Seriously good point! While people are always bitching about Apple "lock-in", you can't deny that Apple's "lock-in" drives innovation from competitors. In the end, everyone wins.
Unfortunately, it seems most entities are rushing to copy Apple rather than provide the less-lock-in alternative.
As it turns out, unlike Symantec, McAffeee et al would have you beliveve, COMMON SENSE goes a very long towards keeping your PC safe. Best of all it's free!!!!
What are the odds that a hack0r is also a pedo that would do this?
Even if a pedo paid a hack0r what are the odds he would report him?
A friend of mine is a network admin at a local university. As such, part of his duties include network security. He knows of several anonymous FTP servers on "his" network that are routinely tagged and used as drop-points for illicit data. Attempts to fix the situation have been stone-walled or outright ignored. So he just watches what goes on with these servers.
It's amazing what shows up on them. There's a pretty good trade of warez that goes on - he doesn't have to hunt down torrents. There's often interesting malware examples to poke around with. And there's often more porn covering a wide array of kinks than you can get googling for "fetish". Child porn included.
On a side note - that's based on what data he can see. There's also a large number of encrypted archive files that show up. It's a mystery what's in those. But often they're found in directory structures created by the illicit data peddlers so one can make a guess that if a given directory structure includes unencrypted kiddie porn, the encrypted archives found in that directory structure are probably more of the same.
Of course, this is all very old-school. Hijacking servers? How very 1990's. Today we hijack small workstations often with just as many resources as a dedicated server - without the hassle of the occasional alert sysadmin.
And how much does it cost those big companies in lost productivity when an unpaid supplier deciedes they have had enough and stops shipments?
That's the beauty of it. You go with a supplier that's large enough to have their own SAP implementation. That way, the supplier is pretty much in the dark as well and it takes them a while to realize they should have cut you off years ago.
Mod me what you like but the fact remains that, while there have been some damn good advances towards this state, "much longer" is not a quantifiable term. The linux zealots out there are predicting The Year of the Linux Desktop but are they really doing anything to make it happen?
So when you note that there have been "damn good advances" but then ask if anyone is "doing anything to make it happen"... are you making a joke? If you are, I don't blame you. The whole "Year of the Linux Desktop" meme is, in fact, a joke. There is no such thing. There will be no such thing. The year has already passed. The year is now. The year has yet to come. The year will never be. It all depends on where you stand.
We like to talk about our industry like it's a field of mushrooms. One day there's nothing there. The next day, a technological revolution pops up out of nowhere and the field has changed. But the reality is that these things happen over time. Some people are aware of the changes rather early on and can track it's progress. Others suddenly become aware of change well beyond the infamous tipping point and wonder where it all came from.
The sad thing is that they're right, you don't have to deal with compatibility issues and all that bullshit on Windows. Deal with it.
I don't have to deal with it - I leave dealing with the compatibility issues in Windows up to the poor desktop support guys. There's a whole team of them that deal with those things on a daily basis.
Having the adviser report to both the national security and economic advisers suggests that the White House is seeking to ensure a balance between homeland security and economic concerns, the sources said.
I am certain the economic concerns you speak of are only economic concerns of lobbyists when you should maybe be paying attention to what consumers are interested in?
I share a great deal of your cynicism. I've seen the US Government make a fine mess of it's information security initiatives. And I've witnesses beurocrats twist such initiatives and policy around until they do something entirely different than what they should be. So I completely agree that the danger of this sort of thing is very real. However, having said that, let's not get too carried away. The full paragraph from the article reads:
Having the adviser report to both the national security and economic advisers suggests that the White House is seeking to ensure a balance between homeland security and economic concerns, the sources said. It also indicates an effort to quell an internal political battle in which Lawrence H. Summers, the senior White House economic adviser, is pushing for the National Economic Council to have a key role in cybersecurity to ensure that efforts to protect private networks do not unduly threaten economic growth, the sources said.
What we have is the standard inverse relationship between security and functionality; increase one, affect the other. In this case, we're concerned with security policy vs. the cost of doing business / impacts on economic growth. Any formal infosec requirement tends to induce a cost on businesses required to follow those requirements. And believe me, the US Government does an excellent job at inducing costly requirements (second only to private industry's ability - which is impressive on it's own rights).
One of the most effective environments I've dealt with was a private enterprise that often pitted the security team against the business unit that wanted to do something. Usually the two could come up with ways to handle most situations. But there were times when the infosec group put forward their recommendations and the business unit wished to ignore them. In those situations, both sides would make their case to upper management. Infosec issues would be bounced against business concerns and if the business unit could demonstrate that there was sufficient business reasons to take on the risks the infosec team identified, they got their way. It should be noted that this wasn't a common occurrence as most business unit managers weren't confident enough in their position to put their own reputation on the line to fight that fight. But when it did occur, the risk and issues were well vetted.
What we have is the beginnings of a policy that makes sense and recognizes how things work in The Real World. Whether it remains so or not is yet to be seen.
Any Windows enthusiast who is "uncomfortable or outright hostile towards the use of a command line" does not qualify as a power user.
I quite agree. But then, I'm coming from years of being in the Unix world. I thought the command line was cool well before Microsoft woke up to the fact.:P
I hardly see how this is a tutorial for "power users." The article makes out the terminal to be a big bad scary thing, but you'd think that most power users would at least be familiar with Start | Run | "cmd" | "ipconfig".
I've met plenty of Windows enthusiasts that are either uncomfortable or outright hostile towards the use of a command line. This despite Microsoft themselves coming to admit the usefulness in such a thing.
I never watched an episode either, but when you consider the easiest ways to keep a male viewers attention are to a) have an attractive woman (see Chuck or Burn Notice)...
To begin with: "whooosh." But I suspect you're just playing the straight man here.:P
The cynical side of me would agree. I'd have to throw in a stereotypical geek fanboy example in to your list - Startrek's Voyager and Enterprise. Having said that, the strategy becomes less gimick when it plays a role.
I'd say in Burn Notice's example, the female lead's personality works well when pitted against the lead characters' personality. It's a sort of same-team "Spy vs. Spy" with a twist of romance.
The flashes of Miami beaches and bikinis, however, seem much more gratuitous. Even if they sort of add a feel / setting to the show.
Maybe that's because we (the software engineers) have failed the users. The computer should be as simple as a toaster!
That's fine as long as you're only making toast. But personal computing devices are considerably more complex than toasters and are expected to perform a large number of vastly diverse functions. At some point, you have to demonstrate some minimal skillset to effectively operate the system effectively. That doesn't mean one needs to be familiar with the esoteric details of how the computer does one activity then the other. But it does require more knowledge than operating a simplistic single-purpose machine.
I should also find it a little ironic that in an article that links vulnerabilities to the web client, you're putting forward the idea of a web browser and software-as-a-service as a solution to user knowledge. There might be some changes if this model takes hold (I'm resistant to it having grown up with the microcomputer revolution). But it ultimately doesn't change the fundamental issues involved with operating complex systems.
People feel that humans are the dominant, superior one in the relationship, thus shouldn't have to meet the computer half way, it should just do what they want or it's rubbish - its creators have failed.
I can't honestly say I ever ran in to this in the years that I did desktop support / helldesk work. But that doesn't mean it doesn't exist in some way. Our culture has to have been influenced by futurist visions of this kind of interaction. I rather enjoy old episodes of The Twilight Zone with it's concepts of robotics and computers that are simultaneously archaic yet describing capabilities that we are yet to come anywhere close to over 40 years later. Popular science fiction continues this trend throughout the decades. And somewhere in there it has to re-inforce an expectation of interaction that just doesn't happen in the real world; that somehow a computer can truly interact with a user on any form of intelligent level. Perhaps Bobs and Paperclips haven't been enough to exercise the demons of SciFi past.
When blacks use the word "nigger" it implies a common bond, a shared experience of hardship as a result of slavery.
That's an interesting take. However, I've seen / heard it being used in a derogatory way far more often than not. That doesn't really fall in line with your band-of-brothers explanation.
In "the oldun days", computers used to come with books, instruction manuals, telling you how to use them.
Yup - and we ignored them for the most part. They did look nifty on the shelf. I've still got a few.
Having said that - I agree with the general premise of what you're saying. Back then, we respected the microcomputer for the complex little beastie it was. These days people are being told that their computer is as simple as a toaster. They're buying in to a whole case of snakeoil.
What makes it even more difficult is an almost willful ignorance from end users. I've talked to some very intelligent (in one case a literal rocket scientist) users who will disengage their entire critical thought process once they get behind a keyboard. I'm not entirely sure why.
Part of the problem is probably because people really do believe computers are still hard to work with. Quite a few years ago, I saw one of the more distinguished news casters interviewing someone and making the claim to be completely ignorant about using computers. It struck me as odd - could you imagine Dan Rather breaking in to his series of questions with a Federal economist to note that economics completely baffles him?
When people think computers are hard but are being told they're "just works" easy, and worse they have some personal experiences that exposes the lie, there's got to be a cognitive dissonance kicking in. No wonder they put hand to mouse and freeze.
Of course - that might be a somewhat dated outlook. These days you don't see newscasters talking about how "computers are hard." Now they're trying to get you to subscribe to a Twitter feed. Maybe we've made a leap over that freeze response and are now blindly clicking away; still lacking critical thought but giving in to the heady promises of the snakeoil.
Point taken, but then large corporations can define which version of which browser or JVM is standard and installed on their users' machines, n'est-ce pas?
You're right. But that's the kind of thinking that gets them painted in to these kinds of corners. Instead of making decisions that are forward-thinking / providing flexibility, they "solve" issues by decree and eventually get bitten.
Been there. Done that. Been part of the problem at times. Been fighting the good fight others.
Not saying that relationship can't work in an alternative form, kind of like an in-house independent contractor, but there's no way the yearly review or whatever can be even remotely accurate.
I disagree. You can still grade someone's performance based on results. Did the person maintain systems they were supposed to maintain? Did they improve systems? Did they provide insight in to projects, etc? Did these actions bring about measurable improvements? You can look at a watch and tell it's working without knowing what it took to make it work.
Having said that - some insight to the craft of watchmaking might help judge how fine the workmanship is. Sure. That's definitely good to have. But it isn't an absolute requirement.
I've had bosses that could have done my job better than I did. I've also had bosses that would have been entirely incompetent doing anything remotely associated with my job. But that didn't make them any better or worse managing me.
The incompetent ones are only dangerous if they're not listening to you. Ultimately, the worse bosses I've ever had were bad because they were combative with their employees and made our jobs more difficult. The best ones knew how to get good people under them and listened to them.
Last year I got a new work laptop and put Ubuntu on it. I'll answer your questions based on my experience...
With Linux:
1. Will Flash media, WITH SOUND, work out of the box?
Now. Use it to watch YouTube and other media sources all the time. Although I do get the impression that Linux is a secondary consideration for the Flash team.
2. What about VPN?
Now. Cisco AnyConnect VPN. Before that, Aventail.
At other times, I've also used Juniper IVE and Microsoft PPTP VPNs with my Linux desktop.
3. What about wireless?
Now. Out of the box with my laptop's built in WiFi hardware. Handled the Verizon mobile broadband card out-of-the-box as well (not even any additional modules / drivers to install).
4. Any specialty software? Someone mentioned quilting software, is there a Linux package for that? If you say yes, provide a URL.
Yes and no. Veritas Java software meant for Solaris, RedHat, etc. worked nicely on Ubuntu. EMC's control client requires Microsoft Java - I had to run it in a Windows VM. So if it's coded for the platform, it works on that platform. No surprise there.
As an aside - when we're investing in new architecture, support for Linux is one of the questions we ask. Some groan and say something about it being looked at. Some have available beta clients or production binaries. We favor the later.
5. Printing?
Out of the box. Helps that I'm printing in an enterprise environment. At home, the crappy little winprinter would work on my Linux box but I don't use it too often. So it's connected to one of the household Windows boxes and is shared out for the other Windows and Linux systems to print to. No problems doing so.
6. Educational software?
What - you've included specialty software twice?
7. Stuff to keep the kids away from nasty sites?
Good question. I've never done it myself as I see that stuff as snakeoil. I'd think there would be a way to do it - I've set up Privoxy for the IE using members of my household which seems somewhat similar. However, I'm sure there's gotchas that I haven't considered, having not considered it very much.
Work has it's own filters - which are just as effective as those things tend to be no matter what OS your desktop is.
8. Home automation?
This is a requirement for Linux on the desktop? Do you actually know a number of people that do this? I know... nobody. I've READ that people do. I've seen Linux drivers for X10 kit. But it's always struck me as one of those future tech promises that never came to pass (it's been around since the day I first got a TRS-80 Mod I and I've still yet to meet anyone actually doing it seriously).
Having said all that - YMMV. It's very hardware dependent. But then, having done a hardware upgrade on one of the household Windows systems this weekend - I'd say the same issue applies no matter what your OS was (Windows was no silver bullet).
Well, when they'll ALL work on Wine, we'll have a great article for the Slashdot front page!
How likely is that? When game developers do not target Wine, we can expect Wine will uncover all manner of bugs that won't get solved (unless the Wine developers want to "fix" game bugs on their end). It's a pretty insane way of doing things.
Buy what supports your platform. I have a number of the very small collection of commercial, proprietary games that have Linux native versions. I also play WoW which runs rather well under Wine - the rumor being that Blizzard devs are unofficially checking their builds against Wine during the development process.
A CFO at a local community bank once told me (I was the manager of network services for the bank):
"I don't want to know how the watch works, I just want to know what time it is."
I like that in a boss. You tell me what you want working, I'll work out the technical details and let you know if we can do it (or what it'll take to do it). You want to tell time - we'll build the watch.
However, that's not what this is about. This is about calling the watch "a bracelet" or "the big hand." It wouldn't be an issue if folks who didn't know the technical details of their system just referred to it as "the computer" vs. calling it "the hard drive" (and the curiosity of why so many users call their computer a "hard drive").
Trust me, those people are fine. It's the ones who pretend to know what they're talking about, that cause the headaches.
When I worked the helldesk for an ISP, the worse calls would start with "I'm a MCSE." These were not folks who needed the standard config information. They were, apparently, MCSEs who've never even heard of dial-up networking (back in the day when dial-up was your standard Internet service). But since they were MCSEs, they knew a heck of a lot more than the standard helldesk jockey and were prepared to argue every other instruction or point.
Yeah, sure. A big part of tech support is often personal interaction - something some of our fellow techies need serious work on. But that's just blowing off the issue.
A monitor is "the computer" except for when it's actually the monitor. And "the hard drive" is the computer except when they're actually talking about a hard drive. The thing is confusing and complex enough without adding to the confusion with mismatched terminology (i.e. from the article someone expecting that "replacing a hard drive" was getting them an entirely new system).
Like, you know, GIMP USER INTERFACE STILL SUCKS. But developers surely know waaaayyy better what's good for the user.
What's funny here is that you're either a subtle troll, uninformed, or willfully ignorant. Not everyone agrees that the GIMP user interface sucks - and that's not just a developer viewpoint. Every time GIMP is mentioned, you get entire subthreads on this. Are you trying to generate another such thread or are you truely unaware of this?
Slashdot Mirror
Seriously good point! While people are always bitching about Apple "lock-in", you can't deny that Apple's "lock-in" drives innovation from competitors. In the end, everyone wins.
Unfortunately, it seems most entities are rushing to copy Apple rather than provide the less-lock-in alternative.
As it turns out, unlike Symantec, McAffeee et al would have you beliveve, COMMON SENSE goes a very long towards keeping your PC safe. Best of all it's free!!!!
It's not as common as you would think.
What are the odds that a hack0r is also a pedo that would do this?
Even if a pedo paid a hack0r what are the odds he would report him?
A friend of mine is a network admin at a local university. As such, part of his duties include network security. He knows of several anonymous FTP servers on "his" network that are routinely tagged and used as drop-points for illicit data. Attempts to fix the situation have been stone-walled or outright ignored. So he just watches what goes on with these servers. It's amazing what shows up on them. There's a pretty good trade of warez that goes on - he doesn't have to hunt down torrents. There's often interesting malware examples to poke around with. And there's often more porn covering a wide array of kinks than you can get googling for "fetish". Child porn included. On a side note - that's based on what data he can see. There's also a large number of encrypted archive files that show up. It's a mystery what's in those. But often they're found in directory structures created by the illicit data peddlers so one can make a guess that if a given directory structure includes unencrypted kiddie porn, the encrypted archives found in that directory structure are probably more of the same. Of course, this is all very old-school. Hijacking servers? How very 1990's. Today we hijack small workstations often with just as many resources as a dedicated server - without the hassle of the occasional alert sysadmin.
SAP: The Board Game.
Every card says "Lose a Turn."
Actually - once in awhile you find a card that reads: "You hire an expensive SAP contractor! Draw another card!"
And how much does it cost those big companies in lost productivity when an unpaid supplier deciedes they have had enough and stops shipments?
That's the beauty of it. You go with a supplier that's large enough to have their own SAP implementation. That way, the supplier is pretty much in the dark as well and it takes them a while to realize they should have cut you off years ago.
Mod me what you like but the fact remains that, while there have been some damn good advances towards this state, "much longer" is not a quantifiable term. The linux zealots out there are predicting The Year of the Linux Desktop but are they really doing anything to make it happen?
So when you note that there have been "damn good advances" but then ask if anyone is "doing anything to make it happen"... are you making a joke? If you are, I don't blame you. The whole "Year of the Linux Desktop" meme is, in fact, a joke. There is no such thing. There will be no such thing. The year has already passed. The year is now. The year has yet to come. The year will never be. It all depends on where you stand. We like to talk about our industry like it's a field of mushrooms. One day there's nothing there. The next day, a technological revolution pops up out of nowhere and the field has changed. But the reality is that these things happen over time. Some people are aware of the changes rather early on and can track it's progress. Others suddenly become aware of change well beyond the infamous tipping point and wonder where it all came from.
The sad thing is that they're right, you don't have to deal with compatibility issues and all that bullshit on Windows. Deal with it.
I don't have to deal with it - I leave dealing with the compatibility issues in Windows up to the poor desktop support guys. There's a whole team of them that deal with those things on a daily basis.
is it just me that thought it was a shame this ended, it managed to remain funny to the end
Part of being good is knowing when to bow out so that people remember you as being good.
Having the adviser report to both the national security and economic advisers suggests that the White House is seeking to ensure a balance between homeland security and economic concerns, the sources said.
I am certain the economic concerns you speak of are only economic concerns of lobbyists when you should maybe be paying attention to what consumers are interested in?
I share a great deal of your cynicism. I've seen the US Government make a fine mess of it's information security initiatives. And I've witnesses beurocrats twist such initiatives and policy around until they do something entirely different than what they should be. So I completely agree that the danger of this sort of thing is very real. However, having said that, let's not get too carried away. The full paragraph from the article reads:
Having the adviser report to both the national security and economic advisers suggests that the White House is seeking to ensure a balance between homeland security and economic concerns, the sources said. It also indicates an effort to quell an internal political battle in which Lawrence H. Summers, the senior White House economic adviser, is pushing for the National Economic Council to have a key role in cybersecurity to ensure that efforts to protect private networks do not unduly threaten economic growth, the sources said.
What we have is the standard inverse relationship between security and functionality; increase one, affect the other. In this case, we're concerned with security policy vs. the cost of doing business / impacts on economic growth. Any formal infosec requirement tends to induce a cost on businesses required to follow those requirements. And believe me, the US Government does an excellent job at inducing costly requirements (second only to private industry's ability - which is impressive on it's own rights).
One of the most effective environments I've dealt with was a private enterprise that often pitted the security team against the business unit that wanted to do something. Usually the two could come up with ways to handle most situations. But there were times when the infosec group put forward their recommendations and the business unit wished to ignore them. In those situations, both sides would make their case to upper management. Infosec issues would be bounced against business concerns and if the business unit could demonstrate that there was sufficient business reasons to take on the risks the infosec team identified, they got their way. It should be noted that this wasn't a common occurrence as most business unit managers weren't confident enough in their position to put their own reputation on the line to fight that fight. But when it did occur, the risk and issues were well vetted.
What we have is the beginnings of a policy that makes sense and recognizes how things work in The Real World. Whether it remains so or not is yet to be seen.
Any Windows enthusiast who is "uncomfortable or outright hostile towards the use of a command line" does not qualify as a power user.
I quite agree. But then, I'm coming from years of being in the Unix world. I thought the command line was cool well before Microsoft woke up to the fact. :P
I hardly see how this is a tutorial for "power users." The article makes out the terminal to be a big bad scary thing, but you'd think that most power users would at least be familiar with Start | Run | "cmd" | "ipconfig".
I've met plenty of Windows enthusiasts that are either uncomfortable or outright hostile towards the use of a command line. This despite Microsoft themselves coming to admit the usefulness in such a thing.
I never watched an episode either, but when you consider the easiest ways to keep a male viewers attention are to a) have an attractive woman (see Chuck or Burn Notice)...
To begin with: "whooosh." But I suspect you're just playing the straight man here. :P
The cynical side of me would agree. I'd have to throw in a stereotypical geek fanboy example in to your list - Startrek's Voyager and Enterprise. Having said that, the strategy becomes less gimick when it plays a role.
I'd say in Burn Notice's example, the female lead's personality works well when pitted against the lead characters' personality. It's a sort of same-team "Spy vs. Spy" with a twist of romance.
The flashes of Miami beaches and bikinis, however, seem much more gratuitous. Even if they sort of add a feel / setting to the show.
Maybe that's because we (the software engineers) have failed the users. The computer should be as simple as a toaster!
That's fine as long as you're only making toast. But personal computing devices are considerably more complex than toasters and are expected to perform a large number of vastly diverse functions. At some point, you have to demonstrate some minimal skillset to effectively operate the system effectively. That doesn't mean one needs to be familiar with the esoteric details of how the computer does one activity then the other. But it does require more knowledge than operating a simplistic single-purpose machine.
I should also find it a little ironic that in an article that links vulnerabilities to the web client, you're putting forward the idea of a web browser and software-as-a-service as a solution to user knowledge. There might be some changes if this model takes hold (I'm resistant to it having grown up with the microcomputer revolution). But it ultimately doesn't change the fundamental issues involved with operating complex systems.
People feel that humans are the dominant, superior one in the relationship, thus shouldn't have to meet the computer half way, it should just do what they want or it's rubbish - its creators have failed.
I can't honestly say I ever ran in to this in the years that I did desktop support / helldesk work. But that doesn't mean it doesn't exist in some way. Our culture has to have been influenced by futurist visions of this kind of interaction. I rather enjoy old episodes of The Twilight Zone with it's concepts of robotics and computers that are simultaneously archaic yet describing capabilities that we are yet to come anywhere close to over 40 years later. Popular science fiction continues this trend throughout the decades. And somewhere in there it has to re-inforce an expectation of interaction that just doesn't happen in the real world; that somehow a computer can truly interact with a user on any form of intelligent level. Perhaps Bobs and Paperclips haven't been enough to exercise the demons of SciFi past.
When blacks use the word "nigger" it implies a common bond, a shared experience of hardship as a result of slavery.
That's an interesting take. However, I've seen / heard it being used in a derogatory way far more often than not. That doesn't really fall in line with your band-of-brothers explanation.
In "the oldun days", computers used to come with books, instruction manuals, telling you how to use them.
Yup - and we ignored them for the most part. They did look nifty on the shelf. I've still got a few.
Having said that - I agree with the general premise of what you're saying. Back then, we respected the microcomputer for the complex little beastie it was. These days people are being told that their computer is as simple as a toaster. They're buying in to a whole case of snakeoil.
What makes it even more difficult is an almost willful ignorance from end users. I've talked to some very intelligent (in one case a literal rocket scientist) users who will disengage their entire critical thought process once they get behind a keyboard. I'm not entirely sure why.
Part of the problem is probably because people really do believe computers are still hard to work with. Quite a few years ago, I saw one of the more distinguished news casters interviewing someone and making the claim to be completely ignorant about using computers. It struck me as odd - could you imagine Dan Rather breaking in to his series of questions with a Federal economist to note that economics completely baffles him?
When people think computers are hard but are being told they're "just works" easy, and worse they have some personal experiences that exposes the lie, there's got to be a cognitive dissonance kicking in. No wonder they put hand to mouse and freeze.
Of course - that might be a somewhat dated outlook. These days you don't see newscasters talking about how "computers are hard." Now they're trying to get you to subscribe to a Twitter feed. Maybe we've made a leap over that freeze response and are now blindly clicking away; still lacking critical thought but giving in to the heady promises of the snakeoil.
Point taken, but then large corporations can define which version of which browser or JVM is standard and installed on their users' machines, n'est-ce pas?
You're right. But that's the kind of thinking that gets them painted in to these kinds of corners. Instead of making decisions that are forward-thinking / providing flexibility, they "solve" issues by decree and eventually get bitten.
Been there. Done that. Been part of the problem at times. Been fighting the good fight others.
Not saying that relationship can't work in an alternative form, kind of like an in-house independent contractor, but there's no way the yearly review or whatever can be even remotely accurate.
I disagree. You can still grade someone's performance based on results. Did the person maintain systems they were supposed to maintain? Did they improve systems? Did they provide insight in to projects, etc? Did these actions bring about measurable improvements? You can look at a watch and tell it's working without knowing what it took to make it work.
Having said that - some insight to the craft of watchmaking might help judge how fine the workmanship is. Sure. That's definitely good to have. But it isn't an absolute requirement.
I've had bosses that could have done my job better than I did. I've also had bosses that would have been entirely incompetent doing anything remotely associated with my job. But that didn't make them any better or worse managing me.
The incompetent ones are only dangerous if they're not listening to you. Ultimately, the worse bosses I've ever had were bad because they were combative with their employees and made our jobs more difficult. The best ones knew how to get good people under them and listened to them.
Last year I got a new work laptop and put Ubuntu on it. I'll answer your questions based on my experience...
With Linux:
1. Will Flash media, WITH SOUND, work out of the box?
Now. Use it to watch YouTube and other media sources all the time. Although I do get the impression that Linux is a secondary consideration for the Flash team.
2. What about VPN?
Now. Cisco AnyConnect VPN. Before that, Aventail.
At other times, I've also used Juniper IVE and Microsoft PPTP VPNs with my Linux desktop.
3. What about wireless?
Now. Out of the box with my laptop's built in WiFi hardware. Handled the Verizon mobile broadband card out-of-the-box as well (not even any additional modules / drivers to install).
4. Any specialty software? Someone mentioned quilting software, is there a Linux package for that? If you say yes, provide a URL.
Yes and no. Veritas Java software meant for Solaris, RedHat, etc. worked nicely on Ubuntu. EMC's control client requires Microsoft Java - I had to run it in a Windows VM. So if it's coded for the platform, it works on that platform. No surprise there.
As an aside - when we're investing in new architecture, support for Linux is one of the questions we ask. Some groan and say something about it being looked at. Some have available beta clients or production binaries. We favor the later.
5. Printing?
Out of the box. Helps that I'm printing in an enterprise environment. At home, the crappy little winprinter would work on my Linux box but I don't use it too often. So it's connected to one of the household Windows boxes and is shared out for the other Windows and Linux systems to print to. No problems doing so.
6. Educational software?
What - you've included specialty software twice?
7. Stuff to keep the kids away from nasty sites?
Good question. I've never done it myself as I see that stuff as snakeoil. I'd think there would be a way to do it - I've set up Privoxy for the IE using members of my household which seems somewhat similar. However, I'm sure there's gotchas that I haven't considered, having not considered it very much.
Work has it's own filters - which are just as effective as those things tend to be no matter what OS your desktop is.
8. Home automation?
This is a requirement for Linux on the desktop? Do you actually know a number of people that do this? I know... nobody. I've READ that people do. I've seen Linux drivers for X10 kit. But it's always struck me as one of those future tech promises that never came to pass (it's been around since the day I first got a TRS-80 Mod I and I've still yet to meet anyone actually doing it seriously).
Having said all that - YMMV. It's very hardware dependent. But then, having done a hardware upgrade on one of the household Windows systems this weekend - I'd say the same issue applies no matter what your OS was (Windows was no silver bullet).
Well, when they'll ALL work on Wine, we'll have a great article for the Slashdot front page!
How likely is that? When game developers do not target Wine, we can expect Wine will uncover all manner of bugs that won't get solved (unless the Wine developers want to "fix" game bugs on their end). It's a pretty insane way of doing things.
Buy what supports your platform. I have a number of the very small collection of commercial, proprietary games that have Linux native versions. I also play WoW which runs rather well under Wine - the rumor being that Blizzard devs are unofficially checking their builds against Wine during the development process.
A CFO at a local community bank once told me (I was the manager of network services for the bank):
"I don't want to know how the watch works, I just want to know what time it is."
I like that in a boss. You tell me what you want working, I'll work out the technical details and let you know if we can do it (or what it'll take to do it). You want to tell time - we'll build the watch.
However, that's not what this is about. This is about calling the watch "a bracelet" or "the big hand." It wouldn't be an issue if folks who didn't know the technical details of their system just referred to it as "the computer" vs. calling it "the hard drive" (and the curiosity of why so many users call their computer a "hard drive").
Trust me, those people are fine. It's the ones who pretend to know what they're talking about, that cause the headaches.
When I worked the helldesk for an ISP, the worse calls would start with "I'm a MCSE." These were not folks who needed the standard config information. They were, apparently, MCSEs who've never even heard of dial-up networking (back in the day when dial-up was your standard Internet service). But since they were MCSEs, they knew a heck of a lot more than the standard helldesk jockey and were prepared to argue every other instruction or point.
Everything under the hood is "the engine".
The monitor is "the computer".
The computer is "the hard drive".
If you don't know how or when to listen to people, you should hide out on the interweb.
http://sheldoncomics.com/strips/sd090416.gif
Yeah, sure. A big part of tech support is often personal interaction - something some of our fellow techies need serious work on. But that's just blowing off the issue.
A monitor is "the computer" except for when it's actually the monitor. And "the hard drive" is the computer except when they're actually talking about a hard drive. The thing is confusing and complex enough without adding to the confusion with mismatched terminology (i.e. from the article someone expecting that "replacing a hard drive" was getting them an entirely new system).
And yet linux fanboys mod me troll.
Like, you know, GIMP USER INTERFACE STILL SUCKS. But developers surely know waaaayyy better what's good for the user.
What's funny here is that you're either a subtle troll, uninformed, or willfully ignorant. Not everyone agrees that the GIMP user interface sucks - and that's not just a developer viewpoint. Every time GIMP is mentioned, you get entire subthreads on this. Are you trying to generate another such thread or are you truely unaware of this?
Way to fuck over the native ants, Texas.
From the article:
The flies, which are USDA -approved, do not attack native ants or species and have been introduced in other Gulf Coast states, Plowes said.
[Generic RTFA joke here]