March Madness Must Be Near, Since The Stupid Warnings To Companies Are Here
from the the-sky-is-falling dept
Ah, March -- the break of spring and all that jazz, and stupid warnings about the impact of the NCAA basketball tournament on America's employers. Two years ago, we got treated to warnings about lost productivity because the games would be streamed online, which got repeated last March as well. With the tournament starting in about ten days, this year's warnings are now rolling in, repeating the same tired comments about the supposed financial losses from "lost productivity", with an added benefit: security concerns. Apparently all these employees watching streams provided by the NCAA and CBS and keeping up with scores on various websites offer attackers a yellow-brick road to follow into corporate networks, so companies have to make sure that they've got the right security in place on their networks -- so says a company that -- you'll never believe this -- sells network security equipment. Of course, March Madness has some competition in the imagined-threat sweepstakes this month, so let's make sure we get through this Y2K-like daylight savings change problem before worrying about the tournament.
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I think you meant...
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The increased productivity of tournament streams
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Like the world cup in the rest of the world
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basketball
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If they were my employees.....
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Re: If they were my employees.....
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Re: Re: If they were my employees.....
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let them complain
Now's the time to get up from that desk and walk out. If you're half-way decent at what you do there are other jobs waiting for you. Life is too short to spend almost all of your waking hours in the employ of unpleasant people.
I'm absolutely serious. Don't waste another day working anywhere you hate. Your life will be over and you'll wish you'd just walked out that day when you still had some life left ahead of you.
There's nothing more important than being happy in your job. And if you're worried about getting fired for watching a game or can't take sick days or vacation, you're not happy, no matter what you tell yourself. When you lay down at night, you know in your deepest places whether or not you're happy. And if not, you owe it to yourself to give notice tomorrow morning.
I'm really serious.
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Bandwidth is the only issue here
Lots of employees all streaming at the same time can kill a network (yeah you could buy more bandwidth but you're in business to do business not to stream content inside office hours)
If you don't like it just do the usual - block ports, install client firewalls etc etc
The chances of getting malware from the pro sites is minimal to non-existant, sure there may be "win a ticket" malware sites out there but the same is true of anything
My personal advice to employers - be flexible, chances are that if Joe and his mates want to watch the Knicks they are going to either way. Give them a big screen and a room if possible - let them work it out on flexi-time
Beats having all of them them streaming, killing your network and stopping others from working - also good for morale and reduces the chances of them botching something whilst only half paying attention to the job in hand
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If you cant beat them, join them
Instead of blocking them from this information, companies should make it very easy to obtain. The companies that do this, will lose less productivity than companies who try to block this information altogether.
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Slightly OT: the appeal of college sports
I just don't get it. College sports are amateur sports. If you're going to watch sports, shouldn't you want to watch the best players in the world competing at the highest level? And please save the "they play for the love of the game/school, not money" argument. That's complete bullshit. They get paid. At the minimum, college athletes have their tuition paid for. If suddenly there were no more college sports, and football and basketball had AAA leagues like baseball where those players learn the game before they go pro, would "March Madness" and Bowl games have any appeal at all?
Is it about the lack of professional sports teams in certain areas of the country? I've noticed that places like Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, and Florida have big-time college sports programs, but no real pro sports teams with storied and/or winning histories.
Or is it all about gambling?
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Re: Slightly OT: the appeal of college sports
I think school ties ARE a big reason. People tend to feel a much deeper connection to a team if they are an alumni. That makes the games that much more compelling. And whether some or many of these kids are making money somewhere of the side or not, it's mostly speculation and whether they do or don't it doesn't effect their level of play. How many times have you seen a pro guy flame out after a few seasons because he was fat and happy and just didn't care as much anymore?
The "love of the game" bullshit (as you described it)? I think that the love of the game DOES have something to do with it. Or the passion with which they play at the very least. If you think about it, a lot of these kids will never play pro, and they know the time they have to play organized ball is limited. So yeah, I do think they're playing with more energy and passion and desire than the pro guys (whether their tuition is being paid for or not). The NCAA tournament is their one chance to make an impact on a huge stage. A lot of pro guys are just playing not to get hurt, and trying to save all of their energy for the playoffs. College kids have to leave it all on the floor just to GET to the playoffs.
Part of the allure of the NCAA tournament is the idea that any team can win on any night. No other sport gives you that. None. You put the Dallas Mavericks up against the New Orleans/Oklahoma City Hornets on a neutral court, and the Hornets might win .0000001 percent of the time. There are rarely any surprises. In the NCAA, at least in the early rounds, at least one #12 seed has beaten a #5 in the first round every year but one since 1988. Over the last five tournaments, #5 seeds are only 11-9 vs. #12 seeds. You don't get that kind of upset potential in the NBA. It just doesn't happen. Predictability is boring.
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IRT 12: if I were your lusers, I would be happier to se you watching the match than trying to spell my name to find out from the FPS server who I am after I catch you wallhacking (a nasty habit of an admin I know of).
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Question of productivity
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shit
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