I will simply have to try it out. I enjoy 3D modeling and have had a blast with Blender. Perhaps if they get enough downloads they will consider changing the crippled features or offer a middle ground product that is under $500.00. I would buy it if it was reasonably priced. I don't mind not having professional features geared for a motion picture production house. I just want to make awesome 3D stills and some small animations. I don't have a renderfarm nor would I need one. I don't have 12 hours to render a production quality frame on my wimpy PC.
If you simply don't want to pay, look at Blender it is truly amazing. Maya is technically better but you can do quite a bit with Blender and there is a huge community for help and support.
We use Netscape's LDAP servers, NIS+ on Solaris and SiteMinder (NT -> Unix bridge) to manage our authentication needs. NT Administration and Unix Administration can be handled via web form interface to the LDAP servers. The changes replicate across platforms. It works fairly well.
The only time I've ever witnessed something like this was when I serviced a client who kept complaining about time jumps (usually backwards and in large hour chunks). I'd swapped all the hardware several times (motherboard, battery, processor, memory, all the ISA cards, etc).
Finally, I saw it happen. It was right about lunch time and on the other side of the wall was the worlds oldest radar range (pre Microwave Oven). That sucka kicked in when someone heated their lunch and the clock on the computer actually ran backwards!
I had to move the desk away from the wall several feet and the problem stopped happening.
More than likely though, the problem is with a buggy BIOS or dying battery. Replace the battery, flash your BIOS to the latest revision. If this doesn't work then you're only out about $10.00. Next step is to either buy an add-on time device that works properly or if you have a net connection running all the time, look into the NTP (Network Time Protocols) to sync with the Naval Observatory or another good source for correct time on as frequently a basis as you require.
Also check out the Linux clock features like the realtime daemon, it's not for realtime as in realtime OS but for more accurate time keeping. Red Hat has this daemon by default.
Check your security, make sure a co-worker is not just trying to mess with your head by changing your clock remotely.
Having worked customer service for the last 10 years, I have to make this comment. You should not be doing customer relations or customer service in any way shape or form. You simply cannot handle the stress...
It took me about 3 years to develop an attitude that didn't make me want to kick my cat or yell at people for cutting me off in a gas station after work.
If you can't take the stress of dealing with idiots and morons, you should not be a project leader/maintainer. Especially for Mac users! (Not a dig or a flame!) But they aren't known for their technical self-help-can-do attitudes. These folks are used to the = MacOS 9 and not a Unix based system like MacOSX. They are used to simple easy to use software and operating systems.
What I learned was the ability to not give a shit if I pleased these people. Don't get me wrong, I truly care to help people and do so every single day. But I always see the same idiots over and over calling me to walk them through the same exact procedure over the phone. Most of these guys/gals are a communications nightmare who can barely use a mouse and they don't know how to listen nor follow directions. We are talking about 3 hour phone calls to accomplish something that should only take 10min.
That said, I can relate to what you are going through. I've written over 300MB worth of web pages detailing all sorts of technical data and my own technical teammates still line up at my desk with questions that are answered in the documentation. Heck if the techs don't read it what makes you think the end users will?
However, it is a crime to just loose it with a customer. Even if that customer is not paying for your services (mine sure as hell aren't...). It was even worse that you publically did it in an open forum. Heck in a professional environment, if I am going to tear someone a new asshole, I take them into a private location where no one else can hear us and I let'em have it.
What you need to learn to do is to roll with the punches, dodge and weave to avoid the bullets, and still maintain an easy going attitude. I do not carry these frustrations around with me. I have learned to exercise extreme patience. If you cannot learn to do this, stay far far away from customer service positions.
I do the bare minimum for the idiots and morons but go the extra mile for the ones who are at least polite and pleasant. If an idiot happens to be at least pleasant and nice then they might get extra help.
Things you could have done:
1. Made an email template with RTFM and links to the FAQ, etc. in it. The latest versions that have been tested, etc. Just forward these automated responses to the idiots.
2. You could just ignore the morons, heck you are not making money on this. You don't need to email all of them. I am sure people like Linus ignore emails all the time.
3. Setup a survey to find out just how many users are actually happy with the Fink project. I bet they outnumber the ones who were pissing you off!
Basically, All IT Folks get full local admin rights. It's the end users who get locked down.
Hopefully one's IT staff is smart enough to follow the rules on licensing. If not they are caught by security audits that run from the login scripts and/or SMS reporting.
We can attach to the machines remotely and login with a local admin id to install software. We use a combination of SMS Remote and pcANYWHERE for dial users. We login, install the software and then logout. End users are so locked down they cannot even change the colors in Windows. Power End users can change colors and other customizations. Kiosk computers are setup with a service id and that id is extremely restricted. There are even training id's for temps, etc. These work in training rooms only. Training rooms are network isolated and filtered.
Developers, Admins, etc. Have full local admin rights. Exceptions are made for WAH users (work at home) so they can at least install local printers etc.
Yes, it makes it harder to fix problems when something goes wrong. We even renamed the local administrator account and randomly assigned it a cryptic pw. Then logged all the passwords to a secure database. If we need to redo the broken security model we have to login to the database with a special id and feed it the workstation name. Then it spits back the cryptic password. We then can login, repair the security model and then the normal admin id's group.
We use an SU.EXE utility for NT/2000 domains that allows us to SU to the admin id's. Every tech has two id's. A normal one and an admin id. Domain Admins have a third id. Everything a domain admin does is fully logged and recorded for security purposes. The midrange Unix platform is setup in a similar fashion.
We have an automated answer file based installation system (home brewed) to install approved software. If you login as an Admin you have more packages available (licensed stuff). The regular users only see the site licensed stuff.
There is what we call a DLLStack that installs after each approved package and it forces the system DLL's to the right versions for a given tested and approved NT Build. It won't let you install a package on an older build if the DLLStack would break your system by downgrading the system DLL's. When this system works, it works well. However sometimes a user is give local admin for some reason or another and they download and install stuff from the Internet that is not compatible with the DLLStack. So the next time the stack is run their computer needs to be rebuilt...
What really stinks is all of the above is home brewed and engineered when it all exists in Unix/Linux systems and is a whole lot easier than setting it up on NT. We use a lot of third party utilities with NT that Unix/Linux have had since the beginning. i.e. su, kix32, sms, etc.
In the case of MS-Office you have to edit approx. 10,000 registry keys. Sure the software will launch but it's a pain. Fortunately, I found a search and replace tool for the registry and was able to fix all the broken keys. On a side note, there is software that will do this for you. Thought it came with Partition Magic...
Either way, in Linux you would have to change some things hear and there as well. Not nearly as bad as Windows however. No registry keeping paths, etc.
Think that's weird try figuring out why car brands and models are named the way they are. That's why I drive cars with numbers in their names like revision levels.
This can be thought of as Road Rage on the Internet! This idiot has made quite a pest of himself. However it brings up questions of free speech and public debate. The following would ring true.
1. You should be a gentleman/lady in one's posts.
2. You should refrain from using language which is profane in nature.
3. You should not slander co-debaters.
Just because users don't know who you really are, should not allow you to become a complete twit. The same concept applies to road rage. A driver feels isolated and protected within their car, so they perform aggresive acts against others. If these people were standing on the street they would not be pusing others around like they do with there automobiles.
Point number two:
A website who provides a public forum should clearly define the rules (as Free Republic did) and they need some sort of moderation technology. Without moderation, you have to manually sensor content and ban user accounts. This is not a free forum, but a skewed reality. Free speech should be allowed, even if you don't like the content of the speech. Although Slashdot's moderation technology is not the greatest, it does work most of the time. Allowing other readers to moderate posts prevents a whole lot of worthless content that does not flow with the debate. This can kill off topic posts, first posts, and other junk. The moderation system is entirely optional. If you don't want to read the junk, turn on a moderation level that strips it out. If you wish to see the junk, set it to the lowest level.
We will never be free from the idiots but we can at least filter some of their junk. I don't know about you but I have been using Newsgroups and BBS forum systems since their inception. I simply don't have the patience for inconsiderate time wasting filth. But I believe that someone should not be blocked from posting such filth.
Eventually, the troll gets bored when no-one bites into his bait. Those that are ignorant enough to bite the bait deserve the resulting onslaught.
I don't believe this user would have started attacking the Free Republic website if he hadn't been banned in the first place. Banning the user id and deleting his messages only escalated the situation and caused the user to retaliate. This is the exact same thing as intentially cutting off another road rage afflicted driver or breaking hard when he/she is tail gating you. It escalates the already dangerous situation. People end up crashing their cars, brawling on the side of the road, and shooting each other over nothing at all.
Not turning one's cheek to a trolls flamebait, only encourages the troll to become more aggresive. One needs to identify a troll and simply ignore their coments completely. Let the troll see that they succeeded in posting but no one cares what they have to say.
Moderation technology and the ability for users to completely ignore posts by a known offensive individual are the only way to stop the problem. Taking action against an individual in cyberspace only escalates the situation. There are people in cyberspace that are knowledgable enough to make your online life very difficult, why test their resolve?
In regards to your recent rant concerning Help Desk cartoons and how they are cruel. I have been working tech support positions for the past 6 years. I am currently in a senior position on an advanced help desk. This new help desk actually helps users instead of just transferring calls to a real tech. We have no-one to escalate the problem to and we built over 2,000 computers that we support. Our current success rate is over 86% on solving all calls on the first call.
Most help desk's are not helpful. For example, there is one at my company that employees over 300 technical analysts and every time I transfer a customer who called the wrong number I get some idiot on the phone. Last time, we just needed the new phone number to dial in. It took three help desk personnel and a manager before we got the correct phone number!
Putting unskilled persons on the phone just to get users off hold is not acceptable. This is why we formed our new help desk. We took the desktop support people (level II) and some engineers (level III) and put us on the phones. We are extremely well paid for the position. I trouble-shoot any problem a user encounters on their NT workstations. This invovles common NT issues as well as all of the office applications (Word, Excel, Exchange, etc) and business applications (Oracle, Sybase, SQL Anywhere, Interbase, etc).
Most of the time, I don't get silly calls but now and they I get some real zingers. It is nice to read comics like UserFriendly which makes fun of users. Heck, I used to be a user and remember not knowing anything. That is not the point. I need to blow off some steam and laugh about it or I am going to burn out and quit!
Everyday, I get yelled at or swore at by some fool who can't even use a mouse. I get calls where they tell me they have a 10 million dollar presentation in two hours and they shut off their computer in the middle of an SMS Logon script then wonder why it's now Blue Screening of Death every time they boot! I get calls where they argue with me about whether or not the laptop is plugged in the power supply when it turns itself off every 10 seconds.
Yesterday, I got a call from a non-employee that we support that transmits data to our mainframe via a dial up system called Advantis (IBM Global Services). The problem was we sent out sixteen mailings over 6 months ago advising them they needed to upgrade their software for Y2K. We even sent the diskettes with the mailing. Minimum requirements were specified on hot pink paper. We told people they had to upgrade their computers and operating systems then the software or it would not work. We had three different calls where it was the same problem. They still had a 486 with 8meg running DOS and Windows 3.1 and running the DOS version of the application which is 16 versions too old. They ended up with a date like 1/4/100 instead of 1/3/2000 and said our system screwed them up. It took 20min per call just to prove them wrong! Even then we got yelled at! It was not our fault!
That is why I read UserFriendly and why I enjoy it so much. There may have not been mission critical Y2K issues but we still are in the trenches dealing with it.
If management would spend half as much on training the users as they do at buying wood and leather furniture, this would not be a problem. I shudder to think what the average office workers productivity must be like when they spend all day on the phone with us.
Read the article, at least it's correct in it's directions. This is no different then when they provided OS/2 removal instructions in DOS and Windows documentation. We should consider this an honorable mention since BEOS or BSD is not mentioned.
Use the feedback feature and slam them with the Slashdot effect. Everyone submit comments about the article and maybe we can flood their Back Office!
The company I am working for has many more users than 25,000. We have many different Exchange Servers segmented across several company divisions. First hand experience, Exchange goes down all too frequently. The Exchange clients are horrible to support. They just love to keep re-trying the server for as long as 10-15min before erroring out. The licensing is astronomical, even with large enterprise discounts. Required add-ons to allow for Fax Gateways, LDAP, etc. are also very expensive. The only good thing is group scheduling via Outlook. I shudder to think how much we could be saving by running Sendmail on SUN Servers. TCO with Microsoft is a complete crock. The servers were overloaded today because someone emailed a global distribution list and a bunch of people used "reply to all". It brought 8 servers to their knees and will cause headaches for months to come as people keep doing it. Granted, this will stress any email server. Exchange and NT in general doesn't function under heavy load very well.
I have an ST 4Meg with the following: - 2 monitors, one color the other hi-res Mono - Switch for changing monitors - Mouse - Keyboard - Externel SCSI hardrive 10 or 20Mb - Software, books, etc. You pay the shipping costs and it's yours absolutely free (AS IS). It is in full working order. Due to the age of the software diskettes, I don't know if all of them work or not. You would be on your own to salvage what you can. I would prefer that this go to 68000 Linux developer, collector, or Atari Enthusiast. I also have an Atari 800XL with 2 Atari Floppy drives and one Black Indus GT drive (remember those beauties?. Cables, books, software, cartridges, etc. Serious inquiries only please: (Disclaimer: Again, AS IS condition; unknown if all devices and software diskettes are in working order.) inquiries to be sent to: stottm@home.com
Slashdot Mirror
I will simply have to try it out. I enjoy 3D modeling and have had a blast with Blender. Perhaps if they get enough downloads they will consider changing the crippled features or offer a middle ground product that is under $500.00. I would buy it if it was reasonably priced. I don't mind not having professional features geared for a motion picture production house. I just want to make awesome 3D stills and some small animations. I don't have a renderfarm nor would I need one. I don't have 12 hours to render a production quality frame on my wimpy PC.
If you simply don't want to pay, look at Blender it is truly amazing. Maya is technically better but you can do quite a bit with Blender and there is a huge community for help and support.
Blender
We use Netscape's LDAP servers, NIS+ on Solaris and SiteMinder (NT -> Unix bridge) to manage our authentication needs. NT Administration and Unix Administration can be handled via web form interface to the LDAP servers. The changes replicate across platforms. It works fairly well.
The only time I've ever witnessed something like this was when I serviced a client who kept complaining about time jumps (usually backwards and in large hour chunks). I'd swapped all the hardware several times (motherboard, battery, processor, memory, all the ISA cards, etc).
Finally, I saw it happen. It was right about lunch time and on the other side of the wall was the worlds oldest radar range (pre Microwave Oven). That sucka kicked in when someone heated their lunch and the clock on the computer actually ran backwards!
I had to move the desk away from the wall several feet and the problem stopped happening.
More than likely though, the problem is with a buggy BIOS or dying battery. Replace the battery, flash your BIOS to the latest revision. If this doesn't work then you're only out about $10.00. Next step is to either buy an add-on time device that works properly or if you have a net connection running all the time, look into the NTP (Network Time Protocols) to sync with the Naval Observatory or another good source for correct time on as frequently a basis as you require.
Also check out the Linux clock features like the realtime daemon, it's not for realtime as in realtime OS but for more accurate time keeping. Red Hat has this daemon by default.
Check your security, make sure a co-worker is not just trying to mess with your head by changing your clock remotely.
Having worked customer service for the last 10 years, I have to make this comment. You should not be doing customer relations or customer service in any way shape or form. You simply cannot handle the stress...
It took me about 3 years to develop an attitude that didn't make me want to kick my cat or yell at people for cutting me off in a gas station after work.
If you can't take the stress of dealing with idiots and morons, you should not be a project leader/maintainer. Especially for Mac users! (Not a dig or a flame!) But they aren't known for their technical self-help-can-do attitudes. These folks are used to the = MacOS 9 and not a Unix based system like MacOSX. They are used to simple easy to use software and operating systems.
What I learned was the ability to not give a shit if I pleased these people. Don't get me wrong, I truly care to help people and do so every single day. But I always see the same idiots over and over calling me to walk them through the same exact procedure over the phone. Most of these guys/gals are a communications nightmare who can barely use a mouse and they don't know how to listen nor follow directions. We are talking about 3 hour phone calls to accomplish something that should only take 10min.
That said, I can relate to what you are going through. I've written over 300MB worth of web pages detailing all sorts of technical data and my own technical teammates still line up at my desk with questions that are answered in the documentation. Heck if the techs don't read it what makes you think the end users will?
However, it is a crime to just loose it with a customer. Even if that customer is not paying for your services (mine sure as hell aren't...). It was even worse that you publically did it in an open forum. Heck in a professional environment, if I am going to tear someone a new asshole, I take them into a private location where no one else can hear us and I let'em have it.
What you need to learn to do is to roll with the punches, dodge and weave to avoid the bullets, and still maintain an easy going attitude. I do not carry these frustrations around with me. I have learned to exercise extreme patience. If you cannot learn to do this, stay far far away from customer service positions.
I do the bare minimum for the idiots and morons but go the extra mile for the ones who are at least polite and pleasant. If an idiot happens to be at least pleasant and nice then they might get extra help.
Things you could have done:
1. Made an email template with RTFM and links to the FAQ, etc. in it. The latest versions that have been tested, etc. Just forward these automated responses to the idiots.
2. You could just ignore the morons, heck you are not making money on this. You don't need to email all of them. I am sure people like Linus ignore emails all the time.
3. Setup a survey to find out just how many users are actually happy with the Fink project. I bet they outnumber the ones who were pissing you off!
Basically, All IT Folks get full local admin rights. It's the end users who get locked down.
Hopefully one's IT staff is smart enough to follow the rules on licensing. If not they are caught by security audits that run from the login scripts and/or SMS reporting.
We can attach to the machines remotely and login with a local admin id to install software. We use a combination of SMS Remote and pcANYWHERE for dial users. We login, install the software and then logout. End users are so locked down they cannot even change the colors in Windows. Power End users can change colors and other customizations. Kiosk computers are setup with a service id and that id is extremely restricted. There are even training id's for temps, etc. These work in training rooms only. Training rooms are network isolated and filtered.
Developers, Admins, etc. Have full local admin rights. Exceptions are made for WAH users (work at home) so they can at least install local printers etc.
Yes, it makes it harder to fix problems when something goes wrong. We even renamed the local administrator account and randomly assigned it a cryptic pw. Then logged all the passwords to a secure database. If we need to redo the broken security model we have to login to the database with a special id and feed it the workstation name. Then it spits back the cryptic password. We then can login, repair the security model and then the normal admin id's group.
We use an SU.EXE utility for NT/2000 domains that allows us to SU to the admin id's. Every tech has two id's. A normal one and an admin id. Domain Admins have a third id. Everything a domain admin does is fully logged and recorded for security purposes. The midrange Unix platform is setup in a similar fashion.
We have an automated answer file based installation system (home brewed) to install approved software. If you login as an Admin you have more packages available (licensed stuff). The regular users only see the site licensed stuff.
There is what we call a DLLStack that installs after each approved package and it forces the system DLL's to the right versions for a given tested and approved NT Build. It won't let you install a package on an older build if the DLLStack would break your system by downgrading the system DLL's. When this system works, it works well. However sometimes a user is give local admin for some reason or another and they download and install stuff from the Internet that is not compatible with the DLLStack. So the next time the stack is run their computer needs to be rebuilt...
What really stinks is all of the above is home brewed and engineered when it all exists in Unix/Linux systems and is a whole lot easier than setting it up on NT. We use a lot of third party utilities with NT that Unix/Linux have had since the beginning. i.e. su, kix32, sms, etc.
In the case of MS-Office you have to edit approx. 10,000 registry keys. Sure the software will launch but it's a pain. Fortunately, I found a search and replace tool for the registry and was able to fix all the broken keys. On a side note, there is software that will do this for you. Thought it came with Partition Magic...
Either way, in Linux you would have to change some things hear and there as well. Not nearly as bad as Windows however. No registry keeping paths, etc.
What like PSION?
Yeah....
Think that's weird try figuring out why car brands and models are named the way they are. That's why I drive cars with numbers in their names like revision levels.
This can be thought of as Road Rage on the Internet! This idiot has made quite a pest of himself. However it brings up questions of free speech and public debate. The following would ring true.
1. You should be a gentleman/lady in one's posts.
2. You should refrain from using language which is profane in nature.
3. You should not slander co-debaters.
Just because users don't know who you really are, should not allow you to become a complete twit. The same concept applies to road rage. A driver feels isolated and protected within their car, so they perform aggresive acts against others. If these people were standing on the street they would not be pusing others around like they do with there automobiles.
Point number two:
A website who provides a public forum should clearly define the rules (as Free Republic did) and they need some sort of moderation technology. Without moderation, you have to manually sensor content and ban user accounts. This is not a free forum, but a skewed reality. Free speech should be allowed, even if you don't like the content of the speech. Although Slashdot's moderation technology is not the greatest, it does work most of the time. Allowing other readers to moderate posts prevents a whole lot of worthless content that does not flow with the debate. This can kill off topic posts, first posts, and other junk. The moderation system is entirely optional. If you don't want to read the junk, turn on a moderation level that strips it out. If you wish to see the junk, set it to the lowest level.
We will never be free from the idiots but we can at least filter some of their junk. I don't know about you but I have been using Newsgroups and BBS forum systems since their inception. I simply don't have the patience for inconsiderate time wasting filth. But I believe that someone should not be blocked from posting such filth.
Eventually, the troll gets bored when no-one bites into his bait. Those that are ignorant enough to bite the bait deserve the resulting onslaught.
I don't believe this user would have started attacking the Free Republic website if he hadn't been banned in the first place. Banning the user id and deleting his messages only escalated the situation and caused the user to retaliate. This is the exact same thing as intentially cutting off another road rage afflicted driver or breaking hard when he/she is tail gating you. It escalates the already dangerous situation. People end up crashing their cars, brawling on the side of the road, and shooting each other over nothing at all.
Not turning one's cheek to a trolls flamebait, only encourages the troll to become more aggresive. One needs to identify a troll and simply ignore their coments completely. Let the troll see that they succeeded in posting but no one cares what they have to say.
Moderation technology and the ability for users to completely ignore posts by a known offensive individual are the only way to stop the problem. Taking action against an individual in cyberspace only escalates the situation. There are people in cyberspace that are knowledgable enough to make your online life very difficult, why test their resolve?
In regards to your recent rant concerning Help Desk cartoons and how they are cruel.
I have been working tech support positions for the past 6 years. I am currently in a senior position on an advanced help desk. This new help desk actually helps users instead of just transferring calls to a real tech. We have no-one to escalate the problem to and we built over 2,000 computers that we support. Our current success rate is over
86% on solving all calls on the first call.
Most help desk's are not helpful. For example, there is one at my company that employees over 300 technical analysts and every time I transfer a customer who called the wrong number I get some idiot on the phone. Last time, we just needed the new phone number to dial in. It took three help desk personnel and a manager before we got the correct phone number!
Putting unskilled persons on the phone just to get users off hold is not acceptable. This is why we formed our new help desk. We took the desktop support people (level II) and some engineers (level III) and put us on the phones. We are extremely well paid for the position. I trouble-shoot any problem a user encounters on their NT workstations. This invovles common NT issues as well as all of the office applications (Word, Excel, Exchange, etc) and business applications (Oracle, Sybase, SQL Anywhere, Interbase, etc).
Most of the time, I don't get silly calls but now and they I get some real zingers. It is nice to read comics like UserFriendly which makes fun of users. Heck, I used to be a user and remember not knowing anything. That is not the point. I need to blow off some steam and laugh about it or I am going to burn out and quit!
Everyday, I get yelled at or swore at by some fool who can't even use a mouse. I get calls where they tell me they have a 10 million dollar presentation in two hours and they shut off their computer in the middle of an SMS Logon script then wonder why it's now Blue Screening of Death every time they boot! I get calls where they argue with me about whether or not the laptop is plugged in the power supply when it turns itself off every 10 seconds.
Yesterday, I got a call from a non-employee that we support that transmits data to our mainframe via a dial up system called Advantis (IBM Global Services). The problem was we sent out sixteen mailings over 6 months ago advising them they needed to upgrade their software for Y2K. We even sent the diskettes with the mailing. Minimum requirements were specified on hot pink paper. We told people they had to upgrade their computers and operating systems then the software or it would not work. We had three different calls where it was the same problem. They still had a 486 with 8meg running DOS and Windows 3.1 and running the DOS version of the application which is 16 versions too old. They ended up with a date like 1/4/100 instead of 1/3/2000 and said our system screwed them up. It took 20min per call just to prove them wrong! Even then we got yelled at! It was not our fault!
That is why I read UserFriendly and why I enjoy it so much. There may have not been mission critical Y2K issues but we still are in the trenches dealing with it.
If management would spend half as much on training the users as they do at buying wood and leather furniture, this would not be a problem. I shudder to think what the average office workers productivity must be like when they spend all day on the phone with us.
Read the article, at least it's correct in it's directions. This is no different then when they provided OS/2 removal instructions in DOS and Windows documentation. We should consider this an honorable mention since BEOS or BSD is not mentioned.
Use the feedback feature and slam them with the Slashdot effect. Everyone submit comments about the article and maybe we can flood their Back Office!
That is one sick puppy! Mom and Dad must be truly proud, this kid's even sicker than Marilynn Manson.
The company I am working for has many more users than 25,000. We have many different Exchange Servers segmented across several company divisions. First hand experience, Exchange goes down all too frequently. The Exchange clients are horrible to support. They just love to keep re-trying the server for as long as 10-15min before erroring out. The licensing is astronomical, even with large enterprise discounts. Required add-ons to allow for Fax Gateways, LDAP, etc. are also very expensive. The only good thing is group scheduling via Outlook. I shudder to think how much we could be saving by running Sendmail on SUN Servers. TCO with Microsoft is a complete crock. The servers were overloaded today because someone emailed a global distribution list and a bunch of people used "reply to all". It brought 8 servers to their knees and will cause headaches for months to come as people keep doing it. Granted, this will stress any email server. Exchange and NT in general doesn't function under heavy load very well.
I have an ST 4Meg with the following: - 2 monitors, one color the other hi-res Mono - Switch for changing monitors - Mouse - Keyboard - Externel SCSI hardrive 10 or 20Mb - Software, books, etc. You pay the shipping costs and it's yours absolutely free (AS IS). It is in full working order. Due to the age of the software diskettes, I don't know if all of them work or not. You would be on your own to salvage what you can. I would prefer that this go to 68000 Linux developer, collector, or Atari Enthusiast. I also have an Atari 800XL with 2 Atari Floppy drives and one Black Indus GT drive (remember those beauties?. Cables, books, software, cartridges, etc. Serious inquiries only please: (Disclaimer: Again, AS IS condition; unknown if all devices and software diskettes are in working order.) inquiries to be sent to: stottm@home.com