• justsomedude (unregistered) in reply to Code Dependent
    Code Dependent:
    I'd rather use an HDTV.

    3x4:3 LCDs is much better (and cheaper) than HDTV.

    It's 3840x1024 compared to 1920x1080, not to mention you get three maximizable screens (say, one for GUI building, one for coding, and the third for debug/locals/immediate :-)

  • St Mary's Hospital for the Irrelevant (unregistered) in reply to Code Dependent
    Code Dependent:
    It says, "Add Comment". What should I do?

    Call any number with a Nigerian prefix. I'll help you.

  • Ben4jammin (unregistered) in reply to Some Guy
    Some Guy:
    Ben4jammin:
    Jeh-fuh-fuh:
    because you're being a dick, right? hahaha.

    Moron.

    It's not about screwing anyone. It's about allocating resources and not rewarding someone for acting like a 2 year old.

    See, that's exactly the problem. He called you a "dick" and a "moron" and you're so useless that you don't yet see that he's obviously better than you'll ever be. :)

    Would you expect anything else from a moron??? :)

    I just find it interesting that (in the story) you have someone willfully breaking equipment, someone else letting them get away with it, extra stress on your IT dept, but I'M the moron, apparently. The story had nothing to do with someone not being able to do their job (until they decided to break something). So in other words, they chose to be in a position to not be able to do their job...I have zero sympathy for that.

  • (cs) in reply to Anon
    Anon:
    the real wtf fool:
    Think about it. If they really were high priced at the time why were they replacing broken monitors with expensive pieces of kit when a spending freeze is in place?

    Erm...because it's broken. It's really hard to get anything done on a computer without some way of seeing the screen output!

    But why were they replacing them with expensive pieces of kit?

  • Real-modo (unregistered) in reply to nik0las

    CAPTCHA: aptent (I know apt-get, but apt-ent ?)[/quote]Package manager for the one OS to rule them all.

  • Boy (unregistered) in reply to Da' Man
    Da' Man:
    Call to wife: I think I need a new Laptop - see, this one is leaking...
    Call to Mum: I think I need some new trousers. See, this one is leaking...
  • (cs) in reply to Anon
    Anon:
    the real wtf fool:
    Bappi:
    the real wtf fool:
    Broken/Deliberately Destroyed - obvious result from having such a process in place. People are very good at gaming processes to achieve what they want rather than what management intended. Why such penny pinching over a £200 monitor anyway? It's a really cheap way of making employees feel happier/more motivated if that's what bothers them.
    It never ceases to amaze me how many people here assume that every story is about last week. As late as the nineties, a 19" monitor cost a good deal more than £200.

    Think about it. If they really were high priced at the time why were they replacing broken monitors with expensive pieces of kit when a spending freeze is in place?

    Erm...because it's broken. It's really hard to get anything done on a computer without some way of seeing the screen output!

    Right, but one would expect that it would not be replaced with a new 19" monitor, but rather the cheapest option, if this is in a time when a 19" monitor is so expensive.

  • (cs)

    Anna sounds rather like one of my users. Two guys share an office; one got a nice new MacBook Air last year. A month or so later, somehow, the other guy's laptop was slammed shut with something resting on the keyboard, cracking the screen. Strangely, around the same time, he'd been talking about getting a nice shiny new 24" iMac...

    Of course, in between the MacBook Air's arrival and the "mishap", a spending freeze had hit. After several months of using an external monitor instead, the second user finally received a new low-end netbook.

    Sadly, I found a worse spreadsheet case than the "23 rows per file" one, just today. One of my colleagues (different company, same project) had been tasked with analyzing the logs from a website. She was doing this by loading the logs into Excel, sorting by IP address - then counting up the hits by hand. She was sure there should be a better way - but was helpfully assured by her own IT department that there wasn't. Yes, this is all on the taxpayer's tab...

  • GrandmasterB (unregistered) in reply to jordanwb
    jordanwb:
    Well that is kinda stupid. I put Ubuntu on my Grandfather's computer. He had no trouble figuring out that to shutdown his computer you click on System.

    Any OS is 'intuitive' if its being used as a web browsing/email appliance where only a few different apps are actually used. Where Linux breaks down is when novices try to use it for something more and start trying to install and configure software. Its far better now than it used to be, but anyone who thinks linux is as usable to a non-technical person as Windows or OSX is simply deluding themselves.

  • GrandmasterB (unregistered) in reply to Compulsive Proofreader
    Compulsive Proofreader:
    You say this, but I used to correct typos in copy sent over by clients before pasting it into their site and adding HTML tags. I stopped doing this because my boss chewed me out one day, saying I'm a web dev and not a secretary.
    I really cant blame him. I will not 'correct' anything handed to me either. I've learned from experience that 1) it's rarely appreciated, 2) it encourages your client/co-workers to NOT proofread what they send you, and 3) if you then make a spelling mistake, you get blamed. Whenever I need to update text on a site now, I copy/paste. If there's an error, I tell them I just copied/pasted what they sent and that next time they should run a spell checker before sending it to me.
  • (cs) in reply to campkev
    campkev:
    You didn't say he wasn't a customer, you said he was a customer calling about a non-supported issue. Big difference. A year from now when the customer goes to buy another computer, he's not going to say "Gee, that tech support guy at CompanyX was right for not helping me, I'll buy another CompanyX since he knew what his job was." He's going to say, "That guy at CompanyX was a dick, I think I'll buy a CompanyY computer instead."

    There's almost certainly some omitted background here. It usually goes like this:

    CompanyX realizes they need to get a handle on their costs of providing support. They segregate support tasks into, say, "supported under warranty only", "supported out of warranty with a service agreement", and "not supported" and divide the support staff up accordingly.

    As time goes on, they notice that "helpful" employees are covering issues outside their group's scope. This is costing them money because not only are they not getting paid for what they should be, the employees in question may be less efficient on those calls. So pressure is applied to get those service-contract issues to the service-contract line instead of the warranty-support line, and get non-supported issues off the line completely because there's no revenue there.

    Combine that with call-time and call-resolution metrics and you get abruptness or even outright hangups from the support staff when encountering a non-supported issue. It's not that they're dicks naturally -- it's that their company's policies incentivize them that way. Eventually that will result in lost sales, as you say, but some number are likely to be sales that would make negative profit for the company anyway. The remainder will hopefully get noticed by management and prompt some policy adjustments before they cost the company enough goodwill to hurt it.

    Where I work we deal with a different but related problem -- first-line support automatically escalating every issue to Tier 2 and beyond. I work Tier 3 and with the cooperation of our service manager, have slowly adapted my group's policy from "eat everything they shovel at us" to "incomplete or non-escalation tickets get sent back to the originator for further action; tickets sent back the second time for cause get copied to the helpdesk manager". This has required some gentle nudging of the "helpful" people in our group who were enabling the bad behavior by doing the helpdesk's job on those tickets.

    Funny thing too -- for awhile there, everybody was bitching about ticket-passing numbers, but now things are actually much more efficient than before. Now if we can just get Tier 2 to understand that every alert after-hours does not warrant escalation to the on-call...

  • Real-modo (unregistered) in reply to J
    J:
    Steve:
    Having spent 10 years on Linux, then changed to Windows XP, I had to do some googling to find Windows+L. Then I was surprised to find that many of my Windows-only colleagues didn't know it.

    Windows is not any more intuitive than any other OS, it is just more widely used. That is not the same as "good".

    I remember working with someone who claimed that F1 for help was intuitive. Because that was the key Lotus-1-2-3 used. Yikes, I'm once again showing my age.

    "Intuitive" just means "that's what I learned to do first."

    The more aware user says "That's not standard!" -- although with the latest version of MS Office, probably that response is going to disappear.

    I'm surprised the first comment set wasn't: Comment1.txt: W Comment2.txt: T Comment3.txt: F Comment4.txt: !

    The coffee's not working the same today, I guess.

  • Peets (unregistered) in reply to rast
    rast:
    A few years ago, I had the misfortune to train a really nice, but really dim employee on our accounting system. I sat with her for several days, showing her the ins and outs of the admittedly complex system, but she could never quite figure things out on her own. I recommended that we have someone else do what she was supposed to do, but management insisted that she do those things.

    Fast forward a year and several big screw-ups later, and management decided that she was better off as the receptionist, after all.

    So how many members of management was said employee sleeping with?

    Umm, nobody kept accounts?

    (ducks quickly)

  • GrandmasterB (unregistered) in reply to Anon
    PS - I didn't used to agree with Microsoft bashers, I used Windows 98 for years without any more than minor troubles, I only "upgraded" because my 5 year old EMachines's hard drive controller died. Vista is worse in many ways than Windows 3.1 was. (Macrosh*t Vista - a view brown and smelly)

    So you were stuck so far in the past with Windows 98 that when you were forced to switch to Vista you became scared and confused. Got it.

    So true. I get occasional customers like that, who'll get all up in arms because our newer versions wont run on Windows 98. Why, you cant expect them to upgrade from their super-stable Windows 98 to the buggy XP or Vista!

    I've been using Vista for a while now, and have had no particular problems with it. Not any more than when I switched to XP. Its been my experience, dealing with customers who run varieties of versions of windows, that the large majority of so-called 'Vista' problems are really problems with pre-installed crapware and shoddy drivers. MS certainly could have been more aggressive in making sure drivers from third parties were up to snuff, but otherwise these arent really Vista problems. But techno-idiots cant tell the difference between an OS problem and a non-OS problems, so it all just gets labeled as 'Vista Sucks'. Especially when thats the trendy thing to say. If you do a bare install of Vista (no crapware from HP, Dell, etc) with proper video drivers, its a very solid OS. On the other hand, if you run it on a $300 PC from walmart, well, you get what you pay for.

  • duckInferno (unregistered) in reply to jordanwb
    jordanwb:
    Step 1: Go to http://ubuntu.com Step 2: Click download Step 3: Burn ISO (YMMV) Step 4: Boot into completely working OS
    A year ago I enthusaistically grabbed a 32bit copy of Lusty Llama (or whatever it was), eager to give this much touted OS a trial run and hopefuly completely move to it. My knowledge of unix and linux was limited but I was determined to give it my all.

    After configuring my network and gateway I decided to install drivers so that I could go beyond 800x600 on my 20" widescreen. Delving into the user-made documentation I came across a guide for installing graphics drivers for popular nvidia cards, mine included. It looked very lengthy but it was the best I could find.

    Fastforward through 10 or so complex and magic (completely unexplained) commands I needed to copy-paste into the command line, the guide asked me to press a key combination to go into some sort of low level mode. The next few steps after that were more huge c+p command strings so I copied the first one and dived into the low level mode, only to discover that it doesn't support copy+paste, or at least had cleared the buffer of my precious 300-char command that resembled a section of a klingon recipe for scones. I subsequently discovered both that I could not alt-tab anymore to read the guide, nor exit from the mode using any keyword or combination that came to mind. I eventually bit the bullet and restarted the PC, to be faced with a corrupt ubuntu installation.

    A few hours down the drain. I'm annoyed at this point but fine, whatever, let's give that another go. So I reinstall Ubuntu, only to find the fresh installation broken in another inexplicable way. I uninstalled it entirely, only to have it unceremoniously strip out the bootloading software it had installed and replace it with... nothing. My main windows partition was nice and unbootable.

    It was like I had gone back in time to the Win95 days, with a malevolent twist.
    Perhaps in a few more years.

  • nobody (unregistered) in reply to campkev
    campkev:
    You didn't say he wasn't a customer, you said he was a customer calling about a non-supported issue. Big difference. A year from now when the customer goes to buy another computer, he's not going to say "Gee, that tech support guy at CompanyX was right for not helping me, I'll buy another CompanyX since he knew what his job was." He's going to say, "That guy at CompanyX was a dick, I think I'll buy a CompanyY computer instead."
    One year from now, the customer will have forgotten the call, walk into the store and buy the cheapest, but most flashy computer he can find.
  • (cs)

    Jessica using the screen saver to lock the computer isn't entirely WTF... That functionality predates the other methods of locking (win+L, ctrl+alt+del then Lock Computer), maybe she learned back then.

  • Uhh... (unregistered) in reply to Smash King
    Smash King:
    It's amazing that one would create a new XLS file after every 23 rows. It would be so much easier to just switch to another tab inside the same document.
    Whats a tab?
  • justsomedude (unregistered) in reply to duckInferno
    duckInferno:
    A year ago I enthusaistically grabbed a 32bit copy of Lusty Llama (or whatever it was)

    A lot changes in a year.

    It took some mangling to figure out how, but I managed to get Hardy up on a triple head rig w/ Xinerama + 3D_Accel + CompizFusion.

    In the end, all it took was one apt-get from the command line to install the xserver-xgl package and the rest was entirely GUI-based configuaration.

    waits for the 'pics or it didn't happen' comment

  • (cs)

    If someone had given the woman with the 23-row spreadsheets a smaller monitor, would she have complained that "this damn new monitor deleted last 5 rows of all my spreadsheets?"

    Actually, I'd be surprised if she really didn't know how to use a scroll-bar. More likely she did know how to freeze the top row and couldn't bear to enter data in row 24 without knowing what the column headers were.

    Either way...wtf?

  • Dirk Diggler (unregistered) in reply to duckInferno
    duckInferno:
    jordanwb:
    Step 1: Go to http://ubuntu.com Step 2: Click download Step 3: Burn ISO (YMMV) Step 4: Boot into completely working OS
    A year ago I enthusaistically grabbed a 32bit copy of Lusty Llama (or whatever it was), eager to give this much touted OS a trial run and hopefuly completely move to it. My knowledge of unix and linux was limited but I was determined to give it my all.

    After configuring my network and gateway I decided to install drivers so that I could go beyond 800x600 on my 20" widescreen. Delving into the user-made documentation I came across a guide for installing graphics drivers for popular nvidia cards, mine included. It looked very lengthy but it was the best I could find.

    Fastforward through 10 or so complex and magic (completely unexplained) commands I needed to copy-paste into the command line, the guide asked me to press a key combination to go into some sort of low level mode. The next few steps after that were more huge c+p command strings so I copied the first one and dived into the low level mode, only to discover that it doesn't support copy+paste, or at least had cleared the buffer of my precious 300-char command that resembled a section of a klingon recipe for scones. I subsequently discovered both that I could not alt-tab anymore to read the guide, nor exit from the mode using any keyword or combination that came to mind. I eventually bit the bullet and restarted the PC, to be faced with a corrupt ubuntu installation.

    A few hours down the drain. I'm annoyed at this point but fine, whatever, let's give that another go. So I reinstall Ubuntu, only to find the fresh installation broken in another inexplicable way. I uninstalled it entirely, only to have it unceremoniously strip out the bootloading software it had installed and replace it with... nothing. My main windows partition was nice and unbootable.

    It was like I had gone back in time to the Win95 days, with a malevolent twist.
    Perhaps in a few more years.

    When you finally get your monitor to work, try installing a wireless card.

  • duckInferno (unregistered) in reply to Dirk Diggler
    Dirk Diggler:
    When you finally get your monitor to work, try installing a wireless card.
    Sorry, I'm busy gluing pieces of corn back onto the cob. After that, I have to mold some hardened bricks using my face.
  • gilhad (unregistered) in reply to Tapcon
    Tapcon:
    the real wtf fool:
    How to Lock a Computer - That's surely what the support desk is for: to support users? Neither Winkey+L or Ctrl-Alt-Del are intuitive.
    The WTF is that the user went to great lengths to lock the computer and it didn't immediately become obvious there must be a better way.
    We are talking about Windows here - why SHOULD be there better way? Usually user can be happy if there is AT LEAST SOME way.
  • RBoy (unregistered) in reply to justsomedude
    justsomedude:
    Code Dependent:
    RBoy:
    Code Dependent:
    Anonymoose:
    It's amazing how people get "equipment envy"

    "How come THEY have that.."

    [image]
    Hey, make one (or both) a wide screen and it's boner time.
    I have two wide-screens. Both are 1680 x 1050.

    BU-WA-HAHA!

    two monitors just makes you itch for a third; tri-mon is the only way to roll! Of course, imo tripple head rigs are better with 4:3 LCDs but those are getting harder and harder to find...

    3?

    Schwing!

  • gilhad (unregistered) in reply to GrandmasterB
    GrandmasterB:
    jordanwb:
    Well that is kinda stupid. I put Ubuntu on my Grandfather's computer. He had no trouble figuring out that to shutdown his computer you click on System.

    Any OS is 'intuitive' if its being used as a web browsing/email appliance where only a few different apps are actually used. Where Linux breaks down is when novices try to use it for something more and start trying to install and configure software. Its far better now than it used to be, but anyone who thinks linux is as usable to a non-technical person as Windows or OSX is simply deluding themselves.

    I strongly diagree - what you describe is "where Linux administrator need to have some knowledge", not "where Linux user hit un-intuitivity of system" - see in many companies users ARE NOT ALLOWED to intall anything, as their work is done by USING the computer. And maybe there is a reason, why receptionsts in decent companies are not meant to be actually INSTALLING and ADMINISTRATING their own computers - when the company has the Administrator (or full department) for taking care about the whole intranet, where the receptionist computer is also connected.

  • gilhad (unregistered) in reply to Sparr
    Sparr:
    Jessica using the screen saver to lock the computer isn't entirely WTF... That functionality predates the other methods of locking (win+L, ctrl+alt+del then Lock Computer), maybe she learned back then.
    IIRC this method predates not only keaybords with "win" key, but the Windows too. I would bet some had seen it in some pure DOS programs, but maybe it came even from more far history ....
  • (cs) in reply to jordanwb
    jordanwb:
    Well that is kinda stupid. I put Ubuntu on my Grandfather's computer. He had no trouble figuring out that to shutdown his computer you click on System.

    PROTIP: jordanwb's Grandfather is Peter Norton.

  • (cs) in reply to GrandmasterB
    GrandmasterB:
    Its far better now than it used to be, but anyone who thinks linux is as usable to a non-technical person as Windows or OSX is simply deluding themselves.

    No... They aren't... Ignoring for the moment that installing apps is technically an admin task, if you ever took a look outside of tech circles, you'd see that almost every Windows user struggles to install software. Even when it's as simple as sticking a freaking CD in and clicking "Next" 3 times.

    The majority of Windows users who CAN manage it have taken it upon themselves to read prompts and things. IE: They learned how to do it.

  • Bob (unregistered)

    Once there was a service tech on commission for hardware sold to his customers i.e. if its broke he fixes it, if he cant he gets a commission on the new hardware. He had a can of magic dust for "preventing" software issues e.g. after BSOD, sprinlke some magic dust before rebooting

    This guy was sacked after a non-id10T customer found out the magc dust was metal filings

  • Julian Calaby (unregistered) in reply to nik0las
    nik0las:
    CAPTCHA: aptent (I know apt-get, but apt-ent ?)

    It installs trees.

  • Xenobiologista (unregistered) in reply to jas88
    jas88:
    Sadly, I found a worse spreadsheet case than the "23 rows per file" one, just today. One of my colleagues (different company, same project) had been tasked with analyzing the logs from a website. She was doing this by loading the logs into Excel, sorting by IP address - then counting up the hits by hand. She was sure there should be a better way - but was helpfully assured by her own IT department that there wasn't. Yes, this is all on the taxpayer's tab...

    After college I worked as an intern/technician in a government lab for a year. We had an old 96-well-plate reader that just output raw data to Excel (newer plate readers come with software that you can set up to crunch your data however you like). For an antibody assay called an ELISA, you have to find the 95% confidence interval of the negative controls to calculate a positive/negative cut-off value, and also since we ran samples in duplicate, take the averages and compare them to the cut-off. The middle-aged biologist who taught me how to run ELISAs was printing out the Excel spreadsheets and doing all this with a calculator >_<

  • (cs) in reply to Anon
    Anon:
    It's really hard to get anything done on a computer without some way of seeing the screen output!
    ORLY? There are a few million blind internet users out there who would like to take you up on that!
  • (cs) in reply to Uhh...
    Uhh...:
    Smash King:
    It's amazing that one would create a new XLS file after every 23 rows. It would be so much easier to just switch to another tab inside the same document.
    Whats a tab?
    Geordie word for snout, innit.
  • (cs) in reply to operagost
    operagost:
    Steve:
    Having spent 10 years on Linux, then changed to Windows XP, I had to do some googling to find Windows+L. Then I was surprised to find that many of my Windows-only colleagues didn't know it.

    Windows is not any more intuitive than any other OS, it is just more widely used. That is not the same as "good".

    Thanks for the proselytization, loyal acolyte of the holy Penguin.
    I have been running Windows every day at work for the last 17 years and have never heard of Windows+L. Does anyone know of a way I can get multiple desktop workspaces in XP the way I can in Ubuntu?

  • (cs) in reply to Sparr
    Sparr:
    Jessica using the screen saver to lock the computer isn't entirely WTF... That functionality predates the other methods of locking (win+L, ctrl+alt+del then Lock Computer), maybe she learned back then.
    Yeh, I was thinking that to anyone who was trained on the 9x series of windows, pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del is something you only ever do in utter desparation and if the system is so horribly munged that crashing it totally could hardly make things worse.

    It's quite understandable that they don't realise it's a useful feature when the first get on an NT-series windows, it's as if buying yourself a newer car somehow made punching yourself in the balls not hurt any more: you wouldn't expect people to think of trying that by themselves.

  • (cs) in reply to el_oscuro
    el_oscuro:
    I have been running Windows every day at work for the last 17 years and have never heard of Windows+L. Does anyone know of a way I can get multiple desktop workspaces in XP the way I can in Ubuntu?
    Guess you haven't heard of Microsoft's own XP PowerToys extension either then!
    Virtual Desktop Manager

    Manage up to four desktops from the Windows taskbar with this PowerToy.

  • Stychokiller (unregistered) in reply to Steve
    Steve:
    Windows is *not* any more intuitive than any other OS, it is just more widely used. That is not the same as "good".

    Reminds me of a poster of a guy eating a big steaming pile of S&t: "Eat Sht, 528 Billion flies can't be wrong!"

  • Stychokiller (unregistered) in reply to Uhh...

    A tab is a really hideous-tasting diet soda here in the states.

  • (cs) in reply to DaveK
    DaveK:
    el_oscuro:
    I have been running Windows every day at work for the last 17 years and have never heard of Windows+L. Does anyone know of a way I can get multiple desktop workspaces in XP the way I can in Ubuntu?
    Guess you haven't heard of Microsoft's own XP PowerToys extension either then!
    Virtual Desktop Manager

    Manage up to four desktops from the Windows taskbar with this PowerToy.

    I prefer VirtuaWin (I don't want the giant thumbnails taking up space, plus it goes up to nine desktops if you want).

  • John Muller (unregistered) in reply to DaveK
    DaveK:
    Anon:
    It's really hard to get anything done on a computer without some way of seeing the screen output!
    ORLY? There are a few million blind internet users out there who would like to take you up on that!

    It's really harder for blind users than it should be though...

    I'm currently working on touch screen stuff... with no tactile/audio feedback, blind users are basically out of luck with it, which is disappointing to me.

  • (cs) in reply to Stychokiller
    Stychokiller:
    Steve:
    Windows is *not* any more intuitive than any other OS, it is just more widely used. That is not the same as "good".

    Reminds me of a poster of a guy eating a big steaming pile of S&t: "Eat Sht, 528 Billion flies can't be wrong!"

    There's also the traditional old graffiti "Go on, top yourself - Two million lemmings can't be wrong". An early pre-internet example of the "An hero" meme!
  • (cs) in reply to John Muller
    John Muller:
    DaveK:
    Anon:
    It's really hard to get anything done on a computer without some way of seeing the screen output!
    ORLY? There are a few million blind internet users out there who would like to take you up on that!

    It's really harder for blind users than it should be though...

    I'm currently working on touch screen stuff... with no tactile/audio feedback, blind users are basically out of luck with it, which is disappointing to me.

    Yep, accessibility = important. Computers have become an important part of people's engagement with society, nobody should be needlessly excluded. I was just drawing attention to Anon's underlying assumption... we all have to try and remember to think bigger picture.
  • Fluboerd (unregistered)

    I know this "monitor envy" disease too good from my last job. i even experienced users with mouse-and-keyboard-envy... :D

  • csrster (unregistered) in reply to GrandmasterB
    GrandmasterB:
    Compulsive Proofreader:
    You say this, but I used to correct typos in copy sent over by clients before pasting it into their site and adding HTML tags. I stopped doing this because my boss chewed me out one day, saying I'm a web dev and not a secretary.
    I really cant blame him. I will not 'correct' anything handed to me either. I've learned from experience that 1) it's rarely appreciated, 2) it encourages your client/co-workers to NOT proofread what they send you, and 3) if you then make a spelling mistake, you get blamed. Whenever I need to update text on a site now, I copy/paste. If there's an error, I tell them I just copied/pasted what they sent and that next time they should run a spell checker before sending it to me.

    Good call. Reminds me of an ancient historian I knew whose institution required secretarial proof-reading of all grant applications. One application he wrote came back with the word "gnostic" replaced with "agnostic" throughout the document.

  • inomyabcs (unregistered) in reply to becoming zealous

    Actually, you will have the same problem with ubuntu... su is deprecated in favor of sudo in debian and ubuntu

  • (cs) in reply to shepd
    shepd:
    Users breaking their equipment for upgrades during idiotic-type spending freezes is what we call Perverse Incentive. *Always* consider perverse incentive before making policies. Anna did exactly the logical thing to do in this situation. And they say that geeks like logic...

    yup. Worked as a consultant for a government department once, a long time ago. They had a policy that no computers were to be replaced unless broken (which of course led to a potential maintenance nightmare as we had people using anything from XTs under DOS to 486s under NT4). Consequence was that whenever a new type of computer was being rolled out the number of reports of stolen computers would skyrocket. Years later the department moved to another building across town. When the renovation crew tore out the false ceilings they found dozens of old computers, screens, printers, and other assorted equipment.

  • (cs) in reply to the real wtf fool
    the real wtf fool:
    Bappi:
    the real wtf fool:
    Broken/Deliberately Destroyed - obvious result from having such a process in place. People are very good at gaming processes to achieve what they want rather than what management intended. Why such penny pinching over a £200 monitor anyway? It's a really cheap way of making employees feel happier/more motivated if that's what bothers them.
    It never ceases to amaze me how many people here assume that every story is about last week. As late as the nineties, a 19" monitor cost a good deal more than £200.

    Think about it. If they really were high priced at the time why were they replacing broken monitors with expensive pieces of kit when a spending freeze is in place?

    Because that was the standard kit that got purchased whenever something was needed, the standard being decided before the spending stop was put in place (or determined based on predictions of future need, so in the long term the cheapest choice).

  • (cs) in reply to inomyabcs
    inomyabcs:
    Actually, you will have the same problem with ubuntu... su is deprecated in favor of sudo in debian and ubuntu
    This is bullshit. Better get your facts straight. In the latest Debian, su is active by default. You can't even use sudo until you add the user name to the sudoers list. And in Ubuntu, all you need to do to activate su is to enable the root account.
  • (cs) in reply to justsomedude
    justsomedude:
    two monitors just makes you itch for a third; tri-mon is the only way to roll! Of course, imo tripple head rigs are better with 4:3 LCDs but those are getting harder and harder to find...
    Many of our developers now have four-head rigs. I don't, but that's because I prefer to be able to develop on the move and monitors are hard to pack in a travel bag.
  • Barry Bond (unregistered) in reply to dkf
    dkf:
    Many of our developers now have four-head rigs. I don't, but that's because I prefer to be able to develop on the move and monitors are hard to pack in a travel bag.
    That's the one thing I miss after moving over to laptops exclusively, is my 4 x 19" quad screen setup. VirtuaWin just doesn't compare.

    Hooking up to a 50" HDTV for 2x1080p goodness on a laptop almost makes up for it, though.

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