I spent many years with a company offering second-line network support to 30-40 UK companies. We had 4-5 helpdesk staff, plus a number of others who could be called out to perform site visits. Each customer would typically have a few staff calling, and log nore more than a dozen calls a week.
The company changed later to offering first line support. The number of customers fell, the support became less intelectually challenging, but we had to employ more staff to cope with the demand, due to the time spent talking to the customer and suppliers.
Until about a year ago I worked for a company who provided Quality 3rd party support to a number of major UK organisations. When we were at out peak we had around 50 companies on our books. The proviso for a contract was that the organisation we supported must have someone trained and competant on site that we spoke to (although there were a couple of exceptions to this rule).
We flourished, supplying support, upgrades, patches and solutions to everyone. In 1996 we had to relocate as we could no longer fit in our office. My department was the major money earner for the company, if revenue for software updates was included.
Then a year or so later everything started to go wrong. Customers failed to renew contracts, or would use us only to provide the software themselves. I would sometimes go for a day without talking to a real customer. New contracts were becoming difficult to sell. Everyone was using the internet resources to find their help.
All we were able to sell from then one were support contracts to places without their own IT departments. Simple calls which would have taken 5 minutes to solve went on for weeks. We even ended up running the helpdesk for one organisation 200 miles away. I spent some time out of the office doing on site work - when I returned all but two of my co-workers had resigned.
The company has now closed this part of its buisness and moved into other fields. I am now working elsewhere, testing communications protocols.
I worked for a company that had an Internet Consultant who would repeatedly mail out all the hoax virus alerts to all staff and customers, even if at the time the payload was not technically possible (this was a few years ago). Our department would always burst into laughter.
What really irks me is that this moron was selling and installing firewalls!
Needless to say his department fell apart due to incompetant management!
Always look at the patch before installing it.
on
Linux 2.2.15 Released
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· Score: 1
In the past, prior to Alan Cox's generating proper release notes, stable kernel patches would come with no list of changes. A few web sites would attempt to summarise the changes, but would never go into the changes in any great detail.
When faced with a kernel patch I always check the source by hand, particularly looking for drivers that I've had problems with. A few minutes looking at the code specific to one platform determines if upgrading will be worthwhile.
I've had a look at the patch myself. Seems to be mainly I2O and ISDN updates, plus other device drivers for hardware I've never seen. A patch I submitted to allow an obscure sound card to be supported better has not appeared (although it is in 2.3). By the time it makes the stable kernel series, I won't be using this hardware any more!!
I started out by pulling down the A, AP, D and N sets from the current Slackware, and installed it. Then I discovered that the latest slackware would connect to my ISP's PPP server no matter what I tried! I then went back to a really ancient Slackware, installing the same package set, and pulled down the source for glibc2.1, gcc2.95, binutils, 2.2.14 kernel and a few other necessary bits to get this to compile. One whole day spent compiling later (I've only got a P100!) and I had something partially current. Now I've got XFree86 4.0, Perl and a few other bits installed. Tonight I should have the Gnome panel up and running. Only thing now is to find a stable bloat free browser!
You forgot Flight Simulator!! One I get my hardware working properly Windows will be reinstalled just for that. I agree on Word 2 - the last version that actually allow you to get your work done. Pity my installation floppies no longer work!
I once supported and tested a product which had very rigid release deadlines, even though at the time there were only 3 sites using the product, and all three were still not in production. The 'project manager' would often promise a new version by the end of the week to one customer, and the programming team would often work long hours just to get everything working as promised, often ending up with code that was tested enough to check that it was working. The project was an utter shambles. If we had shipped new versions when they had been ready, perhaps the test customers would still be using it today, instead of abandoning it as unready.
I did this myself last year, over a number of weekends. I used an obsolete Slackware install as the base system, running on a small (300MB) partition. Within a few weeks I had a working libc5 system, and a few weeks after that I had recompiled everything with glibc2.1. I learnt quite a bit. I aslo discovered that a lot of autoconf built packages required some really odd software to be installed to allow it to compile correctly. I also needed to do a bit of hacking to get some packages to compile with the latest glibc (typically a namespace clash). This year my hard disk suffered a serious crash rendering it useless - and I hadn't got round to acquiring a suitable backup device. I may try this again, but I'm more likely to go for a Debian unstable installation this time.
Some enterprising nations of this size make a vast fortune yearly by seliing postage stamps to collectors. These are not printed or used in the state itself, but generate a large amount of revenue for the government, by printing many different designs. Maybe demand for stamps is falling, and Tuvalu needs some other form of income?
I've used techniques like this on usenet.
on
Author Unknown
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· Score: 4
There's a local usenet group I semi-lurk in. There's one trolling poster who posts using a number of different pseudonyms, ISPs and email addreses, yet it always possible to tell that it is him just by the style of his postings, the separation of the various message parts, and the fact that he is one of the few that top-posts in that group.
Kill-filing this looney is impossible as his email address constantly mutates.
One thing that the Y2K problem did do was to force companies to rid themselves of un-maintained software.
I worked with one financial institution who used a lot of really old DOS software for day to day tasks, some dating back to the late 1980s. Generally no support was available, but I still had to get it working. We had problems due to network API changes, fast CPUs and other aspects of software rot. As no-one had maintained the software for years, no Y2K compliance statements could be obtained, and this software was junked.
It is unlikely that another excuse to junk software will occur until 2038 - and by then I won't care.
Slashdot Mirror
The company changed later to offering first line support. The number of customers fell, the support became less intelectually challenging, but we had to employ more staff to cope with the demand, due to the time spent talking to the customer and suppliers.
It all comes down to the individual requirements.
We flourished, supplying support, upgrades, patches and solutions to everyone. In 1996 we had to relocate as we could no longer fit in our office. My department was the major money earner for the company, if revenue for software updates was included.
Then a year or so later everything started to go wrong. Customers failed to renew contracts, or would use us only to provide the software themselves. I would sometimes go for a day without talking to a real customer. New contracts were becoming difficult to sell. Everyone was using the internet resources to find their help.
All we were able to sell from then one were support contracts to places without their own IT departments. Simple calls which would have taken 5 minutes to solve went on for weeks. We even ended up running the helpdesk for one organisation 200 miles away. I spent some time out of the office doing on site work - when I returned all but two of my co-workers had resigned.
The company has now closed this part of its buisness and moved into other fields. I am now working elsewhere, testing communications protocols.
On second thoughts it won't be cai.com, as this virus works properly and doesn't cost a fortune!
What really irks me is that this moron was selling and installing firewalls!
Needless to say his department fell apart due to incompetant management!
An administrative nightmare, all that awful form filling. And if using shared mail, all common mail messages are in one big file.
And the user interface is one of the most inconsistant pieces of junk I've ever had the misfortune to see.
I'd rather run Exchange, and that sucks rocks through a straw!
The ones that used to appear on Kernelnotes were little more than a list of the files that had changed
gzip -dc patch-2.2.15.gz | grep +++ | less
would do the same!
Notice the e-mail address of one of the authors!
When faced with a kernel patch I always check the source by hand, particularly looking for drivers that I've had problems with. A few minutes looking at the code specific to one platform determines if upgrading will be worthwhile.
I've had a look at the patch myself. Seems to be mainly I2O and ISDN updates, plus other device drivers for hardware I've never seen. A patch I submitted to allow an obscure sound card to be supported better has not appeared (although it is in 2.3). By the time it makes the stable kernel series, I won't be using this hardware any more!!
I started out by pulling down the A, AP, D and N sets from the current Slackware, and installed it. Then I discovered that the latest slackware would connect to my ISP's PPP server no matter what I tried! I then went back to a really ancient Slackware, installing the same package set, and pulled down the source for glibc2.1, gcc2.95, binutils, 2.2.14 kernel and a few other necessary bits to get this to compile. One whole day spent compiling later (I've only got a P100!) and I had something partially current. Now I've got XFree86 4.0, Perl and a few other bits installed. Tonight I should have the Gnome panel up and running. Only thing now is to find a stable bloat free browser!
You forgot Flight Simulator!! One I get my hardware working properly Windows will be reinstalled just for that.
I agree on Word 2 - the last version that actually allow you to get your work done. Pity my installation floppies no longer work!
I once supported and tested a product which had very rigid release deadlines, even though at the time there were only 3 sites using the product, and all three were still not in production. The 'project manager' would often promise a new version by the end of the week to one customer, and the programming team would often work long hours just to get everything working as promised, often ending up with code that was tested enough to check that it was working. The project was an utter shambles. If we had shipped new versions when they had been ready, perhaps the test customers would still be using it today, instead of abandoning it as unready.
I did this myself last year, over a number of weekends. I used an obsolete Slackware install as the base system, running on a small (300MB) partition. Within a few weeks I had a working libc5 system, and a few weeks after that I had recompiled everything with glibc2.1. I learnt quite a bit. I aslo discovered that a lot of autoconf built packages required some really odd software to be installed to allow it to compile correctly. I also needed to do a bit of hacking to get some packages to compile with the latest glibc (typically a namespace clash). This year my hard disk suffered a serious crash rendering it useless - and I hadn't got round to acquiring a suitable backup device. I may try this again, but I'm more likely to go for a Debian unstable installation this time.
Doesn't work in the English version. However this install is a bit broken in that Windows update comes up as a blank screen.
Some enterprising nations of this size make a vast fortune yearly by seliing postage stamps to collectors. These are not printed or used in the state itself, but generate a large amount of revenue for the government, by printing many different designs. Maybe demand for stamps is falling, and Tuvalu needs some other form of income?
Kill-filing this looney is impossible as his email address constantly mutates.
Some ftp sites were also taken down over the period. I believe one of the machines that resolves to ftp.uk.kenel.org was one such machine.
I worked with one financial institution who used a lot of really old DOS software for day to day tasks, some dating back to the late 1980s. Generally no support was available, but I still had to get it working. We had problems due to network API changes, fast CPUs and other aspects of software rot. As no-one had maintained the software for years, no Y2K compliance statements could be obtained, and this software was junked.
It is unlikely that another excuse to junk software will occur until 2038 - and by then I won't care.