From :http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1434432,00.asp

However, some IT professionals like Jim Lambright, an IT manager with
Roth Manufacturing Corp., in New London, Ohio, find themselves in a
Catch-22 situation. The companies are running outdated PC business
applications but are not making enough profit to upgrade their hardware
and software.

"Oftentimes, the budgets just don't allow for all these fancy upgrades.
It's the 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' scenario. I'm in Northern Ohio
and the region is losing businesses so fast it's unreal. Upgrades are not
a prerequisite if your profit loss margin is in the less than one percent
range," he said.

"Also, to upgrade both the desktop and network operating system will not
improve production on the shop floor, which is where the money is made,"
Lambright observed. "I can't even come close to being able to pitch a
justification proposal when I know we need new machinery on the shop floor.
That is why Linux will become increasingly popular in the business world." 


-- 
              Kind Regards from Terry 
    My Desktop is powered by GNU/LinuX, Gentoo-1.4_rc2   
         New Homepage: http://milkstone.d2.net.au/          
 ** Linux Registration Number: 103931,  http://counter.li.org **

Terry wrote:

> From :http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1434432,00.asp
> 
> However, some IT professionals like Jim Lambright, an IT manager with
> Roth Manufacturing Corp., in New London, Ohio, find themselves in a
> Catch-22 situation. The companies are running outdated PC business
> applications but are not making enough profit to upgrade their hardware
> and software.
> 
> "Oftentimes, the budgets just don't allow for all these fancy upgrades.
> It's the 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' scenario. I'm in Northern Ohio
> and the region is losing businesses so fast it's unreal. Upgrades are not
> a prerequisite if your profit loss margin is in the less than one percent
> range," he said.
> 
> "Also, to upgrade both the desktop and network operating system will not
> improve production on the shop floor, which is where the money is made,"
> Lambright observed. "I can't even come close to being able to pitch a
> justification proposal when I know we need new machinery on the shop
> floor. That is why Linux will become increasingly popular in the business
> world."

I would agree with this guy.
Internet Explorer, antispam, zonealarm are really useless programs to run 
on a shop floor.
We've had to run some old machines running DOS, novell, win3.1 despite 
uppermanagement saying we're going to be a windows 2K company.....
yeah, right, hahaha.
Those old machines kept churning the company's bread-n-butter, meanwhile, 
upper management went into a spending frenzy on windows software that 
looked good (to upper management) but was a real dog to the people who were 
then required to use it. Plenty of computers bought that ran 20x faster 
(hardware wise), but slower to get to what the people needed. The workforce 
kept using the old unix terminals until they were finally pulled out.
Meanwhile, upper management and engineering would not be seen very often 
because now they had internet, surfing, gaming, email.
Sad to see it go under, but I would have to say that windows contributed to 
that company becoming non-competitive. Bye-bye.

Amused threw some tea leaves on the floor
 and this is what they wrote:

> Terry wrote:
>
>> From :http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1434432,00.asp
>> 
>> However, some IT professionals like Jim Lambright, an IT manager with
>> Roth Manufacturing Corp., in New London, Ohio, find themselves in a
>> Catch-22 situation. The companies are running outdated PC business
>> applications but are not making enough profit to upgrade their hardware
>> and software.
>> 
>> "Oftentimes, the budgets just don't allow for all these fancy upgrades.
>> It's the 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' scenario. I'm in Northern Ohio
>> and the region is losing businesses so fast it's unreal. Upgrades are not
>> a prerequisite if your profit loss margin is in the less than one percent
>> range," he said.
>> 
>> "Also, to upgrade both the desktop and network operating system will not
>> improve production on the shop floor, which is where the money is made,"
>> Lambright observed. "I can't even come close to being able to pitch a
>> justification proposal when I know we need new machinery on the shop
>> floor. That is why Linux will become increasingly popular in the business
>> world."
>
> I would agree with this guy.
> Internet Explorer, antispam, zonealarm are really useless programs to run 
> on a shop floor.
> We've had to run some old machines running DOS, novell, win3.1 despite 
> uppermanagement saying we're going to be a windows 2K company.....
> yeah, right, hahaha.
> Those old machines kept churning the company's bread-n-butter, meanwhile, 
> upper management went into a spending frenzy on windows software that 
> looked good (to upper management) but was a real dog to the people who were 
> then required to use it. Plenty of computers bought that ran 20x faster 
> (hardware wise), but slower to get to what the people needed. The workforce 
> kept using the old unix terminals until they were finally pulled out.
> Meanwhile, upper management and engineering would not be seen very often 
> because now they had internet, surfing, gaming, email.
> Sad to see it go under, but I would have to say that windows contributed to 
> that company becoming non-competitive. Bye-bye.

Wow, that's a story!

Ernie Ball said that one of the reasons they love Linux is because the
workforce get what they need, and that's *all*.

Ernie Ball in News.com interview:-

The other thing is that if you look at productivity. If you put a bunch
of stuff on people's desktops they don't need to do their job, chances
are they're going to use it. I don't have that problem. If all you need
is word processing, that's all you're going to have on your desktop,
a word processor. It's not going to have Paint or PowerPoint.

I tell you what, our hits to eBay went down greatly when not everybody
had a Web browser.

For somebody whose job is filling out forms all day, invoicing and exporting,
why do they need a Web browser? The idea that if you have 2,000 terminals
they all have to have a Web browser, that's crazy.

It just creates distractions.
.......................

-- 
              Kind Regards from Terry 
    My Desktop is powered by GNU/LinuX, Gentoo-1.4_rc2   
         New Homepage: http://milkstone.d2.net.au/          
 ** Linux Registration Number: 103931,  http://counter.li.org **

Terry wrote:

> Amused threw some tea leaves on the floor
>  and this is what they wrote:
> 
>> Terry wrote:
>>
>>> From :http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1434432,00.asp
>>> 
>>> However, some IT professionals like Jim Lambright, an IT manager with
>>> Roth Manufacturing Corp., in New London, Ohio, find themselves in a
>>> Catch-22 situation. The companies are running outdated PC business
>>> applications but are not making enough profit to upgrade their hardware
>>> and software.
>>> 
>>> "Oftentimes, the budgets just don't allow for all these fancy upgrades.
>>> It's the 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' scenario. I'm in Northern
>>> Ohio and the region is losing businesses so fast it's unreal. Upgrades
>>> are not a prerequisite if your profit loss margin is in the less than
>>> one percent range," he said.
>>> 
>>> "Also, to upgrade both the desktop and network operating system will not
>>> improve production on the shop floor, which is where the money is made,"
>>> Lambright observed. "I can't even come close to being able to pitch a
>>> justification proposal when I know we need new machinery on the shop
>>> floor. That is why Linux will become increasingly popular in the
>>> business world."
>>
>> I would agree with this guy.
>> Internet Explorer, antispam, zonealarm are really useless programs to run
>> on a shop floor.
>> We've had to run some old machines running DOS, novell, win3.1 despite
>> uppermanagement saying we're going to be a windows 2K company.....
>> yeah, right, hahaha.
>> Those old machines kept churning the company's bread-n-butter, meanwhile,
>> upper management went into a spending frenzy on windows software that
>> looked good (to upper management) but was a real dog to the people who
>> were then required to use it. Plenty of computers bought that ran 20x
>> faster (hardware wise), but slower to get to what the people needed. The
>> workforce kept using the old unix terminals until they were finally
>> pulled out. Meanwhile, upper management and engineering would not be seen
>> very often because now they had internet, surfing, gaming, email.
>> Sad to see it go under, but I would have to say that windows contributed
>> to that company becoming non-competitive. Bye-bye.
> 
> Wow, that's a story!
> 
> Ernie Ball said that one of the reasons they love Linux is because the
> workforce get what they need, and that's *all*.

....and that *all* is a key point to remember too.
We had some machines that *had* to have the basic access to hardware that 
DOS had... latest software we were able to manage on the machines was win95.
They really played havoc on the network connections (bwahahaha). one or 
more personnel kept reloading internet explorer on these machines because 
win95 really has poor restrictions (was designed for 1 person, 1 user) 
therefore welcome to anonymous surfing when you're supposed to be working.
The DOS and win3.1 machines were okay because they had no surfing access.

....then you add the point that different windows machines had different 
fonts etc., so if you created a DOC in one machine (say win95), it looked 
different on a win2k machine (imagine trying to view some documents that 
were out of alignment due to fonts).

About *the software* that ran like molasses... it was designed so that it 
was slick for *the manager*, but for the 100+ employees that were supposed 
to use it, it was like adding 10minutes of wasted time trying to get the 
info you were supposed to get.... figure 10minutes x 100+ employees x (1 to 
more times access per day), and you realize you got a waste of time on hand.
I'd swear Dilbert's pointy-haired boss must've been somewhere in management.

> Ernie Ball in News.com interview:-
> 
> The other thing is that if you look at productivity. If you put a bunch
> of stuff on people's desktops they don't need to do their job, chances
> are they're going to use it. I don't have that problem. If all you need
> is word processing, that's all you're going to have on your desktop,
> a word processor. It's not going to have Paint or PowerPoint.
> 
> I tell you what, our hits to eBay went down greatly when not everybody
> had a Web browser.
> 
> For somebody whose job is filling out forms all day, invoicing and
> exporting, why do they need a Web browser? The idea that if you have 2,000
> terminals they all have to have a Web browser, that's crazy.

One guys computer had to be backed up, he was asked what he wanted backed 
up... the computer guy just rolled his eyes telling us about it.... thing 
was full of porn.... so figure all these guys and gals in cubicles wasting 
time surfing these sites.... yeah, call it a real moral booster for the 
rest of the personnel doing *real* work.

> It just creates distractions.

Sure does, we experienced it.

Fearing a spontaneous XP reboot, Terry mumbled this incantation:

> Ernie Ball in News.com interview:-
> 
> I tell you what, our hits to eBay went down greatly when not everybody
> had a Web browser.
> 
> For somebody whose job is filling out forms all day, invoicing and exporting,
> why do they need a Web browser? The idea that if you have 2,000 terminals
> they all have to have a Web browser, that's crazy.
> 
> It just creates distractions.

And an intrusion vector!

-- 
No, I won't fix your Windows computer!

Fearing a spontaneous XP reboot, Amused mumbled this incantation:

> One guys computer had to be backed up, he was asked what he wanted backed 
> up... the computer guy just rolled his eyes telling us about it.... thing 
> was full of porn.... so figure all these guys and gals in cubicles wasting 
> time surfing these sites.... yeah, call it a real moral booster for the 
> rest of the personnel doing *real* work.
> 
>> It just creates distractions.
> 
> Sure does, we experienced it.

And a porn vector!

-- 
No, I won't fix your Windows computer!

On Tue, 13 Jan 2004 18:22:44 -0800, Amused wrote:

> Terry wrote:
> 
>> Amused threw some tea leaves on the floor
>>  and this is what they wrote:
>> 
>>> Terry wrote:
>>>
>>>> From :http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1434432,00.asp
>>>> 
>>>> However, some IT professionals like Jim Lambright, an IT manager with
>>>> Roth Manufacturing Corp., in New London, Ohio, find themselves in a
>>>> Catch-22 situation. The companies are running outdated PC business
>>>> applications but are not making enough profit to upgrade their
>>>> hardware and software.
>>>> 
>>>> "Oftentimes, the budgets just don't allow for all these fancy
>>>> upgrades. It's the 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' scenario. I'm in
>>>> Northern Ohio and the region is losing businesses so fast it's
>>>> unreal. Upgrades are not a prerequisite if your profit loss margin is
>>>> in the less than one percent range," he said.
>>>> 
>>>> "Also, to upgrade both the desktop and network operating system will
>>>> not improve production on the shop floor, which is where the money is
>>>> made," Lambright observed. "I can't even come close to being able to
>>>> pitch a justification proposal when I know we need new machinery on
>>>> the shop floor. That is why Linux will become increasingly popular in
>>>> the business world."
>>>
>>> I would agree with this guy.
>>> Internet Explorer, antispam, zonealarm are really useless programs to
>>> run on a shop floor.
>>> We've had to run some old machines running DOS, novell, win3.1 despite
>>> uppermanagement saying we're going to be a windows 2K company.....
>>> yeah, right, hahaha.
>>> Those old machines kept churning the company's bread-n-butter,
>>> meanwhile, upper management went into a spending frenzy on windows
>>> software that looked good (to upper management) but was a real dog to
>>> the people who were then required to use it. Plenty of computers
>>> bought that ran 20x faster (hardware wise), but slower to get to what
>>> the people needed. The workforce kept using the old unix terminals
>>> until they were finally pulled out. Meanwhile, upper management and
>>> engineering would not be seen very often because now they had
>>> internet, surfing, gaming, email. Sad to see it go under, but I would
>>> have to say that windows contributed to that company becoming
>>> non-competitive. Bye-bye.
>> 
>> Wow, that's a story!
>> 
>> Ernie Ball said that one of the reasons they love Linux is because the
>> workforce get what they need, and that's *all*.
> 
> ...and that *all* is a key point to remember too. We had some machines
> that *had* to have the basic access to hardware that DOS had... latest
> software we were able to manage on the machines was win95. They really
> played havoc on the network connections (bwahahaha). one or more
> personnel kept reloading internet explorer on these machines because
> win95 really has poor restrictions (was designed for 1 person, 1 user)
> therefore welcome to anonymous surfing when you're supposed to be
> working. The DOS and win3.1 machines were okay because they had no
> surfing access.
> 
> ...then you add the point that different windows machines had different
> fonts etc., so if you created a DOC in one machine (say win95), it
> looked different on a win2k machine (imagine trying to view some
> documents that were out of alignment due to fonts).
> 
> About *the software* that ran like molasses... it was designed so that
> it was slick for *the manager*, but for the 100+ employees that were
> supposed to use it, it was like adding 10minutes of wasted time trying
> to get the info you were supposed to get.... figure 10minutes x 100+
> employees x (1 to more times access per day), and you realize you got a
> waste of time on hand. I'd swear Dilbert's pointy-haired boss must've
> been somewhere in management.
> 
>> Ernie Ball in News.com interview:-
>> 
>> The other thing is that if you look at productivity. If you put a bunch
>> of stuff on people's desktops they don't need to do their job, chances
>> are they're going to use it. I don't have that problem. If all you need
>> is word processing, that's all you're going to have on your desktop, a
>> word processor. It's not going to have Paint or PowerPoint.
>> 
>> I tell you what, our hits to eBay went down greatly when not everybody
>> had a Web browser.
>> 
>> For somebody whose job is filling out forms all day, invoicing and
>> exporting, why do they need a Web browser? The idea that if you have
>> 2,000 terminals they all have to have a Web browser, that's crazy.
> 
> One guys computer had to be backed up, he was asked what he wanted
> backed up... the computer guy just rolled his eyes telling us about
> it.... thing was full of porn.... so figure all these guys and gals in
> cubicles wasting time surfing these sites.... yeah, call it a real moral
> booster for the rest of the personnel doing *real* work.
> 
>> It just creates distractions.
> 
> Sure does, we experienced it.

run your stuff behind a decent firewall with a proxy server that
implements a whitelist of approved sites... that way you can easily
implement a company intranet with message forums and run sales and wants
lists etc.

Place I used to work for had a timer system set up so that employees had a
strict half hours browsing time for the real web (but some stuff was still
blacklisted). That way, they could legitimately use the web in their own
time for personal matters like booking tickets, searching for cars for
sale and good online deals etc...

-- 
Has your ms-windows computer been turned into a SPAM server???
<http://www.computerweekly.com/Article123378.htm>

paul cooke wrote:

> run your stuff behind a decent firewall with a proxy server that
> implements a whitelist of approved sites... that way you can easily
> implement a company intranet with message forums and run sales and wants
> lists etc.
>
> Place I used to work for had a timer system set up so that employees had a
> strict half hours browsing time for the real web (but some stuff was still
> blacklisted). That way, they could legitimately use the web in their own
> time for personal matters like booking tickets, searching for cars for
> sale and good online deals etc...

Timer doesn't work for engineering. You could go a solid week of surfing 
for info. You could go a solid week without touching the net.
Ripping down cubicle walls are more effective in combatting wasted time.

Approved whitelist sounds easy but it isn't that simple.
For example, take sales.... sales needs to scout-out new potential 
customers. What happens if a new customer isn't on the approved list?

Take parts purchasing.... they have to find parts, plus they have to make 
sure that the parts they buy are cheap & meets the criteria.
It doesn't necessarily have to be made by manufacturer A, but can be made 
by manufacter B, C.....     Not only are distributors busy merging, 
buying-out each other or disappearing off the map, but new ones sprout up 
too. Take a look here www.digikey.com and type/search for LED and you will 
probably hit over 100 types of LEDs. Now take a look at the technical docs 
for that..... notice how you're whitelist is going to mushroom in size.
Meanwhile, you got the porn sites buying up the abandoned names, therefore 
what was on your whitelist is now a potential porn site.

Engineering needs to search out new parts, that possibly not even the 
purchasers know about.... that's what R&D is supposed to be about... create 
something new..... so where's the whitelist now?
I didn't even touch on car rentals, hotels, conventions, as you mentioned, 
but that whitelist is already a problem.

Anyhow, I wasn't part of the computer dep, so I had zero say.
Then you add the point that these window program sales bypassed the comp 
dep and went straight to the upper management anyways.
The comp dep wanted nothing to do with the programs, but management thought 
it was normal for the comp dep to not want new "innovation" anyways.

They finally started banning yahoo (mail, stock market) and a couple other 
places, but by then, it didn't matter as the company was on the way to 
"downsizing", "rightsizing", or whatever nice word you like to apply to the 
axe.

Linux would have been nice there, because there were "common" machines in 
"common" areas. Some needed access to stuff, many did not. Therefore the 
same machine under user X could have tools x,y,z available but under the 
workforce, it could probably do what you mention with perhaps 1/2hour for 
surfing, and no access to tools y or z. Some engineers had to roam the shop 
floor, and it was odd having to run all the way back to their cubicle to 
run application a, b, c when a roaming X terminal would have been nice.

Amused threw some tea leaves on the floor
 and this is what they wrote:

[...] 
> Linux would have been nice there, because there were "common" machines in 
> "common" areas. Some needed access to stuff, many did not. Therefore the 
> same machine under user X could have tools x,y,z available but under the 
> workforce, it could probably do what you mention with perhaps 1/2hour for 
> surfing, and no access to tools y or z. Some engineers had to roam the shop 
> floor, and it was odd having to run all the way back to their cubicle to 
> run application a, b, c when a roaming X terminal would have been nice.
>

FUBAR!

-- 
              Kind Regards from Terry 
    My Desktop is powered by GNU/LinuX, Gentoo-1.4_rc2   
         New Homepage: http://milkstone.d2.net.au/          
 ** Linux Registration Number: 103931,  http://counter.li.org **