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Re: Office or day-care?
by DCMonkey on Tuesday 24/Jul/2001, @01:04
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Even people with integrity may not realize that their choice of decor is impacting other users via increased bandwidth usage (at least during first connection to the shared system). There are also the issues with 8-bit display that are mentioned in the article.
Maybe the users should actually have windows open with actual work in them rather than staring at their pretty desktop all day.
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Re: Office or day-care?
by kdeFan on Tuesday 24/Jul/2001, @01:35
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The reasons you mention may be legitimate, but he's talking about approving the content of all the images to make sure they're "politically correct". That's a different issue than what you're addressing.
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Doh!
by DCMonkey on Tuesday 24/Jul/2001, @02:10
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You're right! That'll teach me to get lazy and just skim the end of the article. :)
FWIW, we let our users pick their own wallpaper.
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Re: Office or day-care?
by hyrcan on Saturday 27/Oct/2001, @07:51
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You forget that these are images being offered by the CITY, and therefore must be acceptable to anyone. Thus the need to be "politically correct" is there not only because it is required by other employees who may not want to see a half naked man/women or some other ethnicly/politicly/religious/* charged image when they walk by your terminal...
I know quite a few people would be upset if I were to have on my computer the picture by Andres Serrano "Piss Christ" as my background much less offer it so other people would see it when they were choosing their own back ground...
but it's a CYA effort as well.(with good reason)
FYI - Serrano's Piss Christ is a 1987 photograph of a crucifix immersed in urine. In the late-1980s, the work prompted an intense national debate over government funding of the arts.
You can find a copy of it at:
http://www.usc.edu/schools/annenberg/asc/projects/comm544/library/images/502.html
It's not really that bad if you don't know why the picture is yellowish...
Hyrcan
the happy godless heathen
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Re: Office or day-care?
by Mike Richardson on Tuesday 24/Jul/2001, @07:40
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How does a wallpaper impact anything? Does it lean out from the screen and hit the user? Now, I can understand that it can have an <b>affect</b> ...
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Re: Office or day-care?
by Pedant on Monday 13/Aug/2001, @11:54
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> Now, I can understand that it can have an
> affect
ITYM "effect". HTH.
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Re: Office or day-care?
by Krishna Sethuraman on Monday 13/Aug/2001, @17:15
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Gee, I thought that that was one of the best things about linux is that you can have windows (rxvt's?) open with actual work in them <strong>as well as</strong> stare at their pretty desktop all day (in their transparent background).
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Daycare by choice...
by Eric Nichlson on Tuesday 24/Jul/2001, @01:06
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I agree, I would rather be able to choose my own wallpaper. OTOH I really don't think that KDE (or any other software) should make moral decisions that piss my boss off... I usually do that myself anyway.
I would guess that things like wallpaper freedoms (however trite) could be serious legal offenses that would automatically force potential markets to overlook KDE.
And plus, lay off him, he's a sysadmin who has do deal with stupid questions like "Can't we turn off their desktops?" from the PHB and "Why does everything I put in 'Trash' disappear?" from co-workers. I say keep on rockin those admin skills all over Largo!
Now if only I can get the sysadmin here at school would use KDE rather than it's "common" predecessor (yuck!).
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Re: Daycare by choice...
by kdeFan on Tuesday 24/Jul/2001, @01:39
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I really wasn't taking a position on whether the feature shold be implemented... I was merely surprised that his place of employment feels the need to check each background image for political correctness. And you're right, he's just the sysadmin not the policy maker. I didn't mean to come down on him.
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nothing to do with "political correcntess"
by Mike on Tuesday 24/Jul/2001, @03:24
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It's not "political correctness", it's a support issue: background images run the server out of color map entries. Apparently, even in this forum, many people are unaware of the problems that background images cause on 8bit screens.
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Re: nothing to do with "political correcntess"
by kdeFan on Tuesday 24/Jul/2001, @03:53
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If you read the first point under the "Configuration" heading, you'll notice that political (in)correctness was his stated reason for wanting users to choose from an approved list. He does want to turn off wallpapers on 8-bit displays - that's a different issue.
<<Apparently, even in this forum, many people are unaware of the problems that background images cause on 8bit screens.>>
That's not what I'm talking about, and there's no need to be pretentious.
I think my first post was unclear and badly worded. I really didn't mean to suggest that the feature requested doesn't have legitimate uses; I was just surprised that his employer would have such a policy in place. Others have mentioned the possibility of litigation as being the cause of the policy, which is probably accurate. It seems odd to hold the company liable for individuals' actions so long as management deals with infractions properly as soon as they are brought up, but I'm not a lawyer. And I prefer to treat people as adults until they prove that they can't handle it.
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Re: nothing to do with "political correcntess"
by Jo Řiongen on Tuesday 24/Jul/2001, @05:56
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The thing is that where I'm currently working there were people who showed that they could not handle it. The sad thing about this is that there are most likely othere places where this aplies too. So I support the feature to be able to turn of walpapers.
Now I just have to find a way to swap the NT/Citrix servers with Linux/KDE/Citriux servers...
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Re: nothing to do with "political correcntess"
by Teun on Monday 13/Aug/2001, @16:20
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You touch the sore point.
In the US of A there is hardly privacy in the company computer you're using, just have a look at the snooping discussions.
And this is another reason to declare the working environment in the computer private.
That way it becomes so much harder for a 'fiend of his/her own sex' to sue the company/city for what a single employe does on his computer.
Only the results of your working day/project should count.
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Re: Daycare by choice...
by Dre on Tuesday 24/Jul/2001, @03:34
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> I was merely surprised that his place of employment
> feels the need to check each background image for
> political correctness.
For better or worse, there are laws regarding this, and an employer (like the City of Largo) can get sued. E.g., if someone is displaying a pornographic image, a woman visiting city offices may be offended. Or someone may have a racist background. The point is that, particularly when you are the government, you have to be careful that the government computers do not have images that do not discriminate on the basis of age, sex, race, national origin, religion, sexual preferences (in some states), etc. Again, this is a legal requirement, so don't blame sysadmins :-).
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Re: Daycare by choice...
by Bill on Monday 13/Aug/2001, @17:32
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You are 100% correct. The display of "inappropriate" images has cost both employer and employee tons of money. I have a friend in the HR department for the State of CA who has plenty of such horror stories. This stuff was popular in email and on screen savers was popular until a few folks lost their ($80k +) jobs over it. Now everyone seems happy to display Little League pix, Scenic Landscapes and Disney characters.
I'd like to think that adults in the workforce have more sense than to exchange porno via e-mail and use obnoxious screen savers / desktops,but the evidence simply won't permit me to reach that conclusion without first resorting to the use of psychotropic substances.
There is no requirement that the City of Largo permit any sort of desktop customization. I think they should be commended for even permitting it ... and on Linux, at that!
It seems to me that asking users to submit proposed pix for approval is only a reasonable precaution and should inconvenience only dyed-in-the-wool jerks. My guess is that they end up rejecting very few pix since the employees will not want to submit the more offensive ones for approval to begin with.
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Re: Office or day-care?
by Mike on Tuesday 24/Jul/2001, @03:22
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The issue is running out of color map cells on 8bit displays. If people pick a wallpaper, they'll run out and applications will start to malfunction. That causes tech support headaches, since most users have no idea why things are falling apart.
These are business computers; it really isn't such an intrusion to expect people not to set a wallpaper, in particular if it causes support problems.
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Re: Office or day-care?
by kdeFan on Tuesday 24/Jul/2001, @04:16
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I think my first post must have been very unclear. I was attempting to address his statement that without the requested feature he would have to check each user's wallpaper for political correctness. His remedy for this was that people should be able to choose *only* wallpapers on an approved list. As far as color depth goes, he suggested that wallpapers be turned off on 8-bit displays, which is a separate issue.
As far as turning off wallpapers goes, I think that's a perfectly acceptable solution to a technical issue. For that matter, I think having an approved list of wallpapers isn't such a bad idea either. I was just surprised that he would he would have to check every user's background image(s) for PC compliance under the current scheme. It seems to me that showing so little faith in the judgement of the employees sends a bad message.
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Re: Office or day-care?
by Charles Stepp on Wednesday 25/Jul/2001, @12:35
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The problem is a legal one. In the new America,
freedom exists only if it does not offend and
companies end up being the target of law suits.
This is a government agency. Trust me; if they
have been there more than 5 years, they are
probably too rooted to consider coming out into
the real marketplace. Then again...the DOD and
Largo are using their money more wisely than
most businesses.
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Re: Office or day-care?
by Stephen Samuel on Monday 13/Aug/2001, @10:37
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It's silly, but I can understand it being an issue. It's probably easier for them to vette wallpapers than too deal with the occasional person getting <b>freaked</b> at the 'inappropriate' image on their computer. Remember that some of the terminals are <b>very public</b> and they follow a user around...
Something that's find on the computer in my office could cause a firestorm if I logged in to a semi-public screen to check something for a minute -- with 15 visitors from the feminist action league having a cabal session 12 feet behind me.
My guess is that 95% of the pictures submitted would get about 2 seconds viewing before they were put into the public area, where they would then be available to everybody. Hmm... I wonder if they'd then be willing to make the collection publicly available? It'd be a wonderful resource.
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Re: Office or day-care?
by jpostel on Monday 13/Aug/2001, @11:39
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I have to agree with this one. When we first initiated the pr0n alarm at a company I was working, it was getting set off several times a day. I like to think people are smart enough not to do that sort of thing at work during business hours, but the fact remains that they do. I went back as a consultant 6 months later and the VPs son (who was working tech support) was in pr0n chat rooms while at work. Sad really.
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Re: Office or day-care?
by gromm on Monday 13/Aug/2001, @12:30
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No kidding. Businesses should just make rules and give the employees the choice to break them or not. If you decide to break the rules, then disciplinary action is taken. You don't have to make your sysadmin into the desktop Nazi for something that is ultimately the responsibility of the individual.
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