I appreciate your situation, the poor service from your MIS guys could, again, be down to money - ie. if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.
My original post relates to the enviornments I'm used to, where the support specialists know their stuff and the end user will lose a *lot* more than 50-100 bucks for 15 minutes OS training.
If every time your user has a problem, you fix it without explaining what caused it, you're going to potentially decrease the learning rate of your user base.
Depends on the enviornment. In a corporate enviornment, where the end user is an employee in some depatment other than IT, then I'm sure they won't want to know what the problem on their machine is (especially if it's an OS problem as opposed to an application usabilty question), they'll just want it fixed. Also, I'm sure the employer would not want it's support engineers wasting valuable time teaching users the ins and outs of the OS, not to mention the user wasting their time learning about their computer when they have more important work to be getting on with.
On top of this, many users do not want a remote administration client stored on their machine - as many think of it as "their machine,"
Again, in an office enviornment the machine is not 'theirs'.
what if they have porn as their background and the helpdesk person is offended by this?
Most companies I know of treat downloading and storing pr0n on workstations as a sackable offense.
Last, what about the fact that some users want phone support and not you to do something... Hey, it may inconvenience you, but some people prefer it..
Again, in corporate enviornments, this would come down to money. Fixing problems over the phone is *much* slower than remotely controlling the machine from your desk. The quicker the problems can be fixed = the more time the engineers have. The more time the engineers have = the less engineers the company has to employ. The less engineers the company has to employ = the more money the company makes.
I'm not complaining....I'm offering an answer of sorts to the question from the article:- So is it now fair to say that we have lost yet another battle against those evil corporations? We have not necessarily lost a battle, we have to let the 'evil corporations' know that we're not happy - either by complaining or by taking our money elsewhere.
At the end of the day we are still the consumers paying for a service. If we are not happy with that service we can either complain, or take our money elsewhere.
The fact that smaller ISP's are being swallowed up by larger companies will reduce the amount of ISP's we have to choose from if we do decide to change ISP. But, so long as one company doesn't gain a monopoly over all ISP's then we will still have a choice. As with any company we buy goods and/or services from, it is up to us to let them know when we are not happy.
I'm not talking about 'handing more power to the authorities'. I'm talking about having enough police to be able to cope with crime.
I don't think the government are trying to instill any kind of 'thinking' in me, at the end of the day, the reason there are not enough police is because there are not enough resources, which is due to the fact that there is not enough money being ploughed into crime prevention.
The reason that there is not enough money being ploughed into crime prevention is because the government's main concern is to stay in power, so they try to make themselves look attractive by reducing tax, investing in the NHS and throwing money down that drain they call 'The Millenium Dome'. Eventually, when the whole population become victims of crime, as I am, maybe the governments priorities will change to reflect this, but in the meantime people like me will have to suffer and more people will die.
I do live in the UK (in the London area) and I have noticed an accute reduction of police interest in the public over the last ten years.
Granted we have some ridiculous bills in parliament (the RIP bill for one) that do appear to infringe on human rights, but considering the amount of times I have been a victim of crime over the last six months (5) I would feel a whole lot safer if there were more Orwellian messures imposed.
....When you specialize in your desired field you spend most of your time working and learning in said field. We do not have enough time in our lives to learn everything about everything. This is why it is nice to be able to pick up a book on a certain subject (in this case Hawkings' A Brief History Of Time) without having any prior knowledge of that subject, read it, and hopefully have a much better understanding of that subject - even if that understanding is not comprehensive.
For example, after reading A Brief History Of Time, I now consider that I have a basic understanding of black holes. Unless you are suggesting that black holes are not: Places where gravity is so strong that light (i.e. photons) cannot escape. If that is not true then I stand corrected....and could you please tell me what they are?
So Jobs swears. Big deal. It doesn't change my opinion of him in any way. I see Jobs as that gut who went back to Apple at a time where they were in a real crisis, and turned the company around.
Don't get me wrong, I'm no Jobs sycophant, but he did save Apple from near disaster.
It's interesting that there are steps afoot to outlaw electronic spam already, after all the www is not that old.
I have been recieving snail-mail spam (junk mail) for many years. How is this different from electronic spam (aside from bandwidth problems) ? Would the authorities not have to outlaw this kind of spam also?
Haven't seen camcorders that use hard disk as a storage medium yet. The technology is being used in other similar areas though, Pace are using a hard disk for tape-free recording in their new set-top satellite boxes.
I do a bit (object oriented - flame me - I don't care). But I wouldn't class a new programming language as just another new bit of software. As you can see in my post I actually said that I hardly ever read manuals, *not* never read manuals.
Let me guess, you are a Windows user, right?
I do use Windows, yes, as well as Linux and Mac OS. Do you have a problem with that?
A lot of people would like to see two button mice on Macs
I agree. The functionality is there in the OS to accomodate at least two buttons. I am not that bothered though as I already use a three buttoned mouse on my Macs. It would, however, be nice if Apple took the plunge and made their own multi-buttoned mouse, if only to stop this tired old argument.
Personally, I hardly ever read manuals when I get new _ware. I will only read the technical documentation that comes with a product if I get stuck. I find that I learn more about something if I get stuck in and 'get my hands dirty', because when you have to actually find the cause of a problem by trial and error, you generally remember the solution better than if you just read it out of a manual/book. However, if I want to learn about something completely new, I will usually do a bit of research beforehand. Maybe read a book or an FAQ.
The problem you could face, from a sales point of view, is that if your target consumer is a typical geek type person, they will probably be fully aware that they can usually find pretty much any information, on any subject, free of charge on the internet.
I'm no physics major either, and these are valid arguments, the outcome will be very interesting. I personally still believe that photons have mass and therefore are affected by gravity. If the gravity is strong enough photons will not escape, hence black holes.
Slashdot Mirror
I appreciate your situation, the poor service from your MIS guys could, again, be down to money - ie. if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.
My original post relates to the enviornments I'm used to, where the support specialists know their stuff and the end user will lose a *lot* more than 50-100 bucks for 15 minutes OS training.
----------------------------
If every time your user has a problem, you fix it without explaining what caused it, you're going to potentially decrease the learning rate of your user base.
Depends on the enviornment. In a corporate enviornment, where the end user is an employee in some depatment other than IT, then I'm sure they won't want to know what the problem on their machine is (especially if it's an OS problem as opposed to an application usabilty question), they'll just want it fixed. Also, I'm sure the employer would not want it's support engineers wasting valuable time teaching users the ins and outs of the OS, not to mention the user wasting their time learning about their computer when they have more important work to be getting on with.
On top of this, many users do not want a remote administration client stored on their machine - as many think of it as "their machine,"
Again, in an office enviornment the machine is not 'theirs'.
what if they have porn as their background and the helpdesk person is offended by this?
Most companies I know of treat downloading and storing pr0n on workstations as a sackable offense.
Last, what about the fact that some users want phone support and not you to do something... Hey, it may inconvenience you, but some people prefer it..
Again, in corporate enviornments, this would come down to money. Fixing problems over the phone is *much* slower than remotely controlling the machine from your desk. The quicker the problems can be fixed = the more time the engineers have. The more time the engineers have = the less engineers the company has to employ. The less engineers the company has to employ = the more money the company makes.
----------------------------
28: But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.
What happens if your object of lust is a goat ? Is that *still* adultery ?
----------------------------
Actually, yes....my house really is crap
----------------------------
Does this mean I can create an Unreal Tournament map of my house just by filming it?
----------------------------
I'm not complaining....I'm offering an answer of sorts to the question from the article:- So is it now fair to say that we have lost yet another battle against those evil corporations? We have not necessarily lost a battle, we have to let the 'evil corporations' know that we're not happy - either by complaining or by taking our money elsewhere.
----------------------------
A co-operative ISP could be a great idea. However, I fear a 2Mbit (T1) line may get clogged up pretty quick......Anyone know how much an OC48 is?
----------------------------
At the end of the day we are still the consumers paying for a service. If we are not happy with that service we can either complain, or take our money elsewhere.
The fact that smaller ISP's are being swallowed up by larger companies will reduce the amount of ISP's we have to choose from if we do decide to change ISP. But, so long as one company doesn't gain a monopoly over all ISP's then we will still have a choice. As with any company we buy goods and/or services from, it is up to us to let them know when we are not happy.
----------------------------
I'm not talking about 'handing more power to the authorities'. I'm talking about having enough police to be able to cope with crime.
I don't think the government are trying to instill any kind of 'thinking' in me, at the end of the day, the reason there are not enough police is because there are not enough resources, which is due to the fact that there is not enough money being ploughed into crime prevention.
The reason that there is not enough money being ploughed into crime prevention is because the government's main concern is to stay in power, so they try to make themselves look attractive by reducing tax, investing in the NHS and throwing money down that drain they call 'The Millenium Dome'. Eventually, when the whole population become victims of crime, as I am, maybe the governments priorities will change to reflect this, but in the meantime people like me will have to suffer and more people will die.
----------------------------
I do live in the UK (in the London area) and I have noticed an accute reduction of police interest in the public over the last ten years.
Granted we have some ridiculous bills in parliament (the RIP bill for one) that do appear to infringe on human rights, but considering the amount of times I have been a victim of crime over the last six months (5) I would feel a whole lot safer if there were more Orwellian messures imposed.
----------------------------
I don't know why M$ bother with all this back-stabbing and petty quarreling when they've developed software that can do this!
----------------------------
I agree....why bother with wireless on a plane where you probably won't move out of your seat any way!
----------------------------
Operarting System: LinuxPPC - other distributions supported
Anyone know which other distros are supported?
----------------------------
....When you specialize in your desired field you spend most of your time working and learning in said field. We do not have enough time in our lives to learn everything about everything. This is why it is nice to be able to pick up a book on a certain subject (in this case Hawkings' A Brief History Of Time) without having any prior knowledge of that subject, read it, and hopefully have a much better understanding of that subject - even if that understanding is not comprehensive.
For example, after reading A Brief History Of Time, I now consider that I have a basic understanding of black holes. Unless you are suggesting that black holes are not: Places where gravity is so strong that light (i.e. photons) cannot escape. If that is not true then I stand corrected....and could you please tell me what they are?
----------------------------
The sender pays for junk snailmail. YOU pay (in increased ISP costs, and -- for europeans -- connect time) for junk email.
Yes, bandwidth , I mentioned this if you read my post.
----------------------------
Duh! Really! Well, thanks for pointing that out! So, spam attacks were big back in the 70's as well then?
----------------------------
So Jobs swears. Big deal. It doesn't change my opinion of him in any way. I see Jobs as that gut who went back to Apple at a time where they were in a real crisis, and turned the company around.
Don't get me wrong, I'm no Jobs sycophant, but he did save Apple from near disaster.
----------------------------
It's interesting that there are steps afoot to outlaw electronic spam already, after all the www is not that old.
I have been recieving snail-mail spam (junk mail) for many years. How is this different from electronic spam (aside from bandwidth problems) ? Would the authorities not have to outlaw this kind of spam also?
----------------------------
Haven't seen camcorders that use hard disk as a storage medium yet. The technology is being used in other similar areas though, Pace are using a hard disk for tape-free recording in their new set-top satellite boxes.
----------------------------
....no wonder they're in trouble!
----------------------------
I take it you are not programming much, then.
I do a bit (object oriented - flame me - I don't care). But I wouldn't class a new programming language as just another new bit of software. As you can see in my post I actually said that I hardly ever read manuals, *not* never read manuals.
Let me guess, you are a Windows user, right?
I do use Windows, yes, as well as Linux and Mac OS. Do you have a problem with that?
----------------------------
A lot of people would like to see two button mice on Macs
I agree. The functionality is there in the OS to accomodate at least two buttons. I am not that bothered though as I already use a three buttoned mouse on my Macs. It would, however, be nice if Apple took the plunge and made their own multi-buttoned mouse, if only to stop this tired old argument.
----------------------------
Personally, I hardly ever read manuals when I get new _ware. I will only read the technical documentation that comes with a product if I get stuck. I find that I learn more about something if I get stuck in and 'get my hands dirty', because when you have to actually find the cause of a problem by trial and error, you generally remember the solution better than if you just read it out of a manual/book. However, if I want to learn about something completely new, I will usually do a bit of research beforehand. Maybe read a book or an FAQ.
The problem you could face, from a sales point of view, is that if your target consumer is a typical geek type person, they will probably be fully aware that they can usually find pretty much any information, on any subject, free of charge on the internet.
----------------------------
I'm no physics major either, and these are valid arguments, the outcome will be very interesting. I personally still believe that photons have mass and therefore are affected by gravity. If the gravity is strong enough photons will not escape, hence black holes.
----------------------------
This strikes me as a somewhat flawed design, because if laws apply, they should apply everywhere!
It may not be complete, but it's not wrong is it?
Exactly! You're contradicting yourself. Einstein's theory works, but not for everything.
----------------------------