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Why PHBs Fear Linux
Tin Foil Hat writes "Paul Murphy over at LinuxInsider examines the role IT text books play in business school curriculums and the misconceptions and misinformation that they present to students. If you've ever wondered why your PHB just doesn't get it when it comes to UNIX and Linux, this article is for you."
i've heard either Pin Head Boss or Pointy Hair'd Boss..
any others?
I'm a little tea pot.
"Pointy headed boss". I am a PHB with an MBA and I never saw the word Linux in a textbook. However, being that I am natuarally geeky, I am slowly showing my company the benefits of open source.
"We are accountable for not only what we do, but also that which we don't do." -- Moliere
No, but everyone reads Dilbert, the comic strip whence the Pointy-Haired Boss comes.
"PHB: /PHB/
[Usenet; common; rarely spoken] Abbreviation, "Pointy-Haired Boss". From the Dilbert character, the archetypal halfwitted middle-management type. See also pointy-haired."
Souce: http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/P/PHB.html
My local Best Buy stocks SuSE, and I know they used to stock Red Hat (may still stock the $99 edition). They may also stock Mandrake, but I honestly don't recall.
And yes, they're sitting there right next to Windows. It may not be equal footing, or equal mindshare, but the market penetration is constantly improving.
excerpt - - O'Brien's book is only about 530 pages, plus some appendices. Unix doesn't rate an index entry at all, but Linux gets three. Two of those point to an extract on page 153 from a BusinessWeek article in which the authors have this to say about Linux: "Linux is good at serving up Web pages, but it isn't as effective as Windows 2000 at handling more complex jobs." Very nice. My PHB must have this one.
I don't know about Best Buy, but I know CompUSA has Linux boxen (as in product cardboard) right next to copies of Windows. Not only that, but their prices run the gamut from about $30 to $150, significantly lower than Windows.
Etiquette is etiquette. He kills his mother but he can't wear grey trousers.
...and while I haven't read them all, I find that their treatment of OSes is very general indeed. They talk more about computer systems and networks, and the foundations of these, than they do about which OS is good or bad and what's different about them. In the book I read, an OS comparison showed about 7-8 OSes, including Windows, Mac and Linux, and also had a case study about switching to Linux. (Note that the article doesn't really say that MS Windows is mentioned *so much more* than Linux, just that Linux is not mentioned often.)
This article, IMHO, doesn't really show the reality that 1) Linux even 5 years ago was merely a speck in most people's minds, 2) that Unix does have its downsides, and that 3) the authors of these books are probably running Windows as their native OS! This hardly adds up to the kind of bias the article suggests.
2-3 years from now you will start to see Linux information trickle down into these books, as they publish new versions. A couple may retain a "bias", but I bet that most will realistically track what has changed in the marketplace since the previous version of their book. To expect that formal education moves at the same speed as economic developments is silly. Education moves much more slowly, and it's got nothing to do with bias.
Actually, Pin Head is one of the main characters in Hellraiser. You may think that the that is proper comparision, but anyway, PHB = Pointy Haired Boss.
i teach high school history. from many of text books, you would think that the US is the greatest perpetrator of evil in the world. or at least, no better than most other nations. (okay slash trolls, flame on)
textbooks are notoriously bad, for the most part. textbook publishers have to sell textbooks and there are a whole range of issues they have to deal with. i was a member of the textbook adoption committee a few years ago and i had the privilege (?) of speaking with a few of the reps. holy crap!! it should be no different i IT. the people who have the loudest voices (i.e. political groups who squak about "representation") or the most money (corporations that need product placement), get their voices heard the loudest. it is disgusting, which is why i use the text for very little of the class.
here's a blatant example of the 10th grade Mod Civ book. Hitler and the holocaust get an entire section in the WW2 chapter, yet the multiple 10's of millions Stalin killed gets 2 sentences. hmmm...
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
I don't mean to be a nit but "begging the question" refers to a specific logic fallacy where one assumes what they wish to prove.
For example, the following argument, taken from http://skepdic.com/begging.html, begs the question:
We know God exists because we can see the perfect order of His Creation, an order which demonstrates supernatural intelligence in its design.
I find it annoying that the phrase "begs the question" seems to have fallen into incorrect common use.
Of course I agree that the publishing of falicious information calls into question the credulity of the remainder of the text, however, no begging is happening here.
plurvert
Take for example the requirements that the how the publishers revise textbooks with such high frequency that it forces students to buy new copies instead of using a used copy of an older edition.
The publishers first priority is to make money for their shareholders, not educate people. M$'s first priority is to maximize the dollars of profit per share, not provide the best computing solution.
The Unix/Linux system at my work is a nightmare (Yes we use both). Only certain apps will print on certain printers. Formatting a printed page is nearly impossible. Mounting a CD-Rom requires an IT person and 2 days notice. When the engineers need a picture from a finite element tool they use Exceed to login to Unix from a PC and then take a screenshot. Then we trim the edges and stick it into Word so we can print it. License Servers are always going off line and every afternoon the Unix server bogs down to a crawl. These are just a few of the problems that we literally have on a daily basis.
I've seen well run Unix systems, we just don't have one. As long as poorly run Unix/Linus systems are out there inhibiting work flow the OS will always have its opponents.
Sorry to be blunt, feel free to flame me (I am an anonymous coward for a reason)
Moderation is for the reader, not the poster. Who needs to read the same thing 15 times.
Also, HAL means "Hardware Abstraction Layer".
You could even get an abolutly free linux distro and make arrangments for your company to personnally support it and get paid LOVELY for it...its's been done before and I personally did it on a small scale by installing linux replacement's for windows nt servers and charging for support personally and doing maintnance via webmin...NEVER even one problem ...think about it
I'm currently a student worker at a fairly well known University Library on the east coast of the US. Our facilities here use absolutely no Unix or GNU/Linux solutions - everything is windows based. When I first started working three years ago, I asked one other "higher-ups" why they didn't utilize Unix or GNU/Linux for their webservers, fileservers, or other IT services. I was told that, "Linux is all nice and fun to play around with but in the real world you have to use Windows". Needless to say my stomach churned a little bit after hearing that gem of a statement. Upon further inquiry from my supervisors and boss, it seems that 99% of this non-usage is due to bad-publicity about the true abilities of a Linux system and they also believe that the complexity curve would be far too great for them to successfully impliment such a radical change.
If textbooks had focused more on GNU/Linux and Unix besides only windows, I'm sure the layout of our electronic library system would be much different. (I type this as I hear them talking about problems regarding the printservers that run NT and haven't been functioning properly all day).
I work for a major defense contractor, where I've been integrating systems for numerous years. One of the primary reasons we don't do LINUX is because there's no profit in it for us.
Interesting. I work for a defense contractor and we are mostly a Linux shop.
Ever tried installing Java and Java programs?
Yes, I added jpackage.org to my sources.list and ran "apt-get install ant struts tomcat5" and got everything I needed.
Yeah, uhm... I didn't write that. Notice the "Source:" part. You suggest that I took the time to consider and write an all-inclusive definition, where in fact all I did was a 10 second google search. Don't be so quick to sling insults.
A long time ago, I read a book by Paul Reps titled "Zen Flesh, Zen Bones", that includes a story, "A Cup of Tea", that is particularly appropriate given the material in this article. I reproduce the story here:
A Cup of Tea
The PHBs have had their heads filled so full with material, and are so unwilling/scared/unable to unlearn it, that their education becomes a liability. Corporations encounter the same kind of problem when they develop "core rigidities" and are unable to rapidly adapt to the ever-changing marketplace.Aside: someone has been kind enough to reproduce this story, along with a number of other excerpts from "101 Zen Stories", and they can be found here.
If the Government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law;
Why did the Soviet Union collapse? Because centralized planning and a lack of freedom prevent a complex system from operating efficiently.
Why does the United States prosper? Because of freedom and a lack of top down centralized planning. Every part of the system can react optimally to changing economic conditions.
I think the average business school prof. would agree with the above analysis. You should be able to get said prof. to agree that decentralized systems can adapt to local stimuli better than centralized ones.
You should also get the prof. to agree that monopolies stifle innovation.
So now you ask her how the above facts might be applied to software development. She, not being dumb and seeing where your argument is going (ie. MicroSoft == USSR, OpenSource == USA), will immediately try to convince you that black is white.
PHBs and business professors seem to be immune to logic. They travel in flocks and make baaing sounds. (Just look at all the management fads we've been cursed with. In fact, there is serious opinion that America's worst enemy is the MBA.)
That's OK. Linux will reach its 'tipping point' and everyone will want it. Bah humbug. A pox on them all.
btw. Not all bosses are PHBs. My boss responds quite nicely to bottom line arguments. Credibility is the important factor here. If I say that we can save a bunch of bucks, he believes me. Of course I won't say something until I am darn sure it is true (I'm usually but not always right). Something like a Linux migration would be preceeded by at least one pilot project.