Thats exactly what companies try to do. Bills problem is that he did it too well. Everyone wants to live the American Dream, but no one wants to see anyone else living it.
I am currently enrolled in a Comp Sci course at St. Clair College in Windsor, Ont that uses laptops for the course. In fact, its required that you have one to be enrolled.
I personally wouldn't want to be without a laptop for the course. I can do my work anywhere and ALL my software is there, and configured the way I want it.
We use them for tests, but we aren't connected to the network when we right them. Tests are submitted on floppies.
The thing is, if you really have to look up information during a test to pass, your screwed anyways. Being able to search help files, or online, really only helps if you need a reminder of syntax or something like that (ie. is it: if (a == b) or if a or b then) etc.
Does anyone else find the irony in all this? If this article was posted on USENET, it would be written off as flamebait and forgotten about....
anyways, I've lived the Tech Support life, and I currently work as tech support at an ISP (but to my defence, just till I graduate college). I've seen the good, the bad, and the ugly of tech support. And, except for the lack of fuzzy balls of fluff with feet, UserFriendly is scary in its acuracy of tech support, and geek culture in general.
my advice... Lighten Up People!. Its a comic strip, a joke! Maybe you don't get it, maybe you do, but it doesn't matter either way. I personally don't like Blondie, but I don't flame the strip. I just turn the page and get on with my life.
Is anyone niave enough to actually think it makes matters worse to have "user-bashing" comicc around? Personally, I think it gives us tech's a sense that we're not alone, the tech down the street is also banging his head against the wall, trying not to blow-up at someone saying "well, where is the any key?"
I think the real problem is not the 'in-tolerance' of tech support, its the intolerance of users who don't get how tough tech support is (you try it someday), and the moronic "I wanna say something that will stir up contorversy because no one wants to play with me" authors like this guy.
I agree. Linux is a great operating system. I started using it a year ago out of interest, and started using it heavily in the past few months because of the seemingly limitless development tools which is ideal for someone like me (first year Comp-sci student with hopes to be a programmer). There are a few things that Microsoft has in its OS's that beat Linux hands down. The first being driver support (and ongoing issue I realize so I won't get into it) secondly is the lack of a common clipboard in Gnome. In Windows you can copy and paste anything anywhere and it works (even into DOS shells) but I can't do that in Linux. The other major benefit to Windows is printer support. One driver, 3 clicks of a mouse and you can print, reliably, from almost anywhere. In linux, its a basic nightmare. If these were improved, I'd never boot into Windows... my $.02
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You don't happen to.. oh, I dunno, work for DEC.. do you?
Thats exactly what companies try to do. Bills problem is that he did it too well. Everyone wants to live the American Dream, but no one wants to see anyone else living it.
I personally wouldn't want to be without a laptop for the course. I can do my work anywhere and ALL my software is there, and configured the way I want it.
We use them for tests, but we aren't connected to the network when we right them. Tests are submitted on floppies.
The thing is, if you really have to look up information during a test to pass, your screwed anyways. Being able to search help files, or online, really only helps if you need a reminder of syntax or something like that (ie. is it: if (a == b) or if a or b then) etc.
anyways, I've lived the Tech Support life, and I currently work as tech support at an ISP (but to my defence, just till I graduate college). I've seen the good, the bad, and the ugly of tech support. And, except for the lack of fuzzy balls of fluff with feet, UserFriendly is scary in its acuracy of tech support, and geek culture in general.
my advice... Lighten Up People!. Its a comic strip, a joke! Maybe you don't get it, maybe you do, but it doesn't matter either way. I personally don't like Blondie, but I don't flame the strip. I just turn the page and get on with my life.
Is anyone niave enough to actually think it makes matters worse to have "user-bashing" comicc around? Personally, I think it gives us tech's a sense that we're not alone, the tech down the street is also banging his head against the wall, trying not to blow-up at someone saying "well, where is the any key?"
I think the real problem is not the 'in-tolerance' of tech support, its the intolerance of users who don't get how tough tech support is (you try it someday), and the moronic "I wanna say something that will stir up contorversy because no one wants to play with me" authors like this guy.
My 2 Cents... Dave
I agree. Linux is a great operating system. I started using it a year ago out of interest, and started using it heavily in the past few months because of the seemingly limitless development tools which is ideal for someone like me (first year Comp-sci student with hopes to be a programmer). There are a few things that Microsoft has in its OS's that beat Linux hands down. The first being driver support (and ongoing issue I realize so I won't get into it) secondly is the lack of a common clipboard in Gnome. In Windows you can copy and paste anything anywhere and it works (even into DOS shells) but I can't do that in Linux. The other major benefit to Windows is printer support. One driver, 3 clicks of a mouse and you can print, reliably, from almost anywhere. In linux, its a basic nightmare. If these were improved, I'd never boot into Windows... my $.02