Funny, I was about to demolish your house since it was a blight on the land. Y'know. Just in my personal opinion, which, of course, makes it okay to destroy property.
If you're ripping down private garbage that was put on public land, fine. But if you're ripping down shit that my tax dollars paid to put up on public land, and will pay to repair after you decide that your word is suddenly law, I'd really appreciate it if you could stick your head in the toilet and flush it a few times.
Again more handwaving and idealism and no cost/ROI analysis
Yea, exactly - that was my point. Feel free to go back a few posts and verify it. While you're on your way, note all the people making assinine excuses for not even investigating the possibility.
Congrats. It looks like you have all of one semi-legitimate gripe. Here, one Google search later, and the first result on the page gives you the answer and a justification for your complaint about page numbering:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF -8&q=%22page+numbers%22+open+office+org. Note that this page includes gripes about both Office and OOo. Also, note that I'm a PROGRAMMER. Not an AMDIMINSTRATIVE ASSISTANT. My job is not to use Word processing tools heavily. I cannot use Excel, or Word, or Powerpoint, or anything else like them. What, exactly, is the point in drawing a parellel between an AA and a computer geek? Perhaps for your next trick you would like to draw a comparison between a mathemetician and a literature critic by stating that there's a problem with the fact that the critic can't do cosines?
Also, they're supposed to be doing WORK, not learning new software.
That was probably one of the singularly dumbest excuses for not investigating a computer-related upgrade I've ever heard. If that's true, then a surely hope you're all running the original computer systems and software you installed, because I'm pretty sure there aren't that many jobs out there where you're actually paid to just learn new software. See, here, at smarter companies, we evaluate new software and upgrade to it when necessary, even if that means training people on it. That's why we're using Windows XP now, and haven't used DOS 5.0 in ages. You really should try this policy some time.
If this really is your reasoning, and if you really do manage on that kind of an attitude, I'd like to speak for your employees for a moment. If you don't really believe this, or it's not really your attitude, then disregard the comment. However, if I was an employee under someone like this, I'd think you were a complete idiot, I'd think you were totally full of shit, and I'd react accordingly every time you told me to do something. Just something to think about if you really are under the impression that your excuse is your perogative and that's a good enough explanation.
...downtime of a single office worker can be major.
Our 1900 workers were down for the entire workday one day last week because some idiot brought and infected Windows laptop in and plugged it into the network (against policy - this was an exec, of course) while the patch was undergoing regression tests. How much do you think that sudden, unscheduled downtime costs compared to controlled, scheduled downtime? We send people to train all the time. We survive. That's just a lame excuse for an inability to manage your people's time effectively.
Proper management of any OS is going to get less trouble.
Undoubtedly. A badly mismanaged *nix system is a timebomb waiting on the network. Of course, a well managed Windows box can ALSO still be a timebomb waiting on the network. On top of that, *nix systems, if properly setup in the first place, don't require you to constantly pick through them with a fine tooth comb all the time. They don't require nonstop patching (don't give me shit about the number of patches that come out for "Linux" [since so many people seem to think every app that runs on Linux is a part of it] - if you're putting sendmail on desktop boxes, you deserve to get toasted). There's no forced upgrades. If you stick a box in running kernel 2.0, and it still does its job just fine, good for you! Too bad Microsoft is going to come around and start choking you off so you "upgrade" (upgrade means: introduce a whole new slew of bugs and security issues) when they release their next product.
There are legitimate reasons not to move to Linux. You don't seem to have given me any. You're just making excuses.
...porting it to a less capable backend like mysql would be too much right now.
My experience is from a programming perspective, not administrative. However, in that experience, I've learned that MSSQL (one of the few MS tools I don't find myself absolutely loathing) databases can be migrated to PostgreSQL very easily. NOTHING can be migrated to MySQL because, well, this is just my personal opinion (not a troll, dumbasses, just an unsupported opinion.. but go ahead and mod me down because you're a MySQL fanatic who realizes I'm right), but it's pretty much shitware as far as mid and large scale relational databases go.
In addition, most of the SQL, if you've done it properly in the code, is very portable between the two. Also, if you need to move up a step, PostgreSQL has some nifty features that MSSQL doesn't (conversely, MSSQL does actually have some things, mostly data types and functions, that pgsql doesn't).
Just my two cents, but moving between MSSQL and PostgreSQL usually isn't that painful.
So, the problem with Linux is that your company is too cheap to hire a competent receptionist who can learn the basics of very similar software packages in-house in a reasonable amount of time? For your general word processing and spreadsheeting applications, Open Office isn't really that much different. If she can learn to blindly click buttons on Office, there's no reason she can't learn to do it on Open Office. If that were really true, we'd all still be using WordPerfect.
You can even train a mouse to do rudimentary, repetitive tasks. Just how much dumber are your receptionists?
On top of that, I can't imagine that the cost difference of hiring new receptionists, especially from a temp agency, are going to offset productivity gains and cost savings for the rest of the company if Linux is a viable consideration otherwise. If it does, maybe you need to consider firing your HR group and getting people who don't just knee-jerk hire every receptionist that walks in the door...
Uh. So fire the receptionist and hire a competent one? It's called internal training. You should have a budget for it. There's no reason your receptionist needs to "learn Linux". You give her the apps, you give her the introduction, and you give her some time to settle into it, and that's that.
I'm sick of hearing that people need to "learn Linux" to migrate in the workspace. Hello? I'm surrounded by 350 co-workers and I think maybe 2 of them, not counting our meager IT staff, actually "knows Windows" but they still manage to do their jobs. The nice thing about "knowing Linux", however, is that if you're a competent admin you can make sure that the people who don't "know Linux" can't shoot their own toes off, or, at least, can't shoot anyone else. See, with Windows, not only can you shoot your own toes off if you don't "know Windows", but you can shoot everyone else in the general vicinity, and, on occasion, it just arbitrarily decides to shoot you even if you didn't do anything wrong.
I don't want to hear any crap about migration costs. Proof. Give me proof. Give me case studies. I'm tired of excuses. Maybe they're true, but they're always just excuses. It's just people afraid of a new thing and nothing more.
That's ridiculous, if you don't mind my saying so. If you're in the typical corporate structure, you'll either put up with whatever the company tells you to put up with, or you'll quit. If you quit over the operating system on your box, and you're the typical pencil-pusher type, then you're just an idiot.
It certainly does NOT have to hit both targets at once, and if it did, there'd have certainly been no Windows NT on corporate systems while Windows 95 was on the majority of home desktops. There were superficial usage differences between those two systems that were no worse and no better than the superficial usage differences between WinXP and Linux w/ X. The biggest hurdles to overcome would be getting people used to the fact that they can't just install whatever arbitrary crapware they want, and they should be putting everything in thier Home directory.
Besides, I'd like to know what "problems" exist in a properly administered Linux desktop box for work that don't exist in Windows?
Okay, you have your connector for MS Exchange right there in the main app now. NOW what's stopping you from seriously considering OSS as a possibility? And, I'm not talking about the 1.2% of the population that needs some bizarre, esoteric feature in Outlook or Word or whatever that 98.8% of the rest of the population didn't even know exists.
Seriously, folks. Linux ain't ready for the home desktop market, but it's high time more people start considering its viability for the desktop in the workplace, especially as lightweight replacements for Wintops that don't do all that much more than word processing and scheduling.
Take most of that money you've been blowing on MCSEs and A/V software, and pay a few competent *nix admins to come in and properly set up the systems, and you just may well alleviate some, or most, of that downtime. How much TCO did YOUR company have to add to Windows from Sasser, anyway?
What fer now yer bringin' dem fajits 'round these here parts? I ain't never hearda no turin cep' for that Jesus thing, but it does fer surely sound like a fajit name tah me!
Get me mah shootin' stick maw! We got summa them thar edurmacated city type folk on our front lawn! Git now! Y'hear?
Airbags don't guarantee your safety either, but most (sane) people (of a proper hieght and build) wouldn't trash them just because they're not a 100% solution. That's not the point. The point is to greatly improve your odds. It never claimed to make your survival chances 1:1, just to make them better.
Yea, but after jumping up and down on a couple of innocent pedestrians, YOU'LL be one of the innocent pedestrians that gets jumped up and down on.
The false positive rate would eventually even itself out nicely over a larger population as more and more people made the "Most Wanted" list for attacking innocents and left fewer and fewer people to catch them and turn them in.
Goddamn bosses that ask for IE-centric webpages. Goddamn users that don't know any better than to use IE.
Hey, maybe it's just bad development, but I'd bet not. Our intranet is IE-centric and it drives me nuts, because I can't get it through their thick skulls that if MS ever decides to get off their lazy, worthless asses and make a REAL web browser, the whole system could collapse at upgrade.... stupid clueless management.
(No, I had nothing to do with that miserable page... I hate it too).
Where do you live? I'm guessing not new york. If so, that's very sad.
Heh... fun with grammar constructs. You realize that it could reasonably be interepreted that you just told that poor fellow that it's very sad that he doesn't live in New York?
It could become a very, very crowded place with sort of attitude, mister.. or missus... or other...
I've often been tempted to drop Adelphia, and I've only had their "service" for 4 months. It's been out for about 4 days since I got it due to technical problems, and it was out for 8 days once when they screwed my billing up beyond all belief (automatic payments.. you'd think that means... you know... that the payments are taken automatically....). However, I'd have to drop down to the ol' land line again. Ugh. And, it would only be about $10 a month cheaper since I don't have cable TV and I don't get their little "package deal" (bullshit: the price is a ripoff either way for the QOS).
If I thought Adelphia would give a crap, or that I could organize enough people to do some real damage, I'd do it. But, I can't, so I won't. On top of that, I'd have to hook up my phone through Verizon (or, their lines at the very least... ask 2600.com about how getting service for 3rd party leased Verizon infrastructure works...), and they've fucked me over in the past already.
Such is the modern American consumer's choice. Which abusive monopoly do I want to get beat up by today?
I can't use just any old modem I want for Adelphia. It has to provide certain *ahem* "features" that let them do some level of snooping. Of course, this is all in the name of helping me troubleshoot my connection.... yea.. sure... depsite the fact that they've never successfully found a problem remotely...
They can't make you use any specific modem, but they CAN mandate that your modem must have certain "features" and "standards" under the guise of helping you out. Then, they can push that this tech gets standardized and start requiring it for new connections.
Never underestimate the power of a monopoly to get it's way when it comes to raping consumers.
But, this is a big benefit for Comcast. The instant they find out that you're "circumventing" their neat-o technology, they'll boot your ass right off the network.
They find people that steal cable... if (when) they start requiring that they be allowed to snoop data on your homenet, they'll find people that cut them off from that too.
Yea, you won't complain until Comcast won't give you service unless you have "compliant" hardware. It's a big potential benefit to Comcast's bottom line, and the "lusers" aren't going to know enough to try and kill it. Do you think they'll give a crap if you want it or not?
I can't think of anything that's regularly used that launches connections on the UP ports. I could write a perl script that does it though.... dare yah to run this.
Anyone who says this about America in seriousness is automatically a moron. Congratulations. You are a moron. There is nothing you can say before or after that incredibly assinine statement, if you mean it, that can justify it unless we no longer have rights. Before you respond, however, remember this: I didn't say you COULDN'T say it, I just said you're an idiot for doing so.
If you walk by your house and see someone in a car with a manual to your security system on the dash and notice that blueprints to your house are on their seat do you do nothing?
This analogy is so deeply flawed that it is 100% irrelevant to the discussion. Plans to steam pipes and plans to security systems are entirely different things. Now, if he asked for plans to the security system to the steam pipe, we'd be having an entirely different discussion right now.
In addition, it's none of the FBI's fucking business what groups the student belongs to, it's none of their fucking business why he has long hair, it's none of their fucking business whether he's interested in the ACLU or not. The kid should have just told them to get the hell out of his dorm and come back if they actually had a reason to be wasting his time.
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Funny, I was about to demolish your house since it was a blight on the land. Y'know. Just in my personal opinion, which, of course, makes it okay to destroy property.
If you're ripping down private garbage that was put on public land, fine. But if you're ripping down shit that my tax dollars paid to put up on public land, and will pay to repair after you decide that your word is suddenly law, I'd really appreciate it if you could stick your head in the toilet and flush it a few times.
Again more handwaving and idealism and no cost/ROI analysis
Yea, exactly - that was my point. Feel free to go back a few posts and verify it. While you're on your way, note all the people making assinine excuses for not even investigating the possibility.
Congrats. It looks like you have all of one semi-legitimate gripe. Here, one Google search later, and the first result on the page gives you the answer and a justification for your complaint about page numbering:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF -8&q=%22page+numbers%22+open+office+org. Note that this page includes gripes about both Office and OOo. Also, note that I'm a PROGRAMMER. Not an AMDIMINSTRATIVE ASSISTANT. My job is not to use Word processing tools heavily. I cannot use Excel, or Word, or Powerpoint, or anything else like them. What, exactly, is the point in drawing a parellel between an AA and a computer geek? Perhaps for your next trick you would like to draw a comparison between a mathemetician and a literature critic by stating that there's a problem with the fact that the critic can't do cosines?
Also, they're supposed to be doing WORK, not learning new software.
That was probably one of the singularly dumbest excuses for not investigating a computer-related upgrade I've ever heard. If that's true, then a surely hope you're all running the original computer systems and software you installed, because I'm pretty sure there aren't that many jobs out there where you're actually paid to just learn new software. See, here, at smarter companies, we evaluate new software and upgrade to it when necessary, even if that means training people on it. That's why we're using Windows XP now, and haven't used DOS 5.0 in ages. You really should try this policy some time.
If this really is your reasoning, and if you really do manage on that kind of an attitude, I'd like to speak for your employees for a moment. If you don't really believe this, or it's not really your attitude, then disregard the comment. However, if I was an employee under someone like this, I'd think you were a complete idiot, I'd think you were totally full of shit, and I'd react accordingly every time you told me to do something. Just something to think about if you really are under the impression that your excuse is your perogative and that's a good enough explanation.
Our 1900 workers were down for the entire workday one day last week because some idiot brought and infected Windows laptop in and plugged it into the network (against policy - this was an exec, of course) while the patch was undergoing regression tests. How much do you think that sudden, unscheduled downtime costs compared to controlled, scheduled downtime? We send people to train all the time. We survive. That's just a lame excuse for an inability to manage your people's time effectively.
Proper management of any OS is going to get less trouble.
Undoubtedly. A badly mismanaged *nix system is a timebomb waiting on the network. Of course, a well managed Windows box can ALSO still be a timebomb waiting on the network. On top of that, *nix systems, if properly setup in the first place, don't require you to constantly pick through them with a fine tooth comb all the time. They don't require nonstop patching (don't give me shit about the number of patches that come out for "Linux" [since so many people seem to think every app that runs on Linux is a part of it] - if you're putting sendmail on desktop boxes, you deserve to get toasted). There's no forced upgrades. If you stick a box in running kernel 2.0, and it still does its job just fine, good for you! Too bad Microsoft is going to come around and start choking you off so you "upgrade" (upgrade means: introduce a whole new slew of bugs and security issues) when they release their next product.
There are legitimate reasons not to move to Linux. You don't seem to have given me any. You're just making excuses.
My experience is from a programming perspective, not administrative. However, in that experience, I've learned that MSSQL (one of the few MS tools I don't find myself absolutely loathing) databases can be migrated to PostgreSQL very easily. NOTHING can be migrated to MySQL because, well, this is just my personal opinion (not a troll, dumbasses, just an unsupported opinion.. but go ahead and mod me down because you're a MySQL fanatic who realizes I'm right), but it's pretty much shitware as far as mid and large scale relational databases go.
In addition, most of the SQL, if you've done it properly in the code, is very portable between the two. Also, if you need to move up a step, PostgreSQL has some nifty features that MSSQL doesn't (conversely, MSSQL does actually have some things, mostly data types and functions, that pgsql doesn't).
Just my two cents, but moving between MSSQL and PostgreSQL usually isn't that painful.
So, the problem with Linux is that your company is too cheap to hire a competent receptionist who can learn the basics of very similar software packages in-house in a reasonable amount of time? For your general word processing and spreadsheeting applications, Open Office isn't really that much different. If she can learn to blindly click buttons on Office, there's no reason she can't learn to do it on Open Office. If that were really true, we'd all still be using WordPerfect.
You can even train a mouse to do rudimentary, repetitive tasks. Just how much dumber are your receptionists?
On top of that, I can't imagine that the cost difference of hiring new receptionists, especially from a temp agency, are going to offset productivity gains and cost savings for the rest of the company if Linux is a viable consideration otherwise. If it does, maybe you need to consider firing your HR group and getting people who don't just knee-jerk hire every receptionist that walks in the door...
You're just making exuses. You must be a manager.
Uh. So fire the receptionist and hire a competent one? It's called internal training. You should have a budget for it. There's no reason your receptionist needs to "learn Linux". You give her the apps, you give her the introduction, and you give her some time to settle into it, and that's that.
I'm sick of hearing that people need to "learn Linux" to migrate in the workspace. Hello? I'm surrounded by 350 co-workers and I think maybe 2 of them, not counting our meager IT staff, actually "knows Windows" but they still manage to do their jobs. The nice thing about "knowing Linux", however, is that if you're a competent admin you can make sure that the people who don't "know Linux" can't shoot their own toes off, or, at least, can't shoot anyone else. See, with Windows, not only can you shoot your own toes off if you don't "know Windows", but you can shoot everyone else in the general vicinity, and, on occasion, it just arbitrarily decides to shoot you even if you didn't do anything wrong.
I don't want to hear any crap about migration costs. Proof. Give me proof. Give me case studies. I'm tired of excuses. Maybe they're true, but they're always just excuses. It's just people afraid of a new thing and nothing more.
That's ridiculous, if you don't mind my saying so. If you're in the typical corporate structure, you'll either put up with whatever the company tells you to put up with, or you'll quit. If you quit over the operating system on your box, and you're the typical pencil-pusher type, then you're just an idiot.
It certainly does NOT have to hit both targets at once, and if it did, there'd have certainly been no Windows NT on corporate systems while Windows 95 was on the majority of home desktops. There were superficial usage differences between those two systems that were no worse and no better than the superficial usage differences between WinXP and Linux w/ X. The biggest hurdles to overcome would be getting people used to the fact that they can't just install whatever arbitrary crapware they want, and they should be putting everything in thier Home directory.
Besides, I'd like to know what "problems" exist in a properly administered Linux desktop box for work that don't exist in Windows?
Okay, you have your connector for MS Exchange right there in the main app now. NOW what's stopping you from seriously considering OSS as a possibility? And, I'm not talking about the 1.2% of the population that needs some bizarre, esoteric feature in Outlook or Word or whatever that 98.8% of the rest of the population didn't even know exists.
Seriously, folks. Linux ain't ready for the home desktop market, but it's high time more people start considering its viability for the desktop in the workplace, especially as lightweight replacements for Wintops that don't do all that much more than word processing and scheduling.
Take most of that money you've been blowing on MCSEs and A/V software, and pay a few competent *nix admins to come in and properly set up the systems, and you just may well alleviate some, or most, of that downtime. How much TCO did YOUR company have to add to Windows from Sasser, anyway?
At which point they would say:
What fer now yer bringin' dem fajits 'round these here parts? I ain't never hearda no turin cep' for that Jesus thing, but it does fer surely sound like a fajit name tah me!
Get me mah shootin' stick maw! We got summa them thar edurmacated city type folk on our front lawn! Git now! Y'hear?
Yea, I'm sure they were perfectly content with being tormented by their good friend, Saddam, instead.
If you're going to make political quips, at least make them in the proper context and make sure they make sense.
Airbags don't guarantee your safety either, but most (sane) people (of a proper hieght and build) wouldn't trash them just because they're not a 100% solution. That's not the point. The point is to greatly improve your odds. It never claimed to make your survival chances 1:1, just to make them better.
Yea, but after jumping up and down on a couple of innocent pedestrians, YOU'LL be one of the innocent pedestrians that gets jumped up and down on.
The false positive rate would eventually even itself out nicely over a larger population as more and more people made the "Most Wanted" list for attacking innocents and left fewer and fewer people to catch them and turn them in.
Warning: Some quotes may contain questionable content.
heh... unlike Slashdot? Posting that warning was a little bit like warning people in a porn shop that Playboy might contain nudity.
What? The copy you donated after you determined the "Dummies" version of TCP/IP was too far above your skill level for you to use?
Goddamn IE-centric developers...
Goddamn bosses that ask for IE-centric webpages. Goddamn users that don't know any better than to use IE.
Hey, maybe it's just bad development, but I'd bet not. Our intranet is IE-centric and it drives me nuts, because I can't get it through their thick skulls that if MS ever decides to get off their lazy, worthless asses and make a REAL web browser, the whole system could collapse at upgrade.... stupid clueless management.
(No, I had nothing to do with that miserable page... I hate it too).
Where do you live? I'm guessing not new york. If so, that's very sad.
Heh... fun with grammar constructs. You realize that it could reasonably be interepreted that you just told that poor fellow that it's very sad that he doesn't live in New York?
It could become a very, very crowded place with sort of attitude, mister.. or missus... or other...
So seeing that the federal law overrides state laws, this is a mute point.
You are dead wrong. If you are an American, you really do need to go read up on the Constitution. RIGHT NOW. Specifically, amendment X.
I've often been tempted to drop Adelphia, and I've only had their "service" for 4 months. It's been out for about 4 days since I got it due to technical problems, and it was out for 8 days once when they screwed my billing up beyond all belief (automatic payments.. you'd think that means... you know... that the payments are taken automatically....). However, I'd have to drop down to the ol' land line again. Ugh. And, it would only be about $10 a month cheaper since I don't have cable TV and I don't get their little "package deal" (bullshit: the price is a ripoff either way for the QOS).
If I thought Adelphia would give a crap, or that I could organize enough people to do some real damage, I'd do it. But, I can't, so I won't. On top of that, I'd have to hook up my phone through Verizon (or, their lines at the very least... ask 2600.com about how getting service for 3rd party leased Verizon infrastructure works...), and they've fucked me over in the past already.
Such is the modern American consumer's choice. Which abusive monopoly do I want to get beat up by today?
I can't use just any old modem I want for Adelphia. It has to provide certain *ahem* "features" that let them do some level of snooping. Of course, this is all in the name of helping me troubleshoot my connection.... yea.. sure... depsite the fact that they've never successfully found a problem remotely...
They can't make you use any specific modem, but they CAN mandate that your modem must have certain "features" and "standards" under the guise of helping you out. Then, they can push that this tech gets standardized and start requiring it for new connections.
Never underestimate the power of a monopoly to get it's way when it comes to raping consumers.
But, this is a big benefit for Comcast. The instant they find out that you're "circumventing" their neat-o technology, they'll boot your ass right off the network.
They find people that steal cable... if (when) they start requiring that they be allowed to snoop data on your homenet, they'll find people that cut them off from that too.
Yea, you won't complain until Comcast won't give you service unless you have "compliant" hardware. It's a big potential benefit to Comcast's bottom line, and the "lusers" aren't going to know enough to try and kill it. Do you think they'll give a crap if you want it or not?
I can't think of anything that's regularly used that launches connections on the UP ports. I could write a perl script that does it though.... dare yah to run this.
Anyone who says this about America in seriousness is automatically a moron. Congratulations. You are a moron. There is nothing you can say before or after that incredibly assinine statement, if you mean it, that can justify it unless we no longer have rights. Before you respond, however, remember this: I didn't say you COULDN'T say it, I just said you're an idiot for doing so.
If you walk by your house and see someone in a car with a manual to your security system on the dash and notice that blueprints to your house are on their seat do you do nothing?
This analogy is so deeply flawed that it is 100% irrelevant to the discussion. Plans to steam pipes and plans to security systems are entirely different things. Now, if he asked for plans to the security system to the steam pipe, we'd be having an entirely different discussion right now.
In addition, it's none of the FBI's fucking business what groups the student belongs to, it's none of their fucking business why he has long hair, it's none of their fucking business whether he's interested in the ACLU or not. The kid should have just told them to get the hell out of his dorm and come back if they actually had a reason to be wasting his time.
If it's above port 1023. Port 1024 is the first unprivileged port users can use to open a connection.
A common example of a user launched server opening a port: launch X as an unprivileged user and watch which port it winds up on.