I guess you have them in every company, just recently I was put into the loop of a whole series of mails between managers where the subject was lil' AOL' me.
It started between two Service Delivery Managers, one being my direct superior. Apparently the other SDL was not too happy that one of her guys needed to pick up some work. A whole thread going back an forward for a week, where language became more colourful between the 2 SDL's with about every manager you could find in the company address book on cc. When my manager finally got a detailed mail about everything I didn't do or did wrong, with dates and details of specific tasks, he forwarded the lot to me (without even a 1 on 1 chat or comment in the mail).
The last mail in the thread was portraying me as a lazy, for no good employee and it wasn't until I looked at the dates mentioned that I got a big grin on my face... The dates mentioned where dates I was on holiday, or out of the country on training. So I replied to that mail, giving my take on it and put the whole circus on cc, including HR.
After that, my phone didn't stop ringing; managers I never heard of, apologising their arses off and my mailbox overflowing with likewise apologies and pleas not to take this up any further with HR or involve anyone else. It got so crazy that I sent out a mail to every one, asking them kindly to stop doing that, because it was being a hindrance in getting my job done and clogging up my mailbox. "Accidentally" I cc'd my business manager in it.
Next day there was a very nice meeting with coffee and cake and a whole bunch of managers I never met. (Including my business mangers' boss)
I'm sure that if I posted the whole thread and the resulting memo, it would make a good story, especially as I work for a rather large IT company that just recently had their wrists smacked for not being as ethical as they want to make every one believe they are.
The point is, that companies are run by people and people come with human behaviour, resulting in the ability to say or write emotionally motivated statements when emotion gets the best of them. The MS mails are very entertaining, but no different in behaviour that I have seen in many companies. Managers are human, despite their attempts to hide it, and thankfully they supply us with a wide range of entertainment while keeping lawyers on the job.
"And you shouldn't have to go off on a scavenger hunt, searching doggedly for device drivers, so that your computer can see and get along with that shiny new peripheral."
"You can have absolute confidence in your Mac because it comes prepared with all the drivers you're likely to need for the peripheral devices one generally connects to computers. Thanks to Mac OS X, they're all there, so you don't have to give it a moment's thought."/Sarcasm on So there, WHAT did you do? You went on a scavenger hunt while Apple said you shouldn't and it is very clear that you had NO CONFIDENCE whatsoever in your Mac. SHAME!
But noooo, you had to go and put 3 Gig of RAM in, like your running Vista! So if your having a PC attitude with your Mac, you got what you deserved!
Next time you want to whine about buggy drivers and your OS taking a crap you better be doing it on a PC, tinker boy!/Sarcasm off
What will be interesting though, is to compare the replies here on/. between this article and "Microsoft Worried OEM 'Craplets' Will Harm Vista". It can be argued that Apple talks about a phone and MS talks about an OS. But the observation I make is that both Apple and MS seem to aim to be in tight control to either ban 'Craplets' from their product that might impact performance of the product. It may tempt people to argue others reasons like despotism tendencies and monopolistic behaviour, but last time I checked, there seems to be a lot of products out there, besides phones and OS's that void any warranty if you replace parts or add accessories produces not by the manufacturer of the product
So a user could exploit this? Jeez, panic!
Hold on....
As a matter of habit, I disabled any build-in accounts, so that leaves only me... but can I trust myself?
They will outsource Linux support just like they did for their MS Professional and MS Premier support contracts for EMEA.
Not necessarily a bad thing, considering customer satisfaction for their support started rating better as soon they outsourced it to HP. HP is already in the Linux market, they would be the potential bidders for doing their Linux support as well.
I watched the video, which was actually some nice tongue-in-cheeck humor. Now I don't have much experiance with Mac OS, besides once getting frustrated because as a Windowised user I could find my way around and being too impatient to learn more about it.
Now having played with Vista and finding my way around it, the video suggest that the move to OS-X would be easier then ever!
Instead of downloading Google's IE I just set the default search engine to Google and made my own existing customized Google home page to default in IE and as I don't care much about the Google toolbar I was done in 10 seconds.
I imagine it may be usefull for people who don't know how to do this, but honestly.. how hard is it and does it justify a Google version of IE 7?
Having learned Morse code while in the Royal Dutch Navy and a love to tinker with electronic, I created a text- to Morse - to text application on my Sinclair ZX Spectrum K back in 1983 and hooked it up to an old AN PRC 10-A. I had lots of fun sharing the app and testing how fast we could push it (we got it to transmit and receive at 400 words per minute). Then we had the idea to transmit lists of basic code to each other so we could share apps for the old Sinclair... Of course it would end up having to retransmit because interference or some joker cutting in on the frequency.
We kept tweaking the app until 1989 where we had a IM type of functionality, encryption (!) and we could "attach" binaries or act as a automated relay station. The old Sinclair was an ideal micro to grab your solder iron and make it interface with all sorts of electronics. I remember having much more fun with morsecode and that old Spectrum then when I got my first PC with DOS on it.
Heck, I think I will head up the shed and dig up the Sinclair and the AN PRC 10-A.
I really hated MS and sometimes I still do. Back in the days of win 3.11 I used to spend nights tweaking the OS or finding workarounds to get my PC doing what I wanted (if I could have afforded it, I probably would have gone out and buy a Mac). I did a lot of crash recoveries for friends and family and helped them to get the most out of windhose. By the time I got everything tweaked and fixed, there came a new OS and I had to start from scratch and the hate rekindled. But over the years, my ability to stop the weak points and tweak them into a workable situations increased, I learnt to use debuggers and memory dumps and got my feet wet by making drivers so my TV card would work under Windhoze NT4. Application wise, same thing. Especially if Excel wouldn't do what I wanted, I build my own workarounds using vb script or VBA. Even got Excel to create pearl scripts to distribute automated reports using a Solaris mail server (that was fun!) Being highly allergic to "you can't do that with MS product X" I got a pretty good idea about what sucked and what could be tweaked to do the most interesting things with M$ products. Guess what happened career wise? I am now a technical mentor for MS Product Support, due to this background and experience. Every new product that MS releases has got me up the curtains, cussing and yelling. Still , for some strange reason I really love this job, it has got me on my toes, forces me to do research and expand my knowledge about the limitations and workarounds to get the crap working. Hell, I'm so much into it, I even installed Vista, because I just need to know into the fine detail about it's flaws and weaknesses, just in case I got an support engineer crying at my desk and expects me to provide an action plan because he just went out of knowledge. Come to think of it, when I look at the smartest MS support engineers in my group, they come from the same background, cussing at MS, trying to get it to work.
I guess my hate toward Microsoft got me a career since 10 years. If I didn't, I'd be still shunting cargo waggons in the frickin rain and would have not travelled across the world, got my my house, my car and my MSDN subsciption (hell, you don't expect me to PAY for that crap, do you?)
is while I see a lot of verbiage in the terms of "asume", "think" and "suspect" that hard facts are left out.
Maybe it is just that silly engineer notion I have to do a repro on an issue and get some real-to-life metrics before I cry wolf and make an ASS out of U and ME.
Teach kids about spy ware, bots and viruses before they even learn how to browse?
Excellent idea... Include the adults as well.
The biggest appeal about Windows is the availability of software and ease to install it. That is also it's biggest security risk, because there is such an abundance of Windows targeted malware on the internet that comes calling with screaming banners, offering yet another free piece of junk.
I have become in the habit of thoroughly checking anything I download and install (that goes for my Ubuntu box as well, even the latest firmware updates for my digital camera is under such scrutiny)
Education about trusted sources would reduce the number of zombies, spy bots, virii among the users.
Whatever happened to "Don't take candy from strangers"?
...to add some mall code to any particular OS, recompile and send it out to the world?
Some OS's don't even need to be "cracked" to do this.
Who do you blame if people choose to install cracked software to save a few bucks while the are so many "free" alternatives?
I guess "free" is not that hot, is it?
I recall getting a call from a Mr Fuck from Switzerland a few months ago trying to find out why his registration of his domain got refused. After carefully explaining what his name meant in English he decided to register the domain in the name of one of his Dutch business partner.
Next day he called again and said that they had the same problem to register the domain under the name of his partner, Mr. Cock.
Well, I tried to find www.opensores.ie and it apears to be non-existant.
So your posting proves to be of an insidious and subversive nature.
Who is funding you to spread this bovine poop?
I guess MS doesn't need to fund such a site, your doing a pretty good job yourself.
Oh, wait - You are about to reveal you ARE funded by MS?
It will be the same people who will do the support, they basically get re-trained. With all that need of training coming up you may see a shift from technical support to trainers (after they get their training).
I just happen to be one of the lucky few at my job that gets to go on a 4 weeks exposure to Vista. So some airline is getting a few more seats sold, some hotel owner gets to rent out a room and quiet a few bars and restaurants my expect me frequenting there for 4 weeks. But during those 4 weeks I am pretty sure that my local pub is going to miss out some income (I don't have a drinking problem, I support Microsoft products), but that will probably be compensated by my team that has to miss out on their Technical coach for 4 weeks and by day 2 they will be in the pub making the owner a nice increase of revenue (they don't have a drinking problem, they support Microsoft Products and they have to do it without their coach)
Then, after my return I need to re-deliver the training which will leave me off the floor for another 8 weeks to get everybody trained. By that time the pub owner is exstatic as there will be only half of the engineers available to take on support cases while the other half is in training. Then our customers start frequenting their local pubs more often becuase it will take twice as much time for us to get back to them. The pub owners counts the cash and sees his establishment filling to the brim and that is where the jobs come from, because he will need more staff to poor the drinks (keep them coming, we now support Vista as well)
Because the drop of customer satisfaction due of having only half of the engineers available, the managers are going to be spotted in the pub as well. The pub owner thinks he died and went to heaven.
Shortly after that we will see a revenue increase in detox clinics and treatment of liver cirrhoses. (the clinic is run by the pub owners brother)
So if you are looking to profit from the introduction of Vista, just open a pub realy close to a technical support center and you will be raking in the millions. If you are not the "run your own bussiness" type and looking for a job, it will be in bartending where you can make a career!
"You happened to pick a keyboard that only has drivers for Mac and Windows, again"
Seriously, if it would work, together with my mixing software just as good under Linux, I would not bother with the Mac, but it doesn't, so the Mac is there. I don't give a hoot under which OS it runs, I want it to run and perform.
"Coincidentally the one Camera that don't have drivers for Linux. But that's maybe down to the manufacturers."
And I happen to like that Camera and see no reason to buy myself another one for the sake of running it under linux when I have an XP box that can do that task.
"But everybody is not strong arming the OEMs into keeping the other OSes off the desktop"
You mean MS? They probably use their power to get leverage, but that doesn't seem to stop all those happy Mac and Linux users? OK, it can be a bitch when you have a KORG or a Canon, but like you said that is coincidentally or just happen to be a product that doesn't have a drivers for one or the other OS.
"And catching viruses. How about a games console"
I don't know about virii, I must be doing something wrong or it is that nasty firewall and virusscanner I must have running and spoiling all the fun. Or maybe it is that I don't go downloading every friggin offer that comes up on a webpage just because it is "free"
"Personally I just see it as a tool. Computers used to work in 'harmony' until someone decided to pollute the protocols"
Hey, I see them as a tool too! but sometimes it's so frustrating trying to use a hammer for a saw, I rather reach for the saw, thank you very much. As for the polution part, you realy have to explain that one to me what that has to do with my setup. Are you aware of any protocol problems in my setup I have that I didn't spot yet?
Well, I would not considder myself an Open Source user...More an Open Mind user who makes his conclusions after actually working with the stuff and decide to use whatever I want for whatever I wish to do.
So I still don't get the point what all the fuss is about.
It must be me, but having 3 flavours of linux running, a Mac G4 and 3 PC's with windows XP, XP-x64 and 2003 I don't understand all the flaming back and forth. I love the Linux for getting me on the internet worry free and letting me experiment with all kinds of stuff, I dig the Mac for feeding my Ipod and driving my KORG WS and I just cherisch my Windows flavours for getting my Canos EOS connected and playing my games, doing my SQL 2005 and putting my ASP based forum up nice and secure. I have dedictated a disc for Vista (RC1 at the moment) and I don't realy see the reason for all the big fuss. Everybody is shouting about monopolies and in the same sentence is pushing there own fav OS. Realy, it CAN work, I have all those PC's working in harmony and I wouldn't want to part with any of them. Whenever I get comments to ditch this or that it reminds me of all those fundamentalists trying to force their religion onto the world.
Believe me, they all work, they all are manageble, they all have their down and up sides. You just need to know what you are doing... And that is what REAL system administration is all about. Everything else is just an inabbility to deal with it.
Slashdot Mirror
I guess you have them in every company, just recently I was put into the loop of a whole series of mails between managers where the subject was lil' AOL' me.
It started between two Service Delivery Managers, one being my direct superior. Apparently the other SDL was not too happy that one of her guys needed to pick up some work. A whole thread going back an forward for a week, where language became more colourful between the 2 SDL's with about every manager you could find in the company address book on cc. When my manager finally got a detailed mail about everything I didn't do or did wrong, with dates and details of specific tasks, he forwarded the lot to me (without even a 1 on 1 chat or comment in the mail).
The last mail in the thread was portraying me as a lazy, for no good employee and it wasn't until I looked at the dates mentioned that I got a big grin on my face... The dates mentioned where dates I was on holiday, or out of the country on training. So I replied to that mail, giving my take on it and put the whole circus on cc, including HR.
After that, my phone didn't stop ringing; managers I never heard of, apologising their arses off and my mailbox overflowing with likewise apologies and pleas not to take this up any further with HR or involve anyone else. It got so crazy that I sent out a mail to every one, asking them kindly to stop doing that, because it was being a hindrance in getting my job done and clogging up my mailbox. "Accidentally" I cc'd my business manager in it.
Next day there was a very nice meeting with coffee and cake and a whole bunch of managers I never met. (Including my business mangers' boss)
I'm sure that if I posted the whole thread and the resulting memo, it would make a good story, especially as I work for a rather large IT company that just recently had their wrists smacked for not being as ethical as they want to make every one believe they are.
The point is, that companies are run by people and people come with human behaviour, resulting in the ability to say or write emotionally motivated statements when emotion gets the best of them. The MS mails are very entertaining, but no different in behaviour that I have seen in many companies. Managers are human, despite their attempts to hide it, and thankfully they supply us with a wide range of entertainment while keeping lawyers on the job.
Who doesn't love a juicy scandal?
Then don't!
English is not my native language, mr Anonymous Coward
Ga even fijn een hondenreet likken tot ie bloedt.
http://www.apple.com/getamac/drivers.html
/Sarcasm on
/Sarcasm off
"And you shouldn't have to go off on a scavenger hunt, searching doggedly for device drivers, so that your computer can see and get along with that shiny new peripheral."
"You can have absolute confidence in your Mac because it comes prepared with all the drivers you're likely to need for the peripheral devices one generally connects to computers. Thanks to Mac OS X, they're all there, so you don't have to give it a moment's thought."
So there, WHAT did you do? You went on a scavenger hunt while Apple said you shouldn't and it is very clear that you had NO CONFIDENCE whatsoever in your Mac. SHAME!
But noooo, you had to go and put 3 Gig of RAM in, like your running Vista! So if your having a PC attitude with your Mac, you got what you deserved!
Next time you want to whine about buggy drivers and your OS taking a crap you better be doing it on a PC, tinker boy!
What will be interesting though, is to compare the replies here on /. between this article and "Microsoft Worried OEM 'Craplets' Will Harm Vista". It can be argued that Apple talks about a phone and MS talks about an OS. But the observation I make is that both Apple and MS seem to aim to be in tight control to either ban 'Craplets' from their product that might impact performance of the product. It may tempt people to argue others reasons like despotism tendencies and monopolistic behaviour, but last time I checked, there seems to be a lot of products out there, besides phones and OS's that void any warranty if you replace parts or add accessories produces not by the manufacturer of the product
So a user could exploit this? Jeez, panic! Hold on.... As a matter of habit, I disabled any build-in accounts, so that leaves only me... but can I trust myself?
They will outsource Linux support just like they did for their MS Professional and MS Premier support contracts for EMEA. Not necessarily a bad thing, considering customer satisfaction for their support started rating better as soon they outsourced it to HP. HP is already in the Linux market, they would be the potential bidders for doing their Linux support as well.
I watched the video, which was actually some nice tongue-in-cheeck humor. Now I don't have much experiance with Mac OS, besides once getting frustrated because as a Windowised user I could find my way around and being too impatient to learn more about it.
Now having played with Vista and finding my way around it, the video suggest that the move to OS-X would be easier then ever!
Instead of downloading Google's IE I just set the default search engine to Google and made my own existing customized Google home page to default in IE and as I don't care much about the Google toolbar I was done in 10 seconds.
I imagine it may be usefull for people who don't know how to do this, but honestly.. how hard is it and does it justify a Google version of IE 7?
Having learned Morse code while in the Royal Dutch Navy and a love to tinker with electronic, I created a text- to Morse - to text application on my Sinclair ZX Spectrum K back in 1983 and hooked it up to an old AN PRC 10-A. I had lots of fun sharing the app and testing how fast we could push it (we got it to transmit and receive at 400 words per minute). Then we had the idea to transmit lists of basic code to each other so we could share apps for the old Sinclair... Of course it would end up having to retransmit because interference or some joker cutting in on the frequency.
We kept tweaking the app until 1989 where we had a IM type of functionality, encryption (!) and we could "attach" binaries or act as a automated relay station. The old Sinclair was an ideal micro to grab your solder iron and make it interface with all sorts of electronics. I remember having much more fun with morsecode and that old Spectrum then when I got my first PC with DOS on it.
Heck, I think I will head up the shed and dig up the Sinclair and the AN PRC 10-A.
I really hated MS and sometimes I still do. Back in the days of win 3.11 I used to spend nights tweaking the OS or finding workarounds to get my PC doing what I wanted (if I could have afforded it, I probably would have gone out and buy a Mac). I did a lot of crash recoveries for friends and family and helped them to get the most out of windhose. By the time I got everything tweaked and fixed, there came a new OS and I had to start from scratch and the hate rekindled. But over the years, my ability to stop the weak points and tweak them into a workable situations increased, I learnt to use debuggers and memory dumps and got my feet wet by making drivers so my TV card would work under Windhoze NT4. Application wise, same thing. Especially if Excel wouldn't do what I wanted, I build my own workarounds using vb script or VBA. Even got Excel to create pearl scripts to distribute automated reports using a Solaris mail server (that was fun!) Being highly allergic to "you can't do that with MS product X" I got a pretty good idea about what sucked and what could be tweaked to do the most interesting things with M$ products. Guess what happened career wise? I am now a technical mentor for MS Product Support, due to this background and experience. Every new product that MS releases has got me up the curtains, cussing and yelling. Still , for some strange reason I really love this job, it has got me on my toes, forces me to do research and expand my knowledge about the limitations and workarounds to get the crap working. Hell, I'm so much into it, I even installed Vista, because I just need to know into the fine detail about it's flaws and weaknesses, just in case I got an support engineer crying at my desk and expects me to provide an action plan because he just went out of knowledge. Come to think of it, when I look at the smartest MS support engineers in my group, they come from the same background, cussing at MS, trying to get it to work. I guess my hate toward Microsoft got me a career since 10 years. If I didn't, I'd be still shunting cargo waggons in the frickin rain and would have not travelled across the world, got my my house, my car and my MSDN subsciption (hell, you don't expect me to PAY for that crap, do you?)
is while I see a lot of verbiage in the terms of "asume", "think" and "suspect" that hard facts are left out. Maybe it is just that silly engineer notion I have to do a repro on an issue and get some real-to-life metrics before I cry wolf and make an ASS out of U and ME.
Teach kids about spy ware, bots and viruses before they even learn how to browse?
Excellent idea... Include the adults as well.
The biggest appeal about Windows is the availability of software and ease to install it. That is also it's biggest security risk, because there is such an abundance of Windows targeted malware on the internet that comes calling with screaming banners, offering yet another free piece of junk.
I have become in the habit of thoroughly checking anything I download and install (that goes for my Ubuntu box as well, even the latest firmware updates for my digital camera is under such scrutiny)
Education about trusted sources would reduce the number of zombies, spy bots, virii among the users.
Whatever happened to "Don't take candy from strangers"?
...to add some mall code to any particular OS, recompile and send it out to the world? Some OS's don't even need to be "cracked" to do this. Who do you blame if people choose to install cracked software to save a few bucks while the are so many "free" alternatives? I guess "free" is not that hot, is it?
I be most interested in, when I'm up shit creeck with a cluster that just went "whoopy" on me, is the response/fix time by the products support.
Don't say it won't ever happen...
I recall getting a call from a Mr Fuck from Switzerland a few months ago trying to find out why his registration of his domain got refused. After carefully explaining what his name meant in English he decided to register the domain in the name of one of his Dutch business partner.
Next day he called again and said that they had the same problem to register the domain under the name of his partner, Mr. Cock.
Well, I tried to find www.opensores.ie and it apears to be non-existant. So your posting proves to be of an insidious and subversive nature. Who is funding you to spread this bovine poop? I guess MS doesn't need to fund such a site, your doing a pretty good job yourself. Oh, wait - You are about to reveal you ARE funded by MS?
It will be the same people who will do the support, they basically get re-trained. With all that need of training coming up you may see a shift from technical support to trainers (after they get their training).
I just happen to be one of the lucky few at my job that gets to go on a 4 weeks exposure to Vista. So some airline is getting a few more seats sold, some hotel owner gets to rent out a room and quiet a few bars and restaurants my expect me frequenting there for 4 weeks. But during those 4 weeks I am pretty sure that my local pub is going to miss out some income (I don't have a drinking problem, I support Microsoft products), but that will probably be compensated by my team that has to miss out on their Technical coach for 4 weeks and by day 2 they will be in the pub making the owner a nice increase of revenue (they don't have a drinking problem, they support Microsoft Products and they have to do it without their coach)
Then, after my return I need to re-deliver the training which will leave me off the floor for another 8 weeks to get everybody trained. By that time the pub owner is exstatic as there will be only half of the engineers available to take on support cases while the other half is in training. Then our customers start frequenting their local pubs more often becuase it will take twice as much time for us to get back to them. The pub owners counts the cash and sees his establishment filling to the brim and that is where the jobs come from, because he will need more staff to poor the drinks (keep them coming, we now support Vista as well)
Because the drop of customer satisfaction due of having only half of the engineers available, the managers are going to be spotted in the pub as well. The pub owner thinks he died and went to heaven.
Shortly after that we will see a revenue increase in detox clinics and treatment of liver cirrhoses. (the clinic is run by the pub owners brother)
So if you are looking to profit from the introduction of Vista, just open a pub realy close to a technical support center and you will be raking in the millions. If you are not the "run your own bussiness" type and looking for a job, it will be in bartending where you can make a career!
"You happened to pick a keyboard that only has drivers for Mac and Windows, again"
Seriously, if it would work, together with my mixing software just as good under Linux, I would not bother with the Mac, but it doesn't, so the Mac is there. I don't give a hoot under which OS it runs, I want it to run and perform.
"Coincidentally the one Camera that don't have drivers for Linux. But that's maybe down to the manufacturers."
And I happen to like that Camera and see no reason to buy myself another one for the sake of running it under linux when I have an XP box that can do that task.
"But everybody is not strong arming the OEMs into keeping the other OSes off the desktop"
You mean MS? They probably use their power to get leverage, but that doesn't seem to stop all those happy Mac and Linux users? OK, it can be a bitch when you have a KORG or a Canon, but like you said that is coincidentally or just happen to be a product that doesn't have a drivers for one or the other OS.
"And catching viruses. How about a games console"
I don't know about virii, I must be doing something wrong or it is that nasty firewall and virusscanner I must have running and spoiling all the fun. Or maybe it is that I don't go downloading every friggin offer that comes up on a webpage just because it is "free"
"Personally I just see it as a tool. Computers used to work in 'harmony' until someone decided to pollute the protocols"
Hey, I see them as a tool too! but sometimes it's so frustrating trying to use a hammer for a saw, I rather reach for the saw, thank you very much.
As for the polution part, you realy have to explain that one to me what that has to do with my setup. Are you aware of any protocol problems in my setup I have that I didn't spot yet?
Well, I would not considder myself an Open Source user...More an Open Mind user who makes his conclusions after actually working with the stuff and decide to use whatever I want for whatever I wish to do.
So I still don't get the point what all the fuss is about.
It must be me, but having 3 flavours of linux running, a Mac G4 and 3 PC's with windows XP, XP-x64 and 2003 I don't understand all the flaming back and forth. I love the Linux for getting me on the internet worry free and letting me experiment with all kinds of stuff, I dig the Mac for feeding my Ipod and driving my KORG WS and I just cherisch my Windows flavours for getting my Canos EOS connected and playing my games, doing my SQL 2005 and putting my ASP based forum up nice and secure. I have dedictated a disc for Vista (RC1 at the moment) and I don't realy see the reason for all the big fuss. Everybody is shouting about monopolies and in the same sentence is pushing there own fav OS. Realy, it CAN work, I have all those PC's working in harmony and I wouldn't want to part with any of them. Whenever I get comments to ditch this or that it reminds me of all those fundamentalists trying to force their religion onto the world. Believe me, they all work, they all are manageble, they all have their down and up sides. You just need to know what you are doing... And that is what REAL system administration is all about. Everything else is just an inabbility to deal with it.