach myself how to cope with and work-around my own problems. That's fine, but I might have gotten to this point a lot more quickly if someone helped me along a little bit when I was a kid. About the only "advice" I got was that I was "shy".
True, but I always felt that the "5 senses" were intended to be pretty general. Therefore, I'd group a sense of touch/feel as encompassing all those "internal senses" anyway. (You can "feel" that your bladder is full, just as you can "feel" pain or "feel" hunger.)
It still seems like a very valid point that it's flawed when it comes to not mentioning our sense of "balance" though. The sense of body position is an interesting one... Amputees often report having sensations that their missing appendage is still there, so this "sense" appears to be rather "hard-wired" to provide "static" feedback to the brain, which may not be accurate at all if the "givens" of having all of one's body parts in place isn't met.