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Converting Users to Open Source- Why Do You Care?
mack knife asks: "Here's a question for Slashdot readers: Why do you care what web browser/email client/etc people use? What do you care if Firefox catches on or not? Why do some people feel the need to convert others to their pet applications? Personally, I am a convert to Firefox/Thunderbird, but I understand that many users are happy with their Microsoft products; I'll mention what I use and why, but I won't harangue them on their apps' shortcomings, nor will I try to push an unfamiliar open source app on someone who is more comfortable with a 'mainstream' product. Some open-source proponents can be quite obnoxious about this, and I'm interested to hear why it is taken so seriously."
If you go back to the mid-70's at the time of the Altair, you'll find the
Homebrew club, people that got together for fun but also for finding
solutions to many problems the early PC had.
They were a bunch of hippies of the 70's, sharing everything, every ideas,
every solutions, every new concept together. It was so creative, so
powerful that it generated one of the biggest industry on the planet.
When enough problems were solved this way some (especially one that called all
the others "thieves") stopped sharing and start keeping for themselves. They
started companies and thrived on them.
Today those same guys are still ruling the business, they keep so much a big
share of the market that it is indecent. They use strategies so cruel and
inhuman to keep this share and they leave crumbles for the rest of the world.
Open Source brings us back to that sharing, we go back to that very
innovative time where so much new is invented and shared.
So for me it's not so much important to be comfortable with one browser or
another but it is important to contribute to the knowledge of mankind and
to promote the use of open source solution and to discourage the use of
closed source ones. It's a simple formula:
Open Source solution = Can be a good solution.
Closed Source Solution = Cannot be a good solution.
Bring back the sharing of ideas and stop contributing to the technologies lockdown of the shrews.
At least part of the reason is that everyone needs to feel important in life. If someone isn't academically or socially accomplished, they need to identify with a group on some scale. For lots of people, this means sports teams. For others, religion. For people here, it's the 'open source group'. Many people here who are trying to convert aren't the ones who are actually coding the apps or doing research in computer science areas. They are the ones who use it to feel like they belong to a group, and what better way to justify that than by trying to convince others that their group is somehow elite or desirable?
Hacker with bullhorn: "Save your money! Accept one of our free tanks! It is invulnerable, and can drive across rocks and swamps at ninety miles an hour while getting a hundred miles to the gallon!"
Prospective station wagon buyer: "I know what you say is true...but...er...I don't know how to maintain a tank!"
Bullhorn: "You don't know how to maintain a station wagon either!"
Buyer: "But this dealership has mechanics on staff. If something goes wrong with my station wagon, I can take a day off work, bring it here, and pay them to work on it while I sit in the waiting room for hours, listening to elevator music."
Bullhorn: "But if you accept one of our free tanks we will send volunteers to your house to fix it for free while you sleep!"
Buyer: "Stay away from my house, you freak!"
Bullhorn: "But..."
Buyer: "Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?"
Fundamentally, free (libre) software is a civil rights issue that grows in importance as our dependence on software tools grows.
Complexity Happens
I've been a pc tech for too many years now :/ can't seem to get my foot in the door to a decent IT job / NOC even with certs, anyway here is my opinion:
I see around 50-70 spyware -infested- computers per
month, and though at first I did install all the good free apps that helped prevent spyware before it installed itself, it really killed return business (like the people that would go pr0n browsing the day they got their computer back, and we'd see it back in the shop after the weekend). so my boss made me stop installing the good shit (firefox/spybot/hijackthis/cwshredder/etc). anyway I think that as long as most apps are released mainly for MS OS's the problem will never be solved. and i doubt we will be seeing a huge shift toward linux (thank god) or unix anytime soon.
for the most part I don't care what people use, and with the morons that come in here that call their computers a 'modem', im kinda glad MS is around. imagine explaning editing a Makefile to an applebees manager. anyway, my -2cents. (matches my karma, eh?)
There are very good reasons for people to use Free software, no matter who we're talking about: adherence to standards, the ability of the community to improve the software (and vouch for its security), knowing that it won't just disappear because a company goes out of business, or become obnoxious because of a licensing change. You know the arguments as well as anyone here, I suppose.
But my zeal is harder to explain. Those are important things to me, but I really feel sometimes like I've got religion. It's great: black-and-white boundaries (well, sort of), good guys (Saint Linus, Saint RMS) and bad (Bill Gates, SCO), a nice sense of everything-has-been-building-up-to-THIS-MINUTE!, apocalypse (in the original sense of the word: a revealing that behind the petty, mundane battles of day-to-day life are huge, cosmic battles between Good and Evil)...everything a closet drama queen could want. (I'm serious about that; anyone who likes Sisters of Mercy songs for the lyrics would looooooove discussing Free Software.)
I try to keep it in check; I'm a sysadmin, and in my job it's most important to make sure people can do their job. But it pains me -- O! How it pains me! -- to see the growing number of Windows desktops here, and it's not just because I miss a decent command line.
Carousel is a lie!
I agree. I won't repeat the many good reasons why FireFox is an excellent solution, but would also remind people that open-source software must be easy to use and implement for adoption.
This may seem like a hackneyed point, but it really is quite true. I would have great confidence sending most anyone to the Firefox website to obtain and install FireFox. And, extending FireFox with plug-ins is relatively trivial.
I would not, however, feel so good about sending the general public over to SourceForge. Too confusing for most, I think. Open-source zealots forget this all too often. If you're designing a website to implement open-source to tech-savvy people, SourceForge is great. The real question is: would you send your grandmother there?
By that reasoning, why give anybody advice about anything?
Maybe some of us are just trying to be helpful.
BTW: I'm vastly more likely to reccomend Macs to 90% of the people I know for 90% of the things they want to do.
I would only reccomend Linux to somebody who:
1. Wants to learn *nix administration.
2. Is too poor to buy a Mac.
3. Doesn't mind sitting up all night reading man pages and "how to" forums.
I would only reccomend Windows to somebody who:
1. Wants to play the latest games.
2. Has a really good external firewall in place.
3. Either dual-boots to Linux or has a Mac mini and a KVM switch sitting on top of it for everything not related to gaming.
4. Promises to never, ever call me for support.
It's that it doesn't suck. First of all, the parent post is a complete troll. But it's not, first and foremost, that FireFox is Free Software that makes me "harangue" my family members to use it -- although that kind of is the reason: The FOSS development process and licensing paradigm has, in this case and many others, produced a piece of software that minimizes end-user hassle to a much greater extent than the proprietary offerings of vendors who claim to be driven by the needs of their customers. And when you're in a position in which you face spending literal hours of your personal time overhauling a machine that's become bogged down in software that not only is non-Free but makes everyone's life more difficult because the company that makes it just Doesn't Get It, then it's worth it to put the screws to people to get them to use something else.
"I don't care. I just hate Microsoft."
Troll? "Funny" was a better moderation. Heck, I would have modded it Insightful.
Everybody here's acting like their intentions are pure, but there are a LOT of posts here touting OSS as a form of middle finger in the direction of Redmond. I'm not saying their hatred of MS isn't justified, but it is tainting their judgement.
"Derp de derp."
What I've noticed is that the average computer user wants a turn-key solution. They also want a solution that they are familiar with. Look at how many people are running Windows 98 still...
Open source projects, let's take Firefox as an example, are wonderful for the people who use the features contained therein. I love tabbed browsing. I love the extensions. Firefox is a wonderful product all around, but I take advantage of what makes it great.
On the other hand, I know for a fact that my mother, a very average computer user, is not interested in these features. She wants to get her email, read her online newspaper, and could care less about anything else.
I've learned over the years in IT that it's very difficult to convince people to change what software they're using. My philosophy has always been to let people use what works for them. I haven't used an MS product on my computers at home for years now, only because I don't need to. I love my Apple/Linux network at home. My mother will never use anything else but MS. She can do what she needs to do with MS products. There's no point in getting her to change.
Just my $0.02.
Integration is today's buzzword and need.
Uniformity in all programs is what caused MSFT Office to succeed beyond its dreams.
Corel Wordpefect Office, Lotus Suite, etc., could not succeed for two reasons:
a) They thought they knew how to design products better than their customers. Companies which think they know more than their customers become extinct very fast. Irrespective of what people might say, Microsoft actually listened to people while building new versions of Office. They cared and actually respected customers instead of deriding them with a "i know all" attitude.
b) Word works with Excel, which works with Powerpoint to MY advantage. Iam sure COM was the result of Bill gates shouting at his Uber army of geeks as to why he must keep retyping his letter in another Office program.
Implementing O/S programs may give a warm heart feeling that i have fought and won against the "evil" empire.
The fact is the "evil" empire was not built in a day, and it was NOT evil all along. Somewhere it continued to listen to customers and aimed to give them what they wanted, instead of pushing what MSFT thought they wanted.
Companies like Corel (wordperfect), Lotus (Suite) stopped listening to customer once they started believing in magazine articles that stated they had "won" the desktop war or Office war. They had a stable income line and stopped support or took a "Holier than thou" attitude.
No wonder Lotus and Corel are nowhere today (except for Notes, Corel Linux), while Microsoft continues to win with its Office suite.
Keep it Simple, Keep Listening to customers and Keep it wickedly fast.
I have run Office on systems ranging from 64MB to 1.2 GB RAM and i have always felt MSFT made best of system provided and actually was faster than O/S on same systems.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
The sooner we can retire those millions of boxes that spread the malware via broken applications, the safer we all will be. It's the same reason the public health authorities want to do something about open sewers: they host very efficient disease vectors.
Playing devil's advocate here a little bit, who in this scenario is actually causing the problems? Is it Joe User, who is simply using the same software that 95% of the other users are using, or is it Techie McSmarts who is using all this "fringe" software and causing a ruckus whenever the rest of the Joe's compatriots produce a file he can't read?
I actually agree with you completely, I'm just pointing out that to the user that's still using the old software, and who doesn't have a political or philosophical disagreement with that software, and who isn't techie enough to care about how "under the hood" their software is junk, your argument isn't really going to convince them of anything. They could care less if it was written by a pack of rabid monkeys intend on world domination, as long as they get to get their work done and in on time to their boss.
Now when the OS alternative actually solves problems for them that the proprietary one couldn't, then you can hook them. Linux crossed that threshold years ago on servers, but has not on the desktop. Firefox probably just crossed that threshold, and some other projects are about to cross that line, and when they do, people will use it.
A related question to ask would be: why do people who debate open vs closed source draw the line between desktop software and web-hosted kind? Take any popular webmail, for example. Every one is completely proprietary and closed source. Yet there are lots of happy slashdotters using (and raving about) GMail. You don't have any of the freedoms with GMail that RMS is talking about. You even have fewer freedoms with GMail that you have with Outlook (at least noone can stop you from using Outlook if Microsoft dies). You don't even have your own data (unless you religiously maintain a local mirror, which almost nobody using webmail does). The answer is, of course, convenience. Convenience! Are you the same person taking hours downloading music from p2p who would not be caught dead buying DRM's music from iTunes because it's convenient?
Btw, to be completely fair, I just described myself. But you have to admit there is a cognitive disonnance in there somewhere.
"Not only do many of us work in the IT field and have to deal with all this poorly written software"
I agree. I personally love the extensibility, power, freedom, and dare I say beauty of open source software. I am a proud Firefox / Thunderbird / OpenOffice / Ubuntu user in the midst of a Microsoft shop.
However, Especially for those of us in the IT field, that "poorly written software" is crucial to our existence. Microsoft doesn't only make money for itself. It makes money for all the IT staffs of all the companies that use Microsoft products and for all the consultants that come in to help those IT staffs. If you count how many people that is, I'm sure you'll see that much depends on Microsoft, glistening in green cash and poor software as it is.
I love what you said in the end, and if I had my way, I would make the world like that. The question is, how would all the people I mentioned make money if everyone used open standards and interoperable products?
I've been one of two people in an office who didn't have computers down due to a virus simply because we were using Mozilla's Messenger and Thunderbird. When asked how we weren't stricken, we praised the email clients. Watching everyone else standing around waiting for someone to come out and fix the problem made me appreciate the productivity side.
I've recently helped a few people obtain new computers. MS Office Small Business (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook) adds $279 to a computer that costs less than $400 without it. I've been able to introduce OpenOffice.org to these people because it makes financial sense, and because it is interoperable with documents created on or transferred to their MS Office systems on the job.
I currently work for a US government agency that is dealing with layoffs and cutting of entire areas of research due to funding. Idealistically, I like to think that a shift to more free/open source solutions would allow us to shift the money that goes to new software and maintenance licenses would free up funds to keep the intellectual resources we have, or at the very least allow those of us left to have more funds available to attempt to carry out out research. I try not to be a zealot, but whenever I hear complaints about proprietary software or formats or when it comes time that we are looking to renew maintenance licenses or get new software, I make sure to point out that there are other solutions available, and that I have been using them since I started.
One shouldn't be obnoxious about these things. As these products improve over time, and as we are able to point out sensible adoption strategies for them at the right time, I think the shift will occur naturally. I've noticed more and more coworkers using the software or coming to ask me questions about it over the last 6 months or so, and those I've gotten to use OpenOffice.org on their new computers have been ecstatic. Switching to new software without a directly observable financial or productivity gain can be hard to sell. Deciding to spend the time to learn a few small changes in office software instead of doubling the price of a new computer is easy.
Given that criterion, however, I find it hard to recommend ALL open source to ALL people, even myself ; given that different needs and ability levels will make some software/OS more appropriate than another to any given user.
"Yes, Jayne, she's a witch. She's had congress with the beast..."
"She's in Congress?" - Firefly, "Objects in Space
Sadly, I have failed at getting OOo in use at work because it has a heck of a job with the templates we've got in use. Those templates use a heck of a lot of macros and also make heavy use of sections and numbering... needless to say, I would have to go to the trouble of re-doing every single template doc from scratch to be able to successfully use them with OOo... and all the hassle of getting the new versions past the Quality department as approved documents for our iso 9001 system... currently, when I try using the existing templates, I get a heck of a mess when it comes to the numbering of paras etc... and going back and forth between word and OOo is not fun...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
I think it is similar to vehicles in a lot of ways- Some people want a toyota- no style, but does what you need it to do most of the time. I prefer something different, something I can customize and add to (My 73 Camaro). Have you ever talked to a Chevy guy- I would never drive any truck but my Silverado. I think that is a lot like software- some of our loyalty comes from the heart, not the head necessarily.... There is something cool about Firefox, a certain cache (ha), and I am speaking aside from its features. It has a coolness quotient.
Almost every Harvard student was High School Valedictorian- After a year of college, half are in the bottom of the class
Most open source software is free. Not all, but most.
To use a program, like OpenOffice versus Microsoft Office, OpenOffice is sooo much cheaper.
I use open source programs for that purpose alone. If I can afford it, I buy commercial, as it's generally a lot nicer and most widely accepted. At home I have Microsoft Office only because I could afford it, but my family generally uses OpenOffice on the other systems..
" What I've noticed is that the average computer user wants a turn-key solution."
That's funny what I have noticed is that the average computer user wants an open system and in fact will turn down an easier to use turnkey solution if they have an harder to use open system if it costs a little less.
Maybe it's because my perpective is longer then yours. I lived through the "golden years" of the computer revolution from the eighties, nineties and today.
Time after time I have seen more integrated, easier to use, turnkey systems fall by the wayside while systems that were perceived to be open and cheaper won. Here are some examles.
CP/M vs dozens of other long gone 8 bit computer makers.
Apple II vs Atari, TI, HP etc.
IBM pc vw Mac.
DOS vs OS/2
Windows vs MacOS
IBM PS2 vs Clones
Microchannel vs ISA
PC vs Amiga
Compuserve vs Internet.
AOL vs internet
The list goes on and on. If users truly prefered a cohesive, turn key, easy to use system we would all be griping about Apple instead of MS. In every single one of my examples the better, easier to use, more performant solution lost to a cheaper and more open one.
This dynamic is still going on today. Look at windows/PC vs the Mac. With a mac you get a compresensive turnkey system with windows you get to cobble together the software and hardware. But it's considered more open and costs less so voila, apple still can't gain significant traction into the PC market.
There is one more factor I should mention. Corporate adoption drives home adoption. If you are watching keep an eye out for corporate adoption of linux and other open source technologies. The minute you see corporations embracing linux on the desktop sell your MS stock.
evil is as evil does
I usually am more diplomatic than the OP here.
I usually charge them by the hour and when they ask what can be done, talk to them about alternatives. More to the point, I explain *why* Windows is so vulnerable. Then I let them make up their mind. Remember, they are paying me by the hour.
There are a few times I will go out of my way to switch people to Firefox, OpenOffice, or Linux. These usually exist when it is the cheapest way to solve their immediate problem. Usually with Firefox, it is because IE is broken due to some spyware and I can't find another way to fix it. Usually with the other two, it is when the alternative is buying a new copy of Office and/or Windows.
My customers who run Linux are almost entirely of the non-tech-savvy types anyway, and generally they are happy with their software. This is because say what you will about intuitive interfaces (meaning interfaces one is used to), but Linux is a whole lot more *predictable* than Windows. Explaining this whole "root" thing is not hard. "This is a multi-user system, designed so that several people can use it at once without accessing eachother's data. Root is the account for the administrator who can override system settings." Yes, most people can understand this.
"Why won't Microsoft Office install?" Because if you read the box, it requires Windows. If you really need Microsoft Office, it is still less expensive to buy crossover office or Win4Lin than a copy of Windows. And one can even try with WINE.
Now, there are a few things that Linux currently cannot do that Windows can. These include installing things like Bonzi Buddy, Gator, and other cool freeware tools which come bundled with spyware, as well as some online gaming programs, etc. However, for people who want to use their computers to actually be productive, it is far better than Windows.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
... though I (obviously) have MS Office on my (company) computer, and for a good reason: it is cross-platform!
When the bulk of your "data" gets generated while running EDA software on remote Solaris cluster it is convenient to have an office tool to put together an IOC/presentation/whatener right there and then. After this I can continue to edit it on the Windows side, maybe off-line, WITH THE SAME PROGRAM!
YMMV
Paul B.
All I care about is myself. And I want to use software I like. If everyone uses MS Office, I am forced to use their dc/xls/ppt file formats. If eveyone else is using Windows I will have to deal with wmv files. Many properitory plugins are not available on platform I want to use (because of small user base). As 90% people use IE website will refuse to work with browser I use. I dont care what other people use. I just want everyone to follow (open) standards. If MS Office supports open document format, IE is standards compliant and wmv is replaced by ogg I dont care.
But if they're running Windows, I tell them they're on their own. First of all, a typical Windows machine has far more than its share of major problems. Worms, viruses and spyware are almost entirely Windows afflictions, and most people just won't pay attention to my repeated lectures on proper network hygiene until it's too late.
Second, I find it quite painful to debug a Windows machine even when it's in front of me. Time really starts to drag after the first ten or twenty reboots. Trying to do it over the phone from thousands of miles away, unable to see the screen or type some complicated command without having to spell it out verbally several times, is just beyond my patience. VNC is sometimes useful, but it's painfully slow even over cable modems or DSL, and you still need local human intervention whenever a reboot is needed -- which is all too frequent with Windows.
More reasons:
Standards: It's amazing how many people send around Word, PowerPoint, and Excel documents. Why do they expect me to be able to read these? Do they expect me to cough up ~ $500 like they did (or didn't) for software I don't need other than to accomodate their whimsy? If they send me an OpenOffice document instead, there's no financial burden on me and it's an open standard which I am in some sense more entitled to use/interpret/read.
As for Firefox -- since this is now popular enough at my workplace, I basically don't need to test for compatability with IE (which is difficult to run in Linux), and I don't support it in my web projects. If it works in Firefox, Opera, and Konqueror (which almost tests Safari compatability), then it's good enough for me. I am also looking forward to more complete support for things like MathML, which will gradually make life much easier for me. As for IE support, I wish there was a web page that launches an ActiveX script that installs FireFox with little notification.
For an open-source project, the number of developers tends to increase with the number of users. I don't think it's a linear relationship, but it's certainly monotonic. And when talking about open-source, the distinction between developers and users gets wonderfully blurry.
Finally, I love the wide variety of open-source projects going on! I often find projects that are useful to me, and it seems like each year computing just becomes easier thanks to OSS. Better programming languages, more libraries, more complete hardware support, improved documentation, etc. The more people become aware of open source, the more they will get involved in it. This is of direct benefit to me, and everyone else too!
Example 1: One of my customers relies on a web site hosted by Positive Internet (www.positiveinternet.com). Last weekend, Positive got DDOSed. I had to explain to my customer that the problem is made possible by all the compromised PCs out there - and Microsoft isn't going to do much to fix it until 2007 at the earliest.
Example 2: Another of my customers was using a Debian based PC that I made for them, until they asked me to fit a cheap Vivitar digital camera to it. Which doesn't work, because the camera doesn't properly support USB Mass Storage. Goodbye, Linux. Hello, Windows 98.
Conclusion: I hope that popular open source will help people keep control of their computers. I also hope it will help manufacturers stop producing broken hardware.
Janet was a school teacher. Like many teachers she didn't decide on her profession based on the financial rewards. Money was tight at the best of times.
Janet buys a computer for herself, but doesn't buy a copy of Office. Later she finds out that Wordpad isn't really what she needs in a word processor. She visits one of the local appliance shops which also sell PC software.
Discussing the situation with the sales person she finds she will be paying $200 for a copy of Office. Now $200 is much better than the full price only because she can get the academic pricing, but it is still $200 she can ill afford.
Just then a young man comes up to her and asks her what she needs the word processor for. Does it need to run Macro's etc. She answers that it will be used for writing letters, looking at the childrens homework etc. The young man then suggests that she take a look at OpenOffice, which can be purchased at another store thats only a few minutes walk away.
Intrigued she walks down to the store and buys a copy of OpenOffice for $10. Getting home she pops the CD into the computer and with littlw effort has OpenOffice up and running. How, she wonders, can such excellent software ge so cheap. She begins tgo read the front cover describing that OpenOffice is open source, and what open source means.
Three months later the entire school has changed to OpenOffice, as the idea of freedom that Janet brought to the school caught like wildfire with the teachers that saw the quality of open source. Janet was now used Linux at home, but her journey into open source was just beginning.
Oh, that's rich. Fire up a copy Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Access. Use Windows' nifty "tile windows" feature. Then compare the menu bar, menu layout, and toolbars in those 4 windows. Yeah, real consistent. If you think chaos is consistent.
Now fire up 4 different versions of Word. Notice how very little stayed the same in the interface across versions.
MS has not listened to their customers. Otherwise they would not be changing menu layouts and file formats with every single point release of Office. Adding features is one thing. Changing the placement of icons in the toolbar or items in the menus simply to make it seem new is quite another.
Until you can open a Word 2003 document in Word 97, you'll never be able to convince me that MS is listening to their customers. If Corel can figure out how to keep the exact same file format across 6 versions of WordPerfect (create a doc in WordPerfect 12, you can open it in WordPerfect 7 without losing formatting), then why can't MS? They've got how many more programmers and customers than Corel???
You obviously have not used any version of Office other than 95. Because trying to get Office 2002 or 2003 to work on anything less than a P3 1 GHz is not fun. While WordPerfect Office 12 runs quite nicely on my P2-333. Hell, the minimum system requirements for Office 2003 are simply mind boggling. If would really be nice if MS understood the phrase "keep it simple".
Let's see, where to start...
1. About a year ago, my boss was looking at options for bug tracking/issue tracking software. Knowing I could save the company some money, and implement a great product, I recommended Bugzilla. I even installed it and let other people in I.T. take it for a spin. Mr. Boss didn't even LOOK at it, and we ended up spending $15K on a commercial product that uses an ActiveX control as a front-end, forcing us (i.e. ME) to use Internet Explorer. Choice between an excellent, free, browser-based product that we could modify to suit our needs, or a commercial, closed, platform-specific and expensive product - we go with the expensive product.
2. A few months ago, we as a group decided that we needed a better way to centralize documentation and information, some way to make it easy for us and our users to find and maintain documentation. Perfect use for a wiki! I installed and configured TWiki, showed a few people how to use it, and we started populating it. Everybody loved it! Two weeks ago, Mr. Boss announces that we're installing Sharepoint and migrating all of our documentation there. Reason? He saw it used at a Great Plains conference that he attended. The wiki is running on a retired 350Mhz desktop machine, serving content to approximately 40 users. Think Sharepoint will run on such a machine?
3. In response to our users' increasing complaints about SPAM, we decided that we needed to implement a server-based filtering mechanism. My recommendation - stick a Linux box in front of Exchange, running Exim, Spamassassin, and ClamAV, the same combination that makes me very happy at home. Nope, we spent money on a commercial content filter (can't remember the product name). Our email admin is adding FROM addresses to the blacklist on that thing every day. Explaining that this is an exercise in futility, because FROM addresses are forged and random, passes cleanly above his head, and he merrily continues adding addresses to the blacklist.
It just goes on and on and on. The mentality that money must be spent to solve these problems astounds me.
Why do I care? I care because I have to work with these products as part of my job. I care because I see it as useless spending on the part of my employer. I care because these products are NOT the best solution to the problem, but we're happy to throw money away on them. It is EXTREMELY frustrating to sit back and watch, but trying to argue the point gets you labelled a zealot.
AAAARRRRRGGGGHHHHH!!!!