hear, hear. I've had exactly one good co-worker spend some time on her office... she painted it a non-ugly color, and brought in a lamp and a couple of plants. On the weekend. Everyone else that's spent more effort on it than sticking up a couple of posters and action figures wasn't around long enough to finish their grand plans:)
Just because Red Hat sucks doesn't mean that RPM sucks. That's like saying that McDonald's sucks, so you'll never buy another hamburger.
There is nothing inherent to RPM that prevents sane, centrally-managed package management. Mandrake provides the same sort of sanity with the same wealth of software, only I still get to install the odd bit of other stuff without worrying about using alien on it.
There is nothing inherent to debs or ports that prevents insane, fscked-up packet management. Yes, the Debian system is good, but it's not good because of their package format.
Now go stand in the corner and count in base-6 until your brain starts working again.
A lot of people are confused by the fact that the Windows OS is one CD worth of basic stuff, while a Linux distribution is 5 CDs worth of everything under the sun.
The guy does have a point though, which in typical Slashbot fashion is being completely missed: Server 2003 is not as bad as its predecessors, and the "Linux" that most American IT people think of, Red Hat, is not as good as its companions.
Sure, an XP Workstation held up against Mandrake or Gentoo is going to be shredded from a security standpoint. But put default installs of a Server 2003 box and a RHEL3 box online and I'll bet it's even money which one gets hacked first.
Bingo -- same attitude exists in most of the American corporate market, in spades. Maybe rightly so, maybe not, but take note of Red Hat and IBM's successes... this is not about source code or product licensing, it's about that tech support phone number.
Linuxcare and the like flamed out for poor core business practices and poor market targeting (do not ever, I repeat do not EVER, try to make money directly supporting end users). MySQL AB, Best Practical, Trolltech, &c seem to be doing pretty well though....
I've worked with very sad customers who discovered this to be the case after pinkslipping their developers. Sucks when the fellow you just fired accidentally deleted the source on his way out the door.
Obviously this is not a wise course of action for the developer who intends to continue working in the industry, but a couple of years later the two companies I'm thinking of were still running that code and cursing at its bugs. After all, they laid the developers off to reduce costs and they couldn't afford to get replacement code.
I've been at a company that was driven under by that "buyer's satisfaction" clause, written by a moron of a salesweasel. He probably thought he was being a customer advocate instead of a moron, but the end result was that the customer brought new meaning to the term "scope creep". When it was all over they ended up hiring the developers that were worth anything, so I guess it wasn't all bad.
Try 14 days ago -- it hit Bugtraq on 12/25/2004 12:31 PM.
In other words, Slashdot continues to fall farther and farther behind on the "news" aspect of that "news for nerds" thing, which must be why they've changed the slogan to "It is what IT is".
You just need to change your motivation. If you're in IT to try and make the world a better place, you're going to hit that burn-out wall pretty quick (took me about five years, give or take). Now that my motivation is more squarely focused on "provide for my children while doing something that doesn't drive me completely batty", I can handle the stupid users a little better. They're still just as stupid, but I don't care. I certainly don't scruple at taking their money in exchange for crappy software, because I've learned the hard way that they're incapable of selecting or using better software.
Re:Somone get these ppl some free software!
on
Given Up to Spyware?
·
· Score: 1
And the secret to marketing is a single, focused message. The problem is, the message from the good guys needs to be "they lied to you, computers are actually not as simple as toasters," which will lose against the Dell Dude's promise of "computers are easier to use than toasters, and nearly as cheap!"
It is going to continue to get worse because, as many other posters have pointed out, people are intentionally stupid about computers. So, what are you going to do? The options are three:
1) Fight a losing battle against willful stupidity. 2) Get out of computers and seek a rewarding career doing something fufilling. 3) Fleece the willfully stupid.
Option 3 isn't as bad as it sounds, really... look at how Red Hat and Apple manage it while still posting the occasional rear-guard action against stupid lusers.
Most people do, yes, but many people do not. I travel more often than I'm home, and when I'm travelling I could be anywhere. I'm not likely to buy one of these since the Blackberry handles most of the things I would do with a hotspot, but I can understand the attraction.
Redwood Shores, Los Angeles, Orlando, Vancouver, Montreal, assorted European and Asian sites... no where with very low costs of living. Personally, I think a lot of people need to get a reality check, there's a lot of nice perks at EA as well. I don't see many companies these days with well attended volleyball games at lunch, free espresso, massage chairs, and old school video game consoles in the break areas. My contacts there describe a pretty kick-ass insurance plan as well.
Plenty of other people in this industry are working the same hours at the same pay with crappy insurance and zero quality of life perks.
IME Opera is the least compliant, worst rendering browser. It certainly is fast though, except when you're using JavaScript and hit an Opera bug that makes it grind to a halt.
Uh-oh, I said something bad about one of the Slashdot sacred cows, there goes my karma!
does this mean people living in God's Country will quit looking for validation of their trading culture and weather for lower cost of living? I'm getting ready to have a fit at the next person who wants to tell me that they've got a place they like for cheap. Fine. I'm happy that you're happy, but I don't care for the implication that I'm crazy to buy a $.5M 3+ bedroom bungalow. If I was willing to make the same choice as you, I would have done so already. I'm very happy with my choice and I don't care about yours, so quit complaining that you'd like to live in the same city as me if only it wasn't so expensive... it is, so get over it. Be happy with what you've got, or make the necessary changes.
Actually, it's fairly uncommon at large companies for the CIO to give a damn about how the thing is configured... that's your problem, Slashbot. Similarly, they wil indeed sh*t if they find it's running on a white box computer... but the choice of platform is your problem, not the software's.
I'm not disagreeing with you about Asterix's readiness or lack thereof, I don't really have an opinion. But I do have a lot of experience with CIOs going through the buying process, and I can tell you that they think in terms of services rendered, costs incurred, and risks undertaken. If you can provide the service required at a reasonable cost with minimal risk, they really don't care how you're going to do it so long as your solution passes the sniff test. White box hardware in a mission critical solution stinks to high heaven, but an open source app on good gear with a clear set of contingency and support plans has a fighting chance these days.
Slashdot Mirror
hear, hear. I've had exactly one good co-worker spend some time on her office... she painted it a non-ugly color, and brought in a lamp and a couple of plants. On the weekend. Everyone else that's spent more effort on it than sticking up a couple of posters and action figures wasn't around long enough to finish their grand plans :)
obligatory smack-the-dummy prompt...
Just because Red Hat sucks doesn't mean that RPM sucks. That's like saying that McDonald's sucks, so you'll never buy another hamburger.
There is nothing inherent to RPM that prevents sane, centrally-managed package management. Mandrake provides the same sort of sanity with the same wealth of software, only I still get to install the odd bit of other stuff without worrying about using alien on it.
There is nothing inherent to debs or ports that prevents insane, fscked-up packet management. Yes, the Debian system is good, but it's not good because of their package format.
Now go stand in the corner and count in base-6 until your brain starts working again.
"Active Directory's primary feature is that it is an LDAP implementation"
BZZT... primary feature is a trio of functions, the AAA as it used to be called in Cisco materials: authentication, authorization, and access.
Authentication: Who is this? do the username, password, and option crypto token match?
Authorization: What resources are you allowed to use?
Access: Is the authorization for this resource still valid?
If you just want a directory, OpenLDAP is great. If you want an AD replacement, you need OpenLDAP, Kerberos, PAM, and Samba.
A lot of people are confused by the fact that the Windows OS is one CD worth of basic stuff, while a Linux distribution is 5 CDs worth of everything under the sun.
The guy does have a point though, which in typical Slashbot fashion is being completely missed: Server 2003 is not as bad as its predecessors, and the "Linux" that most American IT people think of, Red Hat, is not as good as its companions.
Sure, an XP Workstation held up against Mandrake or Gentoo is going to be shredded from a security standpoint. But put default installs of a Server 2003 box and a RHEL3 box online and I'll bet it's even money which one gets hacked first.
Bingo -- same attitude exists in most of the American corporate market, in spades. Maybe rightly so, maybe not, but take note of Red Hat and IBM's successes... this is not about source code or product licensing, it's about that tech support phone number.
Linuxcare and the like flamed out for poor core business practices and poor market targeting (do not ever, I repeat do not EVER, try to make money directly supporting end users). MySQL AB, Best Practical, Trolltech, &c seem to be doing pretty well though....
I've worked with very sad customers who discovered this to be the case after pinkslipping their developers. Sucks when the fellow you just fired accidentally deleted the source on his way out the door.
Obviously this is not a wise course of action for the developer who intends to continue working in the industry, but a couple of years later the two companies I'm thinking of were still running that code and cursing at its bugs. After all, they laid the developers off to reduce costs and they couldn't afford to get replacement code.
I've been at a company that was driven under by that "buyer's satisfaction" clause, written by a moron of a salesweasel. He probably thought he was being a customer advocate instead of a moron, but the end result was that the customer brought new meaning to the term "scope creep". When it was all over they ended up hiring the developers that were worth anything, so I guess it wasn't all bad.
Try 14 days ago -- it hit Bugtraq on 12/25/2004 12:31 PM.
In other words, Slashdot continues to fall farther and farther behind on the "news" aspect of that "news for nerds" thing, which must be why they've changed the slogan to "It is what IT is".
"Anti-gravitational engines, that sort of thing"
Simply buy some weather balloons, helium, and a lawnchair...
Make sure to wear a parachute to improve your chances of living to see the pokey they'll put you into for endangering air traffic.
You just need to change your motivation. If you're in IT to try and make the world a better place, you're going to hit that burn-out wall pretty quick (took me about five years, give or take). Now that my motivation is more squarely focused on "provide for my children while doing something that doesn't drive me completely batty", I can handle the stupid users a little better. They're still just as stupid, but I don't care. I certainly don't scruple at taking their money in exchange for crappy software, because I've learned the hard way that they're incapable of selecting or using better software.
And the secret to marketing is a single, focused message. The problem is, the message from the good guys needs to be "they lied to you, computers are actually not as simple as toasters," which will lose against the Dell Dude's promise of "computers are easier to use than toasters, and nearly as cheap!"
It is going to continue to get worse because, as many other posters have pointed out, people are intentionally stupid about computers. So, what are you going to do? The options are three:
1) Fight a losing battle against willful stupidity.
2) Get out of computers and seek a rewarding career doing something fufilling.
3) Fleece the willfully stupid.
Option 3 isn't as bad as it sounds, really... look at how Red Hat and Apple manage it while still posting the occasional rear-guard action against stupid lusers.
Most people do, yes, but many people do not. I travel more often than I'm home, and when I'm travelling I could be anywhere. I'm not likely to buy one of these since the Blackberry handles most of the things I would do with a hotspot, but I can understand the attraction.
BS. A visit to an EA campus is like riding a time machine back to 1996.
Redwood Shores, Los Angeles, Orlando, Vancouver, Montreal, assorted European and Asian sites... no where with very low costs of living. Personally, I think a lot of people need to get a reality check, there's a lot of nice perks at EA as well. I don't see many companies these days with well attended volleyball games at lunch, free espresso, massage chairs, and old school video game consoles in the break areas. My contacts there describe a pretty kick-ass insurance plan as well.
Plenty of other people in this industry are working the same hours at the same pay with crappy insurance and zero quality of life perks.
IME Opera is the least compliant, worst rendering browser. It certainly is fast though, except when you're using JavaScript and hit an Opera bug that makes it grind to a halt.
Uh-oh, I said something bad about one of the Slashdot sacred cows, there goes my karma!
Look up -- really high up, like higher than a skyscraper... that's the error margin that homebrew solutions all fall under.
you're complaining about datedness? Cripes, go read the books again, talk about a trip to the early 1980s.
you have to admit though, the bridge is excitingly chunky. Also, Marvin looks pretty depressed and Martin Freeman looks like a serviceable Dent.
Give 'em a chance, it's not like they're casting Kenneth Branagh as Arthur Dent or something.
But, I am an elistist dick you insensitive clod!
does this mean people living in God's Country will quit looking for validation of their trading culture and weather for lower cost of living? I'm getting ready to have a fit at the next person who wants to tell me that they've got a place they like for cheap. Fine. I'm happy that you're happy, but I don't care for the implication that I'm crazy to buy a $.5M 3+ bedroom bungalow. If I was willing to make the same choice as you, I would have done so already. I'm very happy with my choice and I don't care about yours, so quit complaining that you'd like to live in the same city as me if only it wasn't so expensive... it is, so get over it. Be happy with what you've got, or make the necessary changes.
Pro:
Smaller timezone difference
Con:
Larger cultural difference
Hmm...
i'd imagine the idea is that people with financial problems are more easily bribed...
Actually, it's fairly uncommon at large companies for the CIO to give a damn about how the thing is configured... that's your problem, Slashbot. Similarly, they wil indeed sh*t if they find it's running on a white box computer... but the choice of platform is your problem, not the software's.
I'm not disagreeing with you about Asterix's readiness or lack thereof, I don't really have an opinion. But I do have a lot of experience with CIOs going through the buying process, and I can tell you that they think in terms of services rendered, costs incurred, and risks undertaken. If you can provide the service required at a reasonable cost with minimal risk, they really don't care how you're going to do it so long as your solution passes the sniff test. White box hardware in a mission critical solution stinks to high heaven, but an open source app on good gear with a clear set of contingency and support plans has a fighting chance these days.
I seem to recall a bunch of articles on this web site about easy methods for faking caller-id information...
good riddance :)
Flame ON!