Streaming audo forbidden at work? Why?

[blondeatlast]

I work for city government as a librarian.

Recently, along with dozens of other regulations, we were told we were forbidden to listen/watch streaming audio/video.

I have a heinous co-worker who sniffles, burps, and otherwise just makes me ill if I have to listen to her. It was nice hearing Franken instead of that.

What is the reasoning behind this?

[Union Thug]

1. Bandwidth issues? /eom

[Liberal Veteran]

2. That was my thought. It eats bandwidth.....

...which can get expensive.

[blondeatlast]

3. That does explain a lot. Thanks to you both. nt

[DBoon]

4. Though of course

You could tell the streaming source that you are using a slow dial-up connection, and they should throttle it down.

Don't libraries have a legitimate need to serve streaming media to patrons?

[blondeatlast]

11. Yes, and we do, but apparently employees are SOL. nt

[unblock]

5. makes performance suck for people trying to get real work done.

get your own internet connection, then complain.

while you're sharing with you co-workers, please be considerate.

it would be real nice if there were an easy way to request LOW PRIORITY background downloads for music and such.


my suggestion: download at home and bring in a burned cd.

[rustydog]

6. The employer gets to make the rules, it is as simple as that

productivity may suffer, some may find it offensive, especially if you are streaming talk radio.

Eating bandwidth that you don't pay for may be a very big reason.

[Bertha Venation]

7. our IT department (and Mangement backs them) says it's a bandwidth issue

However, they don't ban attorneys from streaming stock quotes. Just staff from audio/video. They even ban Weatherbug. For staff. :grr:

[Madrone]

8. About Weatherbug -

No one is being mean by denying you that spyware laden POS. Seriously - you should be THANKING them they won't let you put that on your computer. :)

If you must have a weather program, check out Weather Pulse - it's very nice, and no spyware. WeatherBug has caused some serious issues in too many computers I've had to put back together --- I'd ban it worldwide if I had the power to do so.

[YellowRubberDuckie]

10. Try your local news/weather station...

All the ones here have their own little bugs in the corner, non weather bug types that you can keep track of storms and radar on. Uses very little resources, and only comes on if there's something going on.
Duckie

[LynneSin]

9. It's bandwidth issue

Seriously, we had a problem with it at the last job I worked at. Everyone was using streaming audio to listen to their favorite radio station and suddenly our network started to slow down. We banned streaming audio and the problem was solved.