Warren Young wrote: > On 1/31/2014 15:06, m.roth at 5-cent.us wrote: >> That's not going to happen. The budget won't allow that much for this >> item. > > So find the person who chose that arbitrary number, and explain to them > that in their ignorance, they chose a number that has no connection with > reality. Ask them -- now that they know what professional equipment > actually costs -- if they would like to choose a new number. My manager knows his budget, he's not completely ignorant, and if professional equipment is several thousand dollars, it's not going to happen. We have servers, and workstations, and some servers in a datacenter, and we need to worry about our budget. This is not a case of some PHB pulling numbers out of his *ss. <snip> > A solution that costs $1,000 in hardware but takes 1/10 your average > yearly time to hand-hold is more expensive than a solution that costs > $10,000 and only needs a specialist to come in and check on it once a > year. If you think that's wrong, you aren't amortizing over the years > the cameras are expected to last. Your time is a recurring expense; the > hardware isn't. A pro-grade security camera should last many years. But if the money's not there, the money's not there. Feel free to contact your legislators and tell them to raise some taxes and spend more money. Oh, and while they're at it, have them spend enough money to rehab this whole damn building, that was *intended* to be rehabbed 20 years ago, and then the money wasn't there, so we live with power blips, and tenement heating (it's very often too hot, or too cold, or only on one side of the building...), and the cheapness of them taking away our water coolers, and telling us to use the in-wall drinking fountains.... If I sound surly about some of this stuff, I am... because we, and you, deserve better. You'd think this was some poor sister organization, rather than part of the one of the biggest and best research organizations on the fsckin' planet. mark