Fek'Lar
They pay me to think. These are my thoughts. Do you think they are getting their money's worth?
The Crapolla According to Fek'Lar
You Know You're DOOMED When...
your boss thinks that leadership skills is buying everyone coffee in the morning.
You've stumbled onto another issue of The Crapolla, a journal written for software professionals. No not the managers; I mean the people who do the work.
This Crapolla is sponsored by...
In This Issue...
Lucy! Time For Economics 101!
Drone in Sector 7 writes...
My manager sent this letter to me. Can you translate? Oh, and, how about a Diet Coke?
List of information a Helpdesk can provide
When they open a ticket to move the ticket along. Ask me. I know this doesn't make sense. I know we always ask for the log file. I know they need to provide their credentials. I know that each product has different troubleshooting. Also, could you mention what logs might be helpful that a wife situation a customer helpdesk might be able to have the user open up and read specific things from the logs.
Hmmm... I think your manager wants to know how to read Wife Logs. This is very different than Man Pages. Wife Logs only have one debug level: 0. Wife Logs look like this:
Him: What would you like for your birthday?
Her: Nothing.
The problem is the log is incorrect and if you take it at face value, you're in deep crap.
Tell your manager to learn the English language.
No Diet Coke for you!
How's This For A Business Model?
Recently, Trouble and I were discussing the future of media in the post-analog television world that awaits us in 2009. Trouble posed the question, "If everything is digital, do we really need television stations?"
With a little pondering, I have to say, no, we don't need television stations. In addition, there's an opportunity to wipe out television and movie piracy by changing the business models.
At CES this past January just about every new TV had a Ethernet port on it. A few had wireless, but that's pretty useless for HD content. The other fairly important news was that a large number of the TV's were truly network aware being able to be assigned an IP address. Although the manufactures were content with content from places like YouTube, Sony was asked point blank, "What's keeping you from using the gigabit port to input HD content?" The answer was simple... content protection. Translate this to Copy Protection. I think you can protect the content by going in the exact opposite direction. Make it freely available.
To do what I am going to describe will require a hell of a lot of bandwidth. Your DSL or cable modem isn't going to cut it. But, if bandwidth grows as it has in the past 30 years, we'll be there soon. The second requirement of this new business model is courage on the part of movie studios. To date, Hollywood is very short of courage. So this has a snowball's chance.
Let's assume we have thick pipes going into our houses. We know one day this will happen. It's post 2009 so we all must have digital televisions, or we can read books. But I think the average Joe is going for the TV. If your television were network aware (it will be) it could look for programming.
Now let's say you're Paramount Pictures, an old studio with an enormous catalog of movies, and television. You're very smart. You've converted all of your catalog to a digital form for the sake of preservation. Anything digital can be delivered over the net.
It's amazing how in the last century the old catalog kept paying and paying. For decades Paramount has been making a fortune off of I Love Lucy. The show has been playing continuously somewhere in the world for over 60 years. But Paramount has also been losing money for over a decade to people who make copies. What to do? I say put it on the internet. No payment system, freely available to any TV who asks for it.
Can I get a "Huh?" from the Hollywood Suits?
Just because Paramount put it on the internet doesn't mean it has given up. In fact, this is a new opportunity to make money. The television requests the episode where Lucy works in the candy factory. Paramount starts streaming it to the TV and drops in commercials at the appropriate spots. But theses are more valuable commercials because Paramount targets the ad based on the show requested and the IP address of the TV which gives Paramount an idea of geographic location of the requester. If Paramount tracks cookies it should be able to figure out some demographics of the watcher and target even better. And best yet, Paramount doesn't have to share revenue with the TV station!
The upside is enormous. The customer's demand that he wants to see whatever he wants, whenever he wants, on whatever he owns, has been satisfied. The studio gets all of the money from advertisers who love targeted ads. And finally, since getting this show legitimately is easier than stealing, piracy dies off for this product. Will some people still record the show, cut out the commercials and trade them? Yes, but the number of pirate copies is going to be very small. Smaller than the rounding errors on Paramount's balance sheet.
Will this happen? I've learned to stop making predictions. But it is a lovely business plan, eh? The same internet that made piracy possible can also kill it off. Piracy is simply a symptom of the media companies not meeting their customers' demands. Whenever this happens in a market, customers find another way to get the products they want.
What Did You Know, and When Did You Know It?
Ok, I'm pissed. I talk with everyone on our India team every business day. This takes two calls to hit all the shifts. One day in the afternoon call, I am told the team has lost database access - a day ago! I ask what was done about it, and end the call to go get access restored.
They need database access to do their job. Without it, they are sitting on their hands. It also means the morning shift was down, and didn't tell me. That's why I'm pissed.
The next morning I ask who knew the database was down. The first response was to tell me that some guy on the evening shift had started a trouble ticket. I tell them that wasn't an answer to my question. I wanted to know who on this phone call knew 24 hours ago that the database was down and didn't mention it. Again, they start talking about this other guy. Again, I cut them off. This wasn't an answer.
I've seen this game before. It appears to be part of Indian culture to avoid at all costs telling your customer something he doesn't want to hear. I do a roll call. They can only answer yes or no to the question, "Did you know the database was down 24 hours ago?" To a person, all of them knew. Bloody amateurs.
I'm supposed to transfer more job functions to these guys. But, truthfully, I just can't trust them to tell me if the company is out of business. That, I think, is the real problem with outsourcing. Your financial health is not the concern of the individual contributor from another company. If you die, he can go get another job. Meanwhile, your stock options are in the crapper.
I've got 18 more house payments to make. Then they can off-shore and out-source my ass all they want. Until then, I've got to ride this herd of cats.
This Issue's Headline submission to the National Daily World Enquiring Globe.
Angelina Jolie Adopting Children From All Over World!
Superstar Trying to Collect the Entire Set!
Heard in the halls of various software companies.
"I made Vista faster."
"How?"
"I turned off all the shit."
"Could you hand me that lung, please?"
"He's got issues, but he's got medication for it."
"You're complaining because your computer doesn't suck???"
"I don't know if it's because I'm happy, or if five shots a day is bad."
"It's just so stiff, it's painful."
Where's my tweezers?
Fek'Lar
They pay me to think. These are my thoughts. Do you think they are getting their money's worth?
Remember: The Crapolla contains my personal opinions. That's right they're mine, so get your own! And you kids get off my lawn!
Although written with the software professional in mind, my mind tends to wander all over the place, and I sometimes write about politics, mass stoopidity, dumb things I saw, and whatever else comes to mind.
From time to time, I use salty language, thus The Crapolla is not intended for children, or certain people in the Bush Administration.
This whole mess is copyright © 2007 by LowComDom Performances, all rights reserved. Wanna send this to your friends? Go ahead and pass out the URL.
Hey, you can subscribe to this rag by sending a message to majordomo@lowcomdom.com. On the first line of your letter type subscribe crapolla. Unsubscribing is the same, just change the command to unsubscribe crapolla
feed available from http://www.lowcomdom.com/crapolla/index.rss
EOJ
<-- Read the previous Crapolla or Read the next Crapolla -->