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Users Don't Read Signs Either

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  • Users Don't Read Signs Either

    As I've noted in several of my IT-related posts, The Client is gradually transitioning from the old "ADE" destkop environment to the new "ENVY" desktop environment.

    Most of the troubles that come with such things have been shaken out at this point, and the process has been smoothed out. Users are notified when their transition is scheduled, and they are permitted to defer it at least twice before they have to provide an explicit reason why they cannot transition. (e.g. the tools they use have not been ported to ENVY yet)

    As part of the notification, especially once they confirm their transition, they are given various instructions to make sure the transition goes through smoothly. Things such as:
    - Back-up your Desktop files into a folder on your network drive
    - Make sure you have your IM password memorized
    - Make sure your ID certificates are up to date
    - etc.

    Twice today I've gotten calls from Lusers who aren't able to get into the IM client. Back on ADE, this would be simple to fix-- the database where users can reset their IM password has a button that allows anyone to send any other user a link to the database.

    Well, the button still works fine for users who are still in ADE. Users in ENVY, however, don't get a working link. It's a known issue that is being worked on, but we have no timetable for when it will be fixed. What I end up doing is remoting in so I can manually open the database from its server for the user.

    Both times today, I advised the Lusers that a lot of people haven't been paying attention to the transition instructions before assisting them. In other words, quietly admonishing them while sounding like I'm reassuring them that "you're not stupid."
    PWNADE(TM) - Serve up a glass today! | PWNZER - An act of pwnage so awesome, it's like the victim got hit by a tank.

    There are only Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse because I choose to walk!

  • #2
    Been there, remoted into that. As bad as customers are with signs, actual instructions are even worse, particularly with computers. On the plus side, if it's legitimately a known issue and not just them, I don't mind reassuring them of such.
    Cheap, fast, good. Pick two.
    They want us to read minds, I want read/write.

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    • #3
      Why can't people READ?

      But I think if ADE is anything like CDE, which it sounds like, why on Earth transition away from it? I just installed CDE on my laptop, and it's the best thing ever!

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      • #4
        Quoth Silent-Hunter View Post
        Why can't people READ?

        But I think if ADE is anything like CDE, which it sounds like, why on Earth transition away from it? I just installed CDE on my laptop, and it's the best thing ever!
        "ADE" in this case just stands for "A Desktop Environment." I'm obfuscating things like crazy, not just because of the site, but because of the contract with The Client.

        I actually prefer ENVY over ADE in this case, because a lot of applications actually work noticeably faster.
        PWNADE(TM) - Serve up a glass today! | PWNZER - An act of pwnage so awesome, it's like the victim got hit by a tank.

        There are only Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse because I choose to walk!

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        • #5
          Oh right. Weird, usually on any given machine, older software will run faster because it was designed for a machine with less resources. But that's not always true I imagine.

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          • #6
            Depends on the software. A number of pieces of software has a upper cap that is programmed in which would prevent it from working beyond that level. It's usually done and most noticed with speed sensitive software like computer games. That said it's not always done. The earlier Sierra adventure games were not clock capped for example to save space. Even when you can get them running (like in a DOS emulator) playing them is impossible because the speed is just too fast. One of the most notable example is in one of the Liesure Suit Larry games where a part of it required doing a certain number of activities. Due to the limiter not being done, running it without a fix in place would require several hundred thousand repetitions for each activity to complete. A human playing it at the best would take several years just to do that.
            I AM the evil bastard!
            A+ Certified IT Technician

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            • #7
              Problem with DOS games was that the usual way of ensuring that the game ran at correct speed was to measure the CPU speed at startup, then pause based on that between each frame. Speed measurement was done with a simple loop that ran for a specified amount of time (usually a tenth of a second to a second), and just increased a variable.

              When computers got faster, the loop ran fast enough that the variable overflowed (reached the maximum value it could hold, and then reverted to zero). Depending on how the game was programmed, the variable overflowing could result in an immediate crash, or it would be ignored, only to cause the game to run too fast (since it wouldn't pause for enough time).

              As for Sierra games, the problem there was that the games used several timers. Some were based on RTC (real-time clock, the chip that takes care of time and date in computer), and others were based on loops I described above. This is why the games still appeared to work normally most of the time (since the majority of game was using RTC), but certain scenes failed on faster computers (I know exactly which LSL scene you're talking about, and there were also several places in Space Quest 4 that were nearly impossible to play through, and one scene in Space Quest 6 that simply crashed).

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              • #8
                I'm mostly referring to a laptop I bought in 1998, that had Windows 98 on it. It ran like crap, so I put MS-DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.1 on it, and it ran like a dream. And also Common Desktop Environment, which I now use on Linux as my default desktop environment because it runs so much faster than GNOME 2 or MATE.

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                • #9
                  Quoth Jay 2K Winger View Post
                  Both times today, I advised the Lusers that a lot of people haven't been paying attention to the transition instructions before assisting them. In other words, quietly admonishing them while sounding like I'm reassuring them that "you're not stupid."
                  That was something I, and the rest of the help desk team when I was still in the military, would say. "You're not the only one having this issue today." We knew it meant "You're not the only one who doesn't pay attention to what we are telling you.", and we'd all do the "roll eyes, evil grin" thing.
                  The customer is not always right. Most of the time, the customer is a clueless moron. If this offends you, you are this moron.

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