Anyone remember a movie called Looker?
was about actors not being needed any more and once they were digitally reproduced being killed.
I wonder if that was what happened to arnie?
This might be interesting to follow up on. I cant remember the actual amounts but I think each emp was given close to 6k for hardware and software. The Agreement with the company really did spell out their responsibility for licensing (not a legal guy) but before I was done, everyone did purchase their software. I truely believe people want to do the right thing. This was a relatively small company as well, only 7 pc users. Not sure how well this would scale.
I ran into this at one company. It caused lots of issues. Managment did agree that they needed to fix the problem and was prepared to start buying licenses, until I came back with a count of what people "needed", and told him the cost. Once he quit clutching his heart, he had a look at the "needed" software list. We then looked at OSS and found that would cover some of our needs and then cut the "needed" list down to the software people required to do their jobs.
When I told the employees what was going to happen, they staged a revolt. Talking about the P in PC meaning personal. I thought about that and said "Your right!"
So back to the boss. Here was my idea. Charge everyone with doing their job. Take away ALL of their sofware and give everyone a raise to buy their own PC and software, and make every sign the CYA agreement that they are personally responsible for the software on their computer and that at any time the company can invite and external audit.
Everyone loved the raise and promptly bought a PC and Licensed versions of their software. This resulted in a direct write off for the company in stead of an amortized one. Because people were spending money on their Own PC many spent extra. so we gained with some having even better hardware and software. Only one person bought the "minimum" to save some cash. The other cool thing was watching people get together to pool their money to purchase things like Symantec Enterprise. One person did quit right away and tried to take their new PC, which they did. However he forgot to read the 6 month clause in actually getting paid for the PC.
It might not work for everyone, It took a lot of communication and hard work. In the end when I left, everything other than some music was licensed. (but as an IT guy you can only push so hard)
When reading through this list, I am amazed at all ofthe things people want that are already available as a free app
Voice dialing
landscape typing
Auto Correct Spelling...
I guess one thing they could add is "Clippy" for the people who dont want to read the instructions.
This is absolutely the one thing that would complete the phone for me. Currently I have my phone and a MC950D to use with my laptop. A consultant at work has jail broke his phone, but because mine is a corp phone, I cannot. Thus we spend more money than we need two with the phone plan and the separate data plan for the 950.
Even with my old phone I was able to use it as a modem if needed. It was expensive, but available. This is just blocked.
I did a contract for a company with this very issue. They were hiring expensive consultants to come in and fix, undocument procedures and code. Part of the problem was some of the people doing the tasks couldnt write to save their life. So, I got out my cannon video recorder. Did some interviews and video'ed the procedure with screen close ups and questions to the user. Streamed the video to mp4, loaded them on web page, and voila! All procedures demoed and explained by the people who do them. Add some tags to each video and they become searchable.
With so many other methods of user verification why do we still continue with passwords?
My work uses so many passwords for each application, and forces you to change them montly, and some of them force you to use different passwords, that you can look at any monitor and find a postit note with complete access to the system. When I mentioned this to the SA's. They said they need all of the passwords for security?
Why not use thumbprints or cards for verification like the hospital I used to work at? Never typed a single password. Had to take the gloves off once or twice, but never a password.
Yes the lists are much simpler, however even a simple list for a medical procedure is not that simple. Which drug and which list do you use? How do you manage the lists? Are there different lists based on location, treatment time, etc.
The hospitals I have worked for alread use basic check lists. However those lists are not usefull for the situations where a list would have the most benefit. There is also the time factor in "getting" the correct list, what is the cost in an ER situation? In the case of a stroke, we flash the message "Time is Brain" for the duration of the treatment as a simple reminder that every second counts. (doctors suggested this, I find it annoying)
Also the cost of maintenance of these checklists is not factored in. They do change constantly, the storage of the checklists, the action based on failure? What good is a check list if no one bothers to fix the situation where a checklist was imcomplete. Or even the cost of finding out the perfectly valid reason a checklist was aborted. All of this is part of the physicians daily life. Yes they can be hard to deal with, but there are also those physicians that truely brilliant in their care. The software I wrote was commissioned by a group of physicians that each used their own captial to fund the software developement. They did get some federal money for the research into the treatment pathways. But for $1.5 million in development, there is close to $20 million in carepath reasearch. Not to mention the "volunteer" time many of these physicians have put in. My point is that is just not that simple, and the article makes it sound simpler than it is.
I actually write software that does this. However, this is not as simple as it sounds. While the checklist for a pilot (and I am one) is very straight forward, the "checklist", or carepath or treatment pathway is not. There are a myriad of factors that determine what comes next and it is not always obvious. There are some simple things, but the fact is, the hospitals already have checklists or protocols for those items.
In 10 years we have managed to complete the "check list" for 2 types of patients, Strokes and Heart Failure. Both are extreamly similar as they are both circulatory diseases. The software is easy. The carepath is exceptionally complicated. The treatment pathway, and thus the checklist, is very different if the patient is young or old, male or female, how quickly the patient is brought in for treatment. For example if a stroke is less than 4 hrs old the treatment is very different than a 7 hr old stroke. Not to mention the difference in the stroke itself.
So while a "checklist" sounds like a great idea, the idea is not new. Some of us have been working on it for a while. But the reasearch that needs to go into the checklists is 99% of the cost of our development.
Bring a couple of laptops. Connect them through a router. If child A can connect to Child B, give them a candy.
Dont talk. Set up the two laptops with messaging client. No connection. try sending a message. Then get two volunteers, have them plug them in through a switch. And send a message. Reward the class with some halloween candy.
Then explain you do this kind of stuff on a much bigger level. (At the very least, they will remember you as the guy that brought candy)
Because as with what happend to my father and brother both killed in an airplane crash in 78. After their plane went down (and it was written up in the papers) 4 more went down within the next 3 months. My father and brother were the only fatalities, but the type was grounded in Canada until it was determined that there was a design flaw in the fuel system.
That grounding saved how many lives? We must always find out why. Because then we can take a positive action out of an unfortunate event. The fact that he was famous has nothing to do with this investigation.
And yes I have 34 hours in a Citabria. It glides like a brick.
This does not a case of someone trying to make a buck on the name. It looks like someone smart who registered a domain name for the purpose of discussion. The domain is not parked, not defamitory and is in use. Case closed.
If this he looses his domain name, then who is next?
I learned by taking apart everything we owned until I was about 12. By then I thought I could fix anything!. My parents go to hiding all of the tools.
Eventually, I just became an engineer.
What company do you work for that can afford multiple servers at 10k each, give or take, and a server room and then balks at the price of an air conditioner?
I like the idea of letting it fail, then going to your boss with downtime costs and recovery costs (you do have a recovery plan?)
Then mention that the $600 plus looks pretty good.
I guarentee that I never went over 5 GB unless I got a LOT of spam that got through my server and was filtered on my end. They could not even tell me my usage when they cancelled mine. Just that they were cancelling everyones.
Complain! I did and they gave me a full refund for my air card (i bought it outright instead of the monthly plan)
I then switched to Rogers. They had a sliding plan that works for me. It does smell and I will never use a telus service again due to the way they marketted this.
I have telecommuted for over 10 years I work in Canada and telecomute to Oklahoma City each day. The comment I got from my boss was, "I get better support from you than I do from our local IT department". Our development team consists of 4 devs in different cities, a local informatics nurse, and myself
Some benefits:
Conference Call meetings are more productive because there is less chatter about he weekend football game. All parties tend to save up the important issues so that they can be delt with in one session. Current online meeting tools really remove the need to meet face to face. Plus we have an instant recording of the meeting, ie no bad meeting minutes.
Working at home requires discipline. We did go through a number of developers who worked well for the first 2 weeks, but then fell prey to the distractions. I actually have a proper office set up. Not a home office that my family shares, but a place of work in my house. We had to come up with some house rules:
When I am in the office, i am at work. Casual conversation from my wife and kids is not allowed. The rule we have is that "if you would not call me at work to discuss the issue, dont come into the office".
I have regular core hours and flex time to support the different time zones we all are in, but it is expected that during the core time, messenger or the phone will be answered.
Telecomutting is not for everyone and it has its draw backs. I actually miss some of the office friendships, at home you are by yourself. There is no one that comes and cleans the office (unless your wife does). All of our devs are required to provide their own hardware, so although you save on gas, you still need development hardware. The devs must also proove that their LANs are secure, plus I need to provide a secure VPN for each of the devs.
All in all, it is a way to get some good people working on the same project that you normally could not. There is no way the team I have would have ever been put on the same project. None of us would move. Telecommuting works for us.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, the real lesson is: dont clean! (now thats my kind of lesson)
Your logic is flawed. You assume I get to talk. Why do you think I read /. while she talks :)
But is this fast enough to photograph my wife with a closed mouth?
What a great place for the wanna be crook to go find the "How NOT to" book of everything.
Anyone remember a movie called Looker? was about actors not being needed any more and once they were digitally reproduced being killed. I wonder if that was what happened to arnie?
Impossible only means "Everyone else gave up"
This might be interesting to follow up on. I cant remember the actual amounts but I think each emp was given close to 6k for hardware and software. The Agreement with the company really did spell out their responsibility for licensing (not a legal guy) but before I was done, everyone did purchase their software. I truely believe people want to do the right thing. This was a relatively small company as well, only 7 pc users. Not sure how well this would scale.
I had the fortunate part of the consultant. I came, solved the problem and left. I like consulting.
I ran into this at one company. It caused lots of issues. Managment did agree that they needed to fix the problem and was prepared to start buying licenses, until I came back with a count of what people "needed", and told him the cost. Once he quit clutching his heart, he had a look at the "needed" software list. We then looked at OSS and found that would cover some of our needs and then cut the "needed" list down to the software people required to do their jobs. When I told the employees what was going to happen, they staged a revolt. Talking about the P in PC meaning personal. I thought about that and said "Your right!" So back to the boss. Here was my idea. Charge everyone with doing their job. Take away ALL of their sofware and give everyone a raise to buy their own PC and software, and make every sign the CYA agreement that they are personally responsible for the software on their computer and that at any time the company can invite and external audit. Everyone loved the raise and promptly bought a PC and Licensed versions of their software. This resulted in a direct write off for the company in stead of an amortized one. Because people were spending money on their Own PC many spent extra. so we gained with some having even better hardware and software. Only one person bought the "minimum" to save some cash. The other cool thing was watching people get together to pool their money to purchase things like Symantec Enterprise. One person did quit right away and tried to take their new PC, which they did. However he forgot to read the 6 month clause in actually getting paid for the PC. It might not work for everyone, It took a lot of communication and hard work. In the end when I left, everything other than some music was licensed. (but as an IT guy you can only push so hard)
No we had to get a separate data plan. Its on a sliding rate depending on data usage.
When reading through this list, I am amazed at all ofthe things people want that are already available as a free app Voice dialing landscape typing Auto Correct Spelling ...
I guess one thing they could add is "Clippy" for the people who dont want to read the instructions.
You do know that you can turn the spell checker off? General Settings Keyboard (Although not the most intuitive)
This is absolutely the one thing that would complete the phone for me. Currently I have my phone and a MC950D to use with my laptop. A consultant at work has jail broke his phone, but because mine is a corp phone, I cannot. Thus we spend more money than we need two with the phone plan and the separate data plan for the 950. Even with my old phone I was able to use it as a modem if needed. It was expensive, but available. This is just blocked.
I did a contract for a company with this very issue. They were hiring expensive consultants to come in and fix, undocument procedures and code. Part of the problem was some of the people doing the tasks couldnt write to save their life. So, I got out my cannon video recorder. Did some interviews and video'ed the procedure with screen close ups and questions to the user. Streamed the video to mp4, loaded them on web page, and voila! All procedures demoed and explained by the people who do them. Add some tags to each video and they become searchable.
With so many other methods of user verification why do we still continue with passwords? My work uses so many passwords for each application, and forces you to change them montly, and some of them force you to use different passwords, that you can look at any monitor and find a postit note with complete access to the system. When I mentioned this to the SA's. They said they need all of the passwords for security? Why not use thumbprints or cards for verification like the hospital I used to work at? Never typed a single password. Had to take the gloves off once or twice, but never a password.
Yes the lists are much simpler, however even a simple list for a medical procedure is not that simple. Which drug and which list do you use? How do you manage the lists? Are there different lists based on location, treatment time, etc. The hospitals I have worked for alread use basic check lists. However those lists are not usefull for the situations where a list would have the most benefit. There is also the time factor in "getting" the correct list, what is the cost in an ER situation? In the case of a stroke, we flash the message "Time is Brain" for the duration of the treatment as a simple reminder that every second counts. (doctors suggested this, I find it annoying) Also the cost of maintenance of these checklists is not factored in. They do change constantly, the storage of the checklists, the action based on failure? What good is a check list if no one bothers to fix the situation where a checklist was imcomplete. Or even the cost of finding out the perfectly valid reason a checklist was aborted. All of this is part of the physicians daily life. Yes they can be hard to deal with, but there are also those physicians that truely brilliant in their care. The software I wrote was commissioned by a group of physicians that each used their own captial to fund the software developement. They did get some federal money for the research into the treatment pathways. But for $1.5 million in development, there is close to $20 million in carepath reasearch. Not to mention the "volunteer" time many of these physicians have put in. My point is that is just not that simple, and the article makes it sound simpler than it is.
I actually write software that does this. However, this is not as simple as it sounds. While the checklist for a pilot (and I am one) is very straight forward, the "checklist", or carepath or treatment pathway is not. There are a myriad of factors that determine what comes next and it is not always obvious. There are some simple things, but the fact is, the hospitals already have checklists or protocols for those items. In 10 years we have managed to complete the "check list" for 2 types of patients, Strokes and Heart Failure. Both are extreamly similar as they are both circulatory diseases. The software is easy. The carepath is exceptionally complicated. The treatment pathway, and thus the checklist, is very different if the patient is young or old, male or female, how quickly the patient is brought in for treatment. For example if a stroke is less than 4 hrs old the treatment is very different than a 7 hr old stroke. Not to mention the difference in the stroke itself. So while a "checklist" sounds like a great idea, the idea is not new. Some of us have been working on it for a while. But the reasearch that needs to go into the checklists is 99% of the cost of our development.
Bring a couple of laptops. Connect them through a router. If child A can connect to Child B, give them a candy. Dont talk. Set up the two laptops with messaging client. No connection. try sending a message. Then get two volunteers, have them plug them in through a switch. And send a message. Reward the class with some halloween candy. Then explain you do this kind of stuff on a much bigger level. (At the very least, they will remember you as the guy that brought candy)
Because as with what happend to my father and brother both killed in an airplane crash in 78. After their plane went down (and it was written up in the papers) 4 more went down within the next 3 months. My father and brother were the only fatalities, but the type was grounded in Canada until it was determined that there was a design flaw in the fuel system. That grounding saved how many lives? We must always find out why. Because then we can take a positive action out of an unfortunate event. The fact that he was famous has nothing to do with this investigation. And yes I have 34 hours in a Citabria. It glides like a brick.
This does not a case of someone trying to make a buck on the name. It looks like someone smart who registered a domain name for the purpose of discussion. The domain is not parked, not defamitory and is in use. Case closed. If this he looses his domain name, then who is next?
I learned by taking apart everything we owned until I was about 12. By then I thought I could fix anything!. My parents go to hiding all of the tools. Eventually, I just became an engineer.
What company do you work for that can afford multiple servers at 10k each, give or take, and a server room and then balks at the price of an air conditioner? I like the idea of letting it fail, then going to your boss with downtime costs and recovery costs (you do have a recovery plan?) Then mention that the $600 plus looks pretty good.
I guarentee that I never went over 5 GB unless I got a LOT of spam that got through my server and was filtered on my end. They could not even tell me my usage when they cancelled mine. Just that they were cancelling everyones.
Complain! I did and they gave me a full refund for my air card (i bought it outright instead of the monthly plan) I then switched to Rogers. They had a sliding plan that works for me. It does smell and I will never use a telus service again due to the way they marketted this.
I have telecommuted for over 10 years I work in Canada and telecomute to Oklahoma City each day. The comment I got from my boss was, "I get better support from you than I do from our local IT department". Our development team consists of 4 devs in different cities, a local informatics nurse, and myself Some benefits: Conference Call meetings are more productive because there is less chatter about he weekend football game. All parties tend to save up the important issues so that they can be delt with in one session. Current online meeting tools really remove the need to meet face to face. Plus we have an instant recording of the meeting, ie no bad meeting minutes. Working at home requires discipline. We did go through a number of developers who worked well for the first 2 weeks, but then fell prey to the distractions. I actually have a proper office set up. Not a home office that my family shares, but a place of work in my house. We had to come up with some house rules: When I am in the office, i am at work. Casual conversation from my wife and kids is not allowed. The rule we have is that "if you would not call me at work to discuss the issue, dont come into the office". I have regular core hours and flex time to support the different time zones we all are in, but it is expected that during the core time, messenger or the phone will be answered. Telecomutting is not for everyone and it has its draw backs. I actually miss some of the office friendships, at home you are by yourself. There is no one that comes and cleans the office (unless your wife does). All of our devs are required to provide their own hardware, so although you save on gas, you still need development hardware. The devs must also proove that their LANs are secure, plus I need to provide a secure VPN for each of the devs. All in all, it is a way to get some good people working on the same project that you normally could not. There is no way the team I have would have ever been put on the same project. None of us would move. Telecommuting works for us.