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People sometimes think that I'm anti-geek. I'm not. I'm far less anti-geek than I'm anti-marketing, anti-sales and anti-'human resources'. And, indeed, I'm far less anti- those three groups than people think. Some people in those roles are human and, indeed, personable. And, although I doubt that I could ever emotionally relate to someone in sales, I realize that they perform a role without which I quite probably wouldn't have a job (I know this because I have heard the good ones at work).
In the land of geekdom, I am eternally thankful for their existence every day of the week. I 'use' software more than most people I know. By that I mean that I like to use the obscure bits in Excel that only geeks would think to put in (most 'power-users' of Excel at work probably use little more if the capabilities of Visicalc). Pokertracker is my lifeblood. I make big-dollar decisions based on pokertracker stats. Pokerstove is FREE, goddammit. However, in other areas, I remain stuck in the 1980s. I still use CTRL+A, CTRL+X, CTRL+C and CTRL+V, mainly because nothing has been produced that is more efficient. I still use ALT+XXXX codes (the use of the four-number code being my one nod to modernization) because they are faster than any of the "insert symbol" systems Mocrosoft has come up with since. I still write HTML stuff in "rawish" notepad code. I'm used to it.
But where software people seem to fall down is in assessing the life-expectancy of a piece of software with any accuracy at all. And, usually, they think that it will survive for a shorter time than it does.
This is, of course, because they are geeks. They want the 'new' when it comes to programming capability. Most people are not geeks. For them, any time learning how a new piece of software works is (a) time wasted and (b) a pain in the arse, about as much fun as learning to use a more efficient keyboard. Even in entertainment, some people get more fun out of Pacman than out of "Empire of Xanthar, expansion pack 82 (100gb disc space required)". There is nothing inherently good about a software game that, to fully appreciate, you have to give up the rest of your life for.
So, it often doesn't matter how out-of-date a piece of software is (or, in the case of keyboards, how out of date the layout is). If it does the job sufficiently well enough, it will survive. More is needed to make people change software (and the layout on a keyboard, rather than the keyboard itself, is 'software' of a fashion) than the fact that 'there is something better out there'.
I'm sure that there are still people out there using Locoscript and an Amstrad 256. Why not? They are comfortable with it. They would probably like to use Locoscript with a flash new computer.
I'll admit that I'm suffering from a bit of trepidation at the advent of Pokertracker 3, or whatever it is going to be called. This will probably be a complete revamp and will take me a few months to get used to.
+++++++++
Although I have a sneaking admiration for good salespeople, my contempt for crap salespeople (those who do not bother to understand what they are selling) knows no bottom. For similar reasons, I have no faith in companies who outsource their sales processes. BT and Daily Telegraph are two who have hired external companies to try to sell me some of their products. Needless to say, the salesperson knows fuck-all about what they are selling.
I suspect that the same would apply to the salesmen in the mobile phone shops when it comes to mobile broadband. Hell, there are so many of these shops in London, my feeling is that, by the law of restrictions on supply, most of the sales staff are unlikely to know much about contracts (which is what they are really selling), let alone the hardware.
Here's a simple test question I thought I might try. Most of these ten quid a month mobile broadband contracts have a data limit. After you exceed that limit (about 3gb in the higher price contrtacts, I think), you pay quite a lump for additional data. The salesman's script would probably include the spiel that 1gb is '20,000 e-mails' or something like that.
However, what's the average size of the data that Microsoft throws at you every month for Windows updates? And what's the average size of the McAfee data that I seem to download every fucking day? In other words, if you had a 3gb a month contract, how much of that would be eaten up by downloads that are 'involuntary'?
Unfortunately, I don't know the answer to that myself; and, like a good lawyer, I never ask salespeople questions to which I do not know the answer, mainly because I know that they have no motive to tell me the truth.
__________
In the land of geekdom, I am eternally thankful for their existence every day of the week. I 'use' software more than most people I know. By that I mean that I like to use the obscure bits in Excel that only geeks would think to put in (most 'power-users' of Excel at work probably use little more if the capabilities of Visicalc). Pokertracker is my lifeblood. I make big-dollar decisions based on pokertracker stats. Pokerstove is FREE, goddammit. However, in other areas, I remain stuck in the 1980s. I still use CTRL+A, CTRL+X, CTRL+C and CTRL+V, mainly because nothing has been produced that is more efficient. I still use ALT+XXXX codes (the use of the four-number code being my one nod to modernization) because they are faster than any of the "insert symbol" systems Mocrosoft has come up with since. I still write HTML stuff in "rawish" notepad code. I'm used to it.
But where software people seem to fall down is in assessing the life-expectancy of a piece of software with any accuracy at all. And, usually, they think that it will survive for a shorter time than it does.
This is, of course, because they are geeks. They want the 'new' when it comes to programming capability. Most people are not geeks. For them, any time learning how a new piece of software works is (a) time wasted and (b) a pain in the arse, about as much fun as learning to use a more efficient keyboard. Even in entertainment, some people get more fun out of Pacman than out of "Empire of Xanthar, expansion pack 82 (100gb disc space required)". There is nothing inherently good about a software game that, to fully appreciate, you have to give up the rest of your life for.
So, it often doesn't matter how out-of-date a piece of software is (or, in the case of keyboards, how out of date the layout is). If it does the job sufficiently well enough, it will survive. More is needed to make people change software (and the layout on a keyboard, rather than the keyboard itself, is 'software' of a fashion) than the fact that 'there is something better out there'.
I'm sure that there are still people out there using Locoscript and an Amstrad 256. Why not? They are comfortable with it. They would probably like to use Locoscript with a flash new computer.
I'll admit that I'm suffering from a bit of trepidation at the advent of Pokertracker 3, or whatever it is going to be called. This will probably be a complete revamp and will take me a few months to get used to.
+++++++++
Although I have a sneaking admiration for good salespeople, my contempt for crap salespeople (those who do not bother to understand what they are selling) knows no bottom. For similar reasons, I have no faith in companies who outsource their sales processes. BT and Daily Telegraph are two who have hired external companies to try to sell me some of their products. Needless to say, the salesperson knows fuck-all about what they are selling.
I suspect that the same would apply to the salesmen in the mobile phone shops when it comes to mobile broadband. Hell, there are so many of these shops in London, my feeling is that, by the law of restrictions on supply, most of the sales staff are unlikely to know much about contracts (which is what they are really selling), let alone the hardware.
Here's a simple test question I thought I might try. Most of these ten quid a month mobile broadband contracts have a data limit. After you exceed that limit (about 3gb in the higher price contrtacts, I think), you pay quite a lump for additional data. The salesman's script would probably include the spiel that 1gb is '20,000 e-mails' or something like that.
However, what's the average size of the data that Microsoft throws at you every month for Windows updates? And what's the average size of the McAfee data that I seem to download every fucking day? In other words, if you had a 3gb a month contract, how much of that would be eaten up by downloads that are 'involuntary'?
Unfortunately, I don't know the answer to that myself; and, like a good lawyer, I never ask salespeople questions to which I do not know the answer, mainly because I know that they have no motive to tell me the truth.
__________
