Time spent surfing the web costs the company money, period. Most obviously, it keeps the user from being productive more often than not. If a user is productive for only two hours during the day, then they should only work two hours of the day, and only be paid two hours of the day.
Plus, you also have to pay a bill for those pipes going out to the Internet. We've got two DS3s out to the Internet, and they're not particularly cheap. Plus, we've got ~750 frame-relay pvcs, ~200 DSL connections, a few hundred dial up accounts, and users accessing our customers' networks to gain connectivity to our WAN across North America. All of these connections cost us $TEXAS bux at the end of the day. Add on to that the cost of a network engineer or network operations analyst's time spent servicing issues directly related to Internet use. I could not care less what Todd in Topeka is looking at on the Internet, but if he's eating up the majority of bandwidth at his remote site, that is impeding the productivity of other users on that shared WAN connection. Then those other users on that WAN connection will complain, which will cause them to log an issue with our service desk, eventually it will get escalated and the aforementioned engineer or operations analyst will need to research why the remote office is experiencing slowness. There are a lot of things I would rather spend my time doing than give lectures to end users on how to behave on a small, very expensive WAN connection. I understand there can be benefits to having Internet access to view informational resources online, and that's fine, but when people are streaming media, or looking at flash-based websites, or downloading linux cd images on 128k or 256k circuits, they are affecting the productivity of their co-workers as well, in a negative fashion.
Also, anybody defending the comparison of phone use to Internet as was mentioned in the beginning of the discussion is out of their mind. The less secure you keep an Internet connection, the easier it is for an outsider to break in and access anything touching your network. Last I checked, unless you're reading social security numbers or credit card numbers over the phone, a personal call to the girlfriend is not going to be all that compromising to a company's secure records.
Just because having unrestricted access to the Internet makes you happy, does not mean it is justifiable in a business environment.
I would still tend to disagree. The system requirements are listed on the box. These are *requirements*. The user should understand what they are committing to prior to making the purchase. If the product needs to be run under a certain OS, then that is all that it is going to be supported under. The updates can be viewed as a type of support. You don't even have to own a computer to purchase Microsoft software and products, so how can you claim that Microsoft is requiring you to run Windows? Microsoft is requiring the user to run Windows if they wish to receive any support on their products.
To use the ever-so-common automobile analogy:
You can buy Motorcraft radio from Ford, but it is not going to plug into the audio harness of a Mopar vehicle. To work around this, you emulate the connection by creating or buying a third party adapter (WINE). Some functionality may be lost such as the controls on your steering wheel, etc. Should Ford support your attempt to install their radio in a competitors vehicle?
Or something a little more software based - try putting a Nissan Pathfinder chip into a Chevy Silvardo. I don't think Chevy will support your attempt at running a Nissan chip on their vehicle.
Long time listener, first time caller
If you paid for the product, such as Microsoft Office, then your box cleary states what OS the product will run on. Why should Microsoft provide support for a product if it is not being run on the platform that it was developed for?
http://www.microsoft.com/office/editions/prodinfo/ standreq.mspx
I'm all for WINE, I think it's a great tool; however I wouldn't expect to download updates from Microsoft for a product I am running in an environment not supported by the system requirements clearly printed on the box.
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So electrically powered vehicles do not qualify? No internal combustion there...
Time spent surfing the web costs the company money, period. Most obviously, it keeps the user from being productive more often than not. If a user is productive for only two hours during the day, then they should only work two hours of the day, and only be paid two hours of the day. Plus, you also have to pay a bill for those pipes going out to the Internet. We've got two DS3s out to the Internet, and they're not particularly cheap. Plus, we've got ~750 frame-relay pvcs, ~200 DSL connections, a few hundred dial up accounts, and users accessing our customers' networks to gain connectivity to our WAN across North America. All of these connections cost us $TEXAS bux at the end of the day. Add on to that the cost of a network engineer or network operations analyst's time spent servicing issues directly related to Internet use. I could not care less what Todd in Topeka is looking at on the Internet, but if he's eating up the majority of bandwidth at his remote site, that is impeding the productivity of other users on that shared WAN connection. Then those other users on that WAN connection will complain, which will cause them to log an issue with our service desk, eventually it will get escalated and the aforementioned engineer or operations analyst will need to research why the remote office is experiencing slowness. There are a lot of things I would rather spend my time doing than give lectures to end users on how to behave on a small, very expensive WAN connection. I understand there can be benefits to having Internet access to view informational resources online, and that's fine, but when people are streaming media, or looking at flash-based websites, or downloading linux cd images on 128k or 256k circuits, they are affecting the productivity of their co-workers as well, in a negative fashion. Also, anybody defending the comparison of phone use to Internet as was mentioned in the beginning of the discussion is out of their mind. The less secure you keep an Internet connection, the easier it is for an outsider to break in and access anything touching your network. Last I checked, unless you're reading social security numbers or credit card numbers over the phone, a personal call to the girlfriend is not going to be all that compromising to a company's secure records. Just because having unrestricted access to the Internet makes you happy, does not mean it is justifiable in a business environment.
I would still tend to disagree. The system requirements are listed on the box. These are *requirements*. The user should understand what they are committing to prior to making the purchase. If the product needs to be run under a certain OS, then that is all that it is going to be supported under. The updates can be viewed as a type of support. You don't even have to own a computer to purchase Microsoft software and products, so how can you claim that Microsoft is requiring you to run Windows? Microsoft is requiring the user to run Windows if they wish to receive any support on their products. To use the ever-so-common automobile analogy: You can buy Motorcraft radio from Ford, but it is not going to plug into the audio harness of a Mopar vehicle. To work around this, you emulate the connection by creating or buying a third party adapter (WINE). Some functionality may be lost such as the controls on your steering wheel, etc. Should Ford support your attempt to install their radio in a competitors vehicle? Or something a little more software based - try putting a Nissan Pathfinder chip into a Chevy Silvardo. I don't think Chevy will support your attempt at running a Nissan chip on their vehicle.
Long time listener, first time caller If you paid for the product, such as Microsoft Office, then your box cleary states what OS the product will run on. Why should Microsoft provide support for a product if it is not being run on the platform that it was developed for? http://www.microsoft.com/office/editions/prodinfo/ standreq.mspx
I'm all for WINE, I think it's a great tool; however I wouldn't expect to download updates from Microsoft for a product I am running in an environment not supported by the system requirements clearly printed on the box.