So I'm between jobs and I get a call from a staffing agency about a tech support helpdesk job. It sounds all right, pays reasonably well and it is on the Kansas side so the taxes are easy. It also turns out that the guy who will decide whether or not I get hired is an old acquaintance of mine from college who remembers me as really tall and a good computer guy.
The staffing agency informs me that in order to make sure I get the job I'm going to have to take some basic tests, a "phone etiquette" test a stunned badger could pass, and a 10-key typing test. They send me the information and I get on the testing website.
Then it turns out that the testing website, for some reason, uses some sort of proprietary Windows web software to do all its testing. IE isn't the problem because FireFox on Windows is supported. Since I went all-Linux a few months ago, I didn't have any way to take the test myself on any of my own computers. I finally had to convince my wife to stop playing Morrowind for an hour (not an easy task) so I could use her Windows PC.
I suppose the thing I find irritating about this is that industry leaders (excepting Microsoft, of course) use platform independent testing software. Cisco in particular used testing software on its Academy website which worked great for me in Firefox on Debian Linux. Is it really that much more cost-effective to use Windows-dependent testing software on a website?
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I suppose the thing I find irritating about this is that industry leaders (excepting Microsoft, of course) use platform independent testing software. Cisco in particular used testing software on its Academy website which worked great for me in Firefox on Debian Linux. Is it really that much more cost-effective to use Windows-dependent testing software on a website?
I think many web developers confuse popularity with standardization. Nobody works hard creating a web application in hopes that it won't be usable to a segment of the population. They write the app assuming that you will be running Windows with IE, as they see this as a standard and not an option. They only choose proprietary languages and so forth because they aren't even aware anything else exists. I work with a bunch of programmers who don't seem to realize that there is such a thing as software created without Visual Studio, and I'm sure whoever developed this web app has similar views. Welcome to monoculture.
--Jestin
On Wednesday 05 September 2007 11:40:01 pm Leo Mauler wrote:
Is it really that much more cost-effective to use Windows-dependent testing software on a website?
Yes. Your secretary, or the owner's nephew can set up the web site with no knowledge of HTML or WWW standards. They just point and click.
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Jestin Stoffel -
Jonathan Hutchins -
Leo Mauler