noel wrote:
I'll say it again, the tools IT staffs have are getting better, not worse. The motivation to lock shit down is getting greater, not smaller. Why? Security for one reason. Each non-work related site an employee goes to is an opportunity for a user to be a victim of social engineering, or to download trojans/virii/worms, etc. Efficiency for another. Most workplaces don't pay their users to check their stock portfolio, read the news, or check their personal email. It's a pretty valid argument for an employer to make whether you like it or not. Of course, you as an employee have the ability to quit your job, but that's not really a great solution to the problem.
The other thing Winnow said that I found funny. Just go out and get an iPhone. Besides all the obvious reasons why that's a laughable solution, a lot of the higher security places of business are blocking cell signals these days. It's not everywhere, and more often than not, the average person isn't going to run into something like that, but as concerns for privacy get greater, and these devices get less and less expensive, expect to see it more, especially places where confidentiality and privacy are concerns.
I can say that at least where I work, they've backed off the restrictions and unblocked the gmail, hotmail, ESPN, etc type websites, leaving the obvious pr0n sites, etc blocked. You can't expect someone to work 100% of the time...not these days, unless you're on an assembly line or something. Hell, we should be on a 4 day work week so in lieu of that, some surfing will suffice. Some jobs simply do not require 100% attention. In other jobe, creatively, it would be detrimental to limit access to the net. The focus should be on evaluating employee performance. If employee X does 200% of the work employee Y does but can still check out a YouTube video in the process...let him watch the freaking video...they're probably more content in their job with some freedom. I'd keep employee X rather than keep lipping Y employees that quit because the job sucks.
This "suit" mentality blows. You're not going to find that at Google HQ, Apple, etc. They've figured out, and rightly so, that performance is how you rate an employee. So, while the capability to restrict employee's access increases, there comes a backlash with that. Working your employees to death isn't one of the things encouraged in those manager meetings. Getting the most out of your employees doesn't mean restricting them.
I think you're reaching for things regarding the blocked cell signals for 95%+ of the people. I can see that in a secure environment. That's whack as half the people are babbling on their cell phones at work. There are less desk phones and more work related cell phones. I could see my old job at Motorola doing something like that as it was classified/secret military shit we were dealing with but even then, I still doubt it.
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Aardor wrote:Not sure if this was clear to you or not but I like you Winnow. You single handedly got me interested in comic books, you keep areas of the site alive that wouldn't be otherwise, and you generally actually give thought to what you post, as well as being helpful when people ask questions.
I appreciate that you can compartmentalize things on VeeshanVault. People vary greatly in interests and opinions, politically, religiously, morally, etc. which is what makes spending time here fun.
Fash, I hit the END key to get right to the bottom of a thread even while a bunch of images are making the page jump all over the place while they load. Hitting END once seems to keep me at the bottom.