justinchudgar - Slashdot User

How Do You Justify the Existence of IT? 411

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday November 07, 2008 @03:18PM from the all-about-roi dept.

bakamaki writes "I work for a small manufacturing company as a SysAdmin. My boss is a DBA. We are the only IT employees. He recently decided to record hours spent on his projects and then evaluate how much time the databases he writes save the employees. Then he translates that into a $ figure. He's asking me to do something similar but I'm kinda at a loss. It seems most of the stuff I do is preventative, IE care and feeding of servers and network infrastructure in addition to all the break fix stuff I do for the user base with their desktops. When in this position what do you folks usually do?"

Comment Re:the goose cocks proved unsatisfying (Score 2, Funny) 380

by justinchudgar on Thursday September 11, 2008 @04:54PM (#24968585) Attached to: Lenovo Removes Linux Option For Home Buyers

I see what you did there. Very clever. How is that working out for you? ...Dr. Phil?! Is that you?

OK, Smartguy. Please explain the difference in logical content between these three conversations:

"Nobody voted for Nader." "I did."

Translation: Nader received a negligible quantity of votes. Your vote was one of the negligible few.

"There was no demand for this product." "I bought one."

Translation: There was so little demand for this product that it was not viable. There were so few of you who purchased this product that it was not profitable.

"P is an empty set." "I am a member of P."

Translation: P is an empty set. You are an element of P. You are NULL.

Effect of Virtual Avatars On Real-Life Behavior 189

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday April 28, 2008 @03:54PM from the color-me-skeptical dept.

Betsy Carroll writes "The Stanford research group on virtual teams discusses how the appearance of one's avatar in virtual worlds has an effect on real life behavior in an NPR interview. The researcher they speak with focuses on the concept of vicarious reinforcement for changing behavior. They also talk a bit about identity issues surrounding the avatar and the 'real' physical self."

Average Web Page Size Triples Since 2003 241

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday April 28, 2008 @09:31AM from the just-the-freshmen-fifteen dept.

Andy King writes "Within the last five years, the size of the average web page has more than tripled, and the number of external objects has nearly doubled. While broadband users have experienced somewhat faster response times, narrowband users have been left behind." The article breaks down a number of changes besides just page size, including image types and video duration.

Submission + - SPAM: Brace for impact: Collision between Smith's Cloud

Submitted by

WirePosted

on Sunday January 13, 2008 @09:09AM

WirePosted writes: "Smith's Cloud, a gigantic cloud of hydrogen gas, is heading toward our Milky Way Galaxy at over 540,000 miles per hour (864,000 kilometers per hour) — or about 150 miles per second. And, a collision is about to happen ...."
Link to Original Source

Submission + - SPAM: Much more to sustainability in IT than being green

Submitted by

WirePosted

on Sunday January 13, 2008 @08:51AM

WirePosted writes: "The Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA) is leading the charge to make 2008 'the year of the sustainable workplace' but says the concept of a sustainability in IT must be much wider than environment or 'green' issues and must address the threat posed to the industry's long term viability by a diminishing pool of human resources and increased competition for those resources."
Link to Original Source

Submission + - Needed: Simple Business Management Software

Submitted by

justinchudgar

on Friday March 02, 2007 @11:59AM

justinchudgar writes: "I'm starting to work as an independent IT consultant; and, I have pretty much switched to Linux on my systems. Overall, I am very happy with the transition away from proprietary software; but, I need a software package to manage the dirty details of my business. For me, that is basically tracking my time and creating invoices/statements for clients and then receiving payments against them. I do not resell hardware as a line of business; and, I do not (yet) have employees which makes it easier for now. What I want is:

integration with standard calendaring packages so that billable time can be entered via a browser anywhere and be accessible to the AR package

handle different bill rates for different service classes

generate invoices and statements without much manual labor

track account balances and service charges

have the capability to integrate credit card payment processing

not require endless hours of HOWTO or manpage slogging to get up and running

While I can muddle through with OO.org documents and spreadsheets + evolution calendar; this is not very efficient or clean. I have searched around the web, read innumerable articles, blogs and tried a bunch of stuff. Yet, I have yet to find a nice simple and user friendly package for my needs.

Compiere/Adempiere are overkill for what I need, and the personal finance apps that I managed to find are not good at doing things like handling multiple bill-rates and tracking receivables. I know that it is possible to get SlowBooks running with CrossOver or Wine, but, I have had so much misery with Intuit products in my clients offices that I will not allow them in mine.

I would really appreciate learning what open-source or commercial Linux apps you have seen working well for professional services firms that you run or serve. Thanks!"

Submission + - Lunar Eclipse, Saturday, March 3rd

Submitted by Quince alPillan on Friday March 02, 2007 @11:56AM

Quince alPillan writes: According to NASA's website, the will be a total lunar eclipse Saturday evening visible from every continent.

In the USA, the eclipse will already be underway when the moon rises on Saturday evening. ... Rising moons are often reddened by clouds or pollution, but this moon will be the deep, extraordinary red only seen during a lunar eclipse.

Submission + - Read An Actual RIAA 'Pre-Litigation' Letter

Submitted by TCB on Friday March 02, 2007 @11:45AM

TCB writes: As a follow-up to this week's "RIAA Announces New Campus Lawsuit Strategy," lolcollege has managed to secure one such pre-litigation letter and has it published for your viewing horror.

Submission + - Businesses Can't Quantify Outsourcing Value

Submitted by

narramissic

on Friday March 02, 2007 @11:37AM

narramissic writes: "According to a KPMG survey of CIOs and senior executives at more than 650 major enterprises worldwide, more than 4 in 10 businesses are unable to quantify the benefits of their outsourcing deals. And nearly 4 out of 5 respondents admitted they did not accurately know the cost of selecting their outsourcing providers. Still, the 'overall sentiment of the companies surveyed was that they were generally happy with their outsourcing arrangements,' giving credence to the old adage that ignorance is bliss."

Submission + - Protecting your eyesight in tech

Submitted by

trainsnpep

on Friday March 02, 2007 @11:33AM

trainsnpep writes: "I'm a sophomore undergrad CS major. I'm also lucky enough to have better-than-average eyesight. Now how do I keep the two? I've heard from various anecdotal sources that staring at a monitor too long is bad for your eyes, but I don't recall ever seeing an actual scientific study on it. How long is it safe to work before I should take an eye break, and how long should the break be? Do you know of any way to ease the supposed strain on my sight? Is it even an issue?"

Submission + - End of life for small businesses wireless email?

Submitted by

BillS

on Friday March 02, 2007 @11:28AM

BillS writes: "Good Technology (now owned by Motorola) recently announced they will not support their Good messaging product for mobile wireless email after May 31, 2007. As an IT manager for a small business, I'm asking the Slashdot community what to do? We have come to depend on this product and cannot justify upgrading to an Exchange Enterprise (including purchasing new hardware) just to keep this functionality. Furthermore, after having Exchange run in-house for many years, how could we possibly consider a hosted option. Are any of the open-source products ready for small business prime time?"

Submission + - Microsoft Exchange, meet your replacement.

Submitted by

IGnatius T Foobar

on Friday March 02, 2007 @11:23AM

IGnatius T Foobar writes: "In this article, Linux Journal discovers the Citadel groupware server, and boldly declares that this is the one — though not as widely known as some other solutions, Citadel is the ideal open source replacement for Microsoft Exchange."

Submission + - OpenXML to/from ODF Translator Available

Submitted by

WED Fan

on Friday March 02, 2007 @11:08AM

WED Fan writes: "A translator that can be plugged into Microsoft Office and competitors to translate ODF to OpenXML or OpenXML to ODF is now freely available, under BSD licensing.

The completed Open XML Translator enables conversion of documents from one format to the other and is available for anyone to download and use at no cost. When plugged into Microsoft® Office Word, for example, the Translator provides customers with the choice to open and save documents in ODF rather than the native Open XML format. The Translator may also be plugged into competing word processing programs that use ODF...

Now, you can use either format and maintain your own choice of word processor. Coolness."

Submission + - Microsoft Hiring Student Propagandists

Submitted by

Ed

on Friday February 16, 2007 @02:40AM

Ed writes: "It seems Microsoft is looking to hire students for "word of mouth advertising" on college campuses. The marketing service's code of ethics stresses the importance of honesty, but somehow I doubt they'd be willing to pay me to give my honest opinions..."

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