Having spent many years in tech support and also being my family tech support, this post pains me.greatly.

I get to see other people ways of using the computer daily.

Thunderbolt 3 ports can provide 15w of power. If you fill them up with devices, especially ones that draw power, then your docking station very quickly needs its own power source in order to make them all work. I've already had a docking station refuse to extend my laptop to multiple screens because it needed its own plug.

Anywayz im not arguing that they dont have advantages. Im arfuing that they aren't necessarily better than having individual ports dedicated to specific functions.

Ok. Cool, but like i said, your use case and the person you responded to are obviously different.

That doesnt have to be "because boomer" or be someone is objectively right or wrong. Because thats not the issue.

You are just trying to be right about something that is completely subjective.

I argued that taking the ports away and replacing them with usb ports is not as cut and dry as sayi g that is better. It depends on your own personal needs.

I accept that a port that can be anything you want is great and may have some advantages over a dedicated port that has only one function. But there are downsides.

You need to carry around a bunch of adapters to get what you need. You are limited to those 4 ports. Remember that most laptops had multiple usb ports alongside multiple display and audio ports so you have lost more than ypu have gained.

You also are still limited to 4 devices or you need a docking station which adds more bulk. And that docking station has limited power unless you connect an external power source.

I feel like you are looking at your needs and severely oversimplifying this debate. Which isnt helpful and doesnt make you right by default.

That's the issue then. You think it's boomers who dont like change as opposed to capitalists removing functionality to sell it back to you in a separate package. I would aregue its zoomers not being able to identify when they are being conned.

I've already been through the problem with that. Cba doing it again.

But in your example, humans are part of the environment. Or at least they are a factor in your ability to survive. Part of being adapted and being able to survive is surviving your predators. Dont you agree?

I dont know if i agree that being adapted to "elephant tasks" is a good marker to measure how adapted elephants are. If an elephant can eat, reproduce, and defend or hide itself from predators or deadly flora or weather, etc, then i would look at the elephant and argue it is well adapted.

Unless you think that predators change things or you dont consider humans as predators because we dont always kill for survival.

I dunno, im kind of just fleshing this out in my head as we speak.

Snap

I'm not disagreeing with you here, but wouldn't it be fair to say there is a gradient, but it is dynamic and defined by the current environment and what it takes to survive it?

Maybe the goal posta keep moving but we are talking about a very large time scale, so long that, for at least a couple of million years, what could be defined as more or less evolved might seem or be descibed as pretty solid.

Although i suppose its not fair to say more or less evolved and might be more accurate to say more or less well adapted.

Wait!.... You don't have problems with something you only used twice in a year? No way!

Its clear you and the person you replied to have different use cases for your devices, and perhaps what they are saying is just as valid as what you are saying.

But thats the dongles mac address. They break. They get passed around and used in multiple devices. If i am trying to authenticate a third party laptop and they are moving from dock to dock then i cant use the unique hardware ID to identify that hardware. I can only see where to dongle is.

In theory its all well and good saying the dongle will stay with the laptop or the mac isn't a useful tool for authentication. But in practice in the wonderful wild world of IT. Its never that straightforward.

Its crap for asset registers, its crap for authentication servers and its crap for finding devices on switches with mac address tables.

I know there are other ways, but network ports aside, why am i buying a £60-£100 docking station to get all those ports back? I had them in my laptop. Now i have to spend more money to get them back and rely on a bit of cheap hardware that needs drivers, updates, and has breakable wires and ports to provide the functionality that was built in to my older devices.

There are advantages, but they dont outweigh the disadvantages. They just make it cheaper to manufacture laptops.

But if i am authenticating a unique third party laptop i could use the mac address and apply a profile in clearpass to authenticate it and apply an ACL to lock the device down as a separate measure to creating a separate vlan for the device.

I wouldn't have called it useless in that regard. But im fairly new to network administration, so perhaps i am not well versed enough to know better.

Our clearpass servers struggle sometimes, and i experience timeouts or rejections when a laptop moves from one usb c docking station to another if they fail dot1x and revert to mab.

Also all of this aside, the fact that all the ports got removed from a laptop and now you have to plig in a £60-100 dock to get all those ports back is an absolute con.

But only twice. You know the problem with having a network port on a usb is that the laptop no longer has a unique mac address, which can cause problems with authentication in a corporate environment. So when building devices or using mac auth it can be a nightmare.

Our quest is vain!

Oh so its ok for trump to transition?!?! I see how it is....

This hurts how accurate it is.

I am constantly worried i am not doing enough whilst simultaneously getting mad that i have to wait for vendors and review/approval meetings to make the tiniest change.

When im most of the way through something and i just need someone in apps to make a small change, I've got all this steam and im almost done with the task but my priority is not their priority so it stops. And a user ibwas helping is now left hanging. And i can't do anything.

If the pay was better i would go back to the desk.

I dunno, having worked both sides of the fence i would say whilst network skills are more valuable because the barrier for entry is higher, in that you need apecialist knowledge, the general knowledge a service desk tech is not to be underestimated (im talking those techs that actually fix and attend jobs as opposed to those on the phones)

The number of problems a tech can fix and the amount of work they get through can be astounding. sure, it's something anyone can be trained to do, but to say it has inherently less value, i dont agree. i do networks in a hospital, and the number of people who appreciated the work i did when i worked the desk is vastly larger than the number of people that even know i exist now.

It felt alot better getting a bit of software working or replacing hardware, or recovering someones emails etc that got a doctor or a nurse working again and lowered their stress levels and made them smile than it does to upgrade cisco call manager from version 1 to version 1.1...

I agree to an extent that its not harder to work the service desk, but i dont think you should look down upon them. We all have an important role to play....

Except execs... they can fuck off.

A duck!

He is also a model.

I uaed to walk 4 miles to school and even further back (because i walked with a friend to their house and then to kine on the way home) instead of taking the bus. I would keep my bus money and use it to buy drinks and stuff. This was only 20 years ago. Much has changed.

I think we can reason that its more than likely trump to harris. Not just because trump is a terrible person and lies about everything. But mainly because trump won so what need would there be to change a vote from anything else to trump?