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‘Fix My Computer’ Cry Echos on Social Media; Air Force CIO Responds

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Re: ‘Fix My Computer’ Cry Echos on Social Media; Air Force CIO Responds

#151

Post by cormacrelf »

jaywalk wrote: post #140
cormacrelf wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, that would help with making technology more accessible. Developers, especially highly paid ones, are as selfish as anyone else on the planet. If you have a strategy to make them care about literally a single other person, I suggest you go for it.

According to your argument, I should be blindfolded and use a screen reader while I'm developing. That's just absurd.

My argument was that it is a rational business decision to sometimes constrain your developers by making them use what the users will.As the upper comment said people at Google often propose. If you do not, then they get utterly out of touch. I didn’t say you have to do it all the time.

Re: ‘Fix My Computer’ Cry Echos on Social Media; Air Force CIO Responds

#152

Post by mysterydip »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #53
mysterydip wrote: post #21

The crux of the issue is in these four words: "lowest price technically acceptable." In the name of saving money, good intentions cause more waste in time and money.

I disagree. I think the crux of the issue is that modern computing is garbage. https://www.google.com/search?q=frustrating My, a lot of those images involve computers for some reason...

I agree with you, but that's the battle everyone is fighting. They have to do it with one hand tied behind their cost-effective back.

Re: ‘Fix My Computer’ Cry Echos on Social Media; Air Force CIO Responds

#153

Post by ferrumfist »

ChicagoBoy11 wrote: post #3

Not to be missed in the article: The Air Force has a "chief of esports and virtual fitness"

I'm not surprised. I've noticed the Air Force has partnered with a few notable esports orgs in the last few years. As a former USAF vet, I totally get it. We are hard-pressed for competent IT folks and our IT presence is only growing. Generally, it's far easier to train a new recruit in the fundamentals of IT if they spent their teenage years building PCs and playing video games compared to someone who did not.

Re: ‘Fix My Computer’ Cry Echos on Social Media; Air Force CIO Responds

#154

Post by 3np »

joshstrange wrote: post #103
_fat_santa wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't even have to be low end hardware. I just gave back a laptop to a client that I was working with in healthcare. It's a 16" MBP with an i7 and 32GB of RAM. The machine itself is really fast but gets bogged down by all the other crap it has to connect to. They had McAfee endpoint security on these things and it would prevent any unauthorized apps from running as well as hog between 50-70% of the CPU during it…

Don't get me started on MDM and the like. It's a cancer for machines and causes all sorts of issues. I understand that some industries have certain compliance that either forces them to do this (or makes them think they need to) but I will not work in those industries. Send me a clean MBP and trust me to do my job. In fact, more and more I'd rather just a stipend and I'll buy my hardware. I've managed to effectively…

MDM?

Re: ‘Fix My Computer’ Cry Echos on Social Media; Air Force CIO Responds

#155

Post by lowbloodsugar »

_fat_santa wrote: post #122
Beltiras wrote: post #107

I'm astounded that the military uses Windows at all. It would seem a no-brainer to make everyone use a better protected OS. Which *nix is a fine starting inquiry.

The "vendorization" of government and government contracting is astounding. I interned for a government contractor back in college and it was floored by some of the decisions being made. Basically we were not allowed to use any free/open source software. The reason is that we couldn't "purchase a support contract" for the thing we were using. Not that we would actually try and buy support, company just wanted the cap…

Sure. It's almost as if we live in some kind of dystopian alternative universe where the trillion dollar defense budget is actually just a giant trough for businesses big enough to bribe (sorry, "lobby") government stooges into giving them a cut. I guess in that world, we'd have a lot of PR about having the #1 military, and yet we'd consistently fail at every long term military goal, up to and including basic protection of our allies and meeting promised mutual defense statements. Sure we could invade the odd tropical island and depose a warlord, maybe trade some class A drugs, but actually defending an ally? Oof. It'd be a world where we are, in fact, powerless. The kind of world where we'd say "Russia would be stupid to actually cut off gas to Europe as Europe would have to find another source and then Russia would have no leverage nor market." while at the same time cutting off chip IP to China, who, er, presumably won't develop their own chip IP, and won't become the #1 chip super power, because that's not what the President wants to happen and if it does he'll throw a tantrum and make a pee pee? In that world, the USA is over. The only option the US has for relevance in that world is to go to war with Russia, and bomb that pipeline to Europe while they're at it, just to get Germany off the teat. But it can't. Because "world's #1 military" is just PR.

Good job we don't live in that world.

Re: ‘Fix My Computer’ Cry Echos on Social Media; Air Force CIO Responds

#156

Post by imperialdrive »

newaccount2021 wrote: post #73

You cannot fix problems on this scale with moderation or half-measures. You must smash the system and restart. Get rid of Windows, reset the entire chain by moving to Chromebooks. Schools have proven this truth: the only way to deploy to large numbers of transient and unsophisticated users is to go thin-client. That will force the DOD to build scalable networked services. Most of the time, using off-the-shelf service…

You're probably getting down voted by government contractors that wouldn't like this idea one bit.

Re: ‘Fix My Computer’ Cry Echos on Social Media; Air Force CIO Responds

#157

Post by ninju »

projectileboy wrote: post #136
joshstrange wrote: post #72

I will never understand when a company/government entity pay people a high salary then give them crap or low-end hardware. You should be maxing out dev machines and the rest of the company should rarely see a spinner or have to wait on their tech. It's a huge waste of time that you are paying for. I once calculated how much time I wasted waiting on slow processes at a job and then multiplied it by my effective hourly…

One big problem is misaligned incentives. At most big orgs, you have an infosec dept with authority to put all kinds of virus scanning, etc etc on every computer in the org. They get rewarded if there are no incidents; they do not get penalized if they make your machine impossible to use.

> they do not get penalized if they make your machine impossible to use.

An "impossible to use" machine won't have any incidents reported against it

Re: ‘Fix My Computer’ Cry Echos on Social Media; Air Force CIO Responds

#158

Post by 3np »

dekhn wrote: post #92
joshstrange wrote: post #72

I will never understand when a company/government entity pay people a high salary then give them crap or low-end hardware. You should be maxing out dev machines and the rest of the company should rarely see a spinner or have to wait on their tech. It's a huge waste of time that you are paying for. I once calculated how much time I wasted waiting on slow processes at a job and then multiplied it by my effective hourly…

I've heard an alternative, proposed often at Google: give devs the weakest systems possible: slow flaky net, slow machines with minimal memory so they are forced to make efficient systems for people in third world countries (key to rapid growth for many products). Personally I don't care much about my laptop except htat it can drive a large external display and does fast networking. I only use it to connect to a VM I…

TFA seems to be from the perspective of said users, most of whom are not devs.

Re: ‘Fix My Computer’ Cry Echos on Social Media; Air Force CIO Responds

#159

Post by ehutch79 »

joshstrange wrote: post #103
_fat_santa wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't even have to be low end hardware. I just gave back a laptop to a client that I was working with in healthcare. It's a 16" MBP with an i7 and 32GB of RAM. The machine itself is really fast but gets bogged down by all the other crap it has to connect to. They had McAfee endpoint security on these things and it would prevent any unauthorized apps from running as well as hog between 50-70% of the CPU during it…

Don't get me started on MDM and the like. It's a cancer for machines and causes all sorts of issues. I understand that some industries have certain compliance that either forces them to do this (or makes them think they need to) but I will not work in those industries. Send me a clean MBP and trust me to do my job. In fact, more and more I'd rather just a stipend and I'll buy my hardware. I've managed to effectively…

MDM itself, on macs is pretty lightweight. The vendor used to mdm might be installing unneeded stuff, but the protocol isn't heavy.

On macs MDM is also needed for a bunch of enterprise setttings. like pre authorizing apps to do stuff, or remote locking 'missing' machines.

Re: ‘Fix My Computer’ Cry Echos on Social Media; Air Force CIO Responds

#160

Post by ferrumfist »

Ensorceled wrote: post #77

> Knausenberger called this “a cultural issue … We need people to call the help desk to complain and order a new laptop when it breaks.” She said a service culture of stoically persevering in the face of impossible odds didn’t do anyone any favors. “If we suffer in silence it doesn’t get fixed,” she said. Apparently all you need to do is call IT and get a new computer! I wonder why none of these service men and women…

I worked as a helpdesk tech in the USAF years ago. The policy on who gets a new computer if they ask generally comes down to fitting into one of the following criteria:

1. How fucked is the PC? Do we have the skills/time to fix it?

2. Is the person an officer or important civilian? Are they in a leadership role?

If a low-ranking airman had a slow laptop, we'd give them advice and tips to speed up the PC and send them on their way unless it was a chronic issue. If it was a high-ranking officer who had a slight performance degradation, we'd replace the PC that day. These weren't codified rules, it was just the culture of our organization and the military in general.

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