The poster is right you and Jonathan Schwartz were the ones that killed it. I was a Solaris Engineer for over 15 years. Our shops back end ran on Solaris (around 300 machines) but we are now in the process of phasing out Solaris for Linux thanks to you. All the training I have with your system is now worth nothing.
I read the article and you missed what killed your company. You didn't do any marketing. Now I am one that hates the marketing department but still it does have it place especially when playing with the big boys that also use it.
When we would try to sell your products our customers would ask "Sun who?". Look at Cisco everyone knows the name. The average Joe's knows the name Cisco. They have no idea what Cisco does or sells but Joe knows the name from the cute little media ads "The Human Network".
I asked many times to your sales and engineers people "Why not get your name out?" and was told "Management doesn't think it is a good idea." Well no one knew your name so why buy Sun? Sun who????
Damn guys why didn't you run ads showing where you all shined. Little robots on Mars designed to run 90 days and RAN FOR YEARS! The fact that your old tag line was still true you guys where "The Dot in Dot Com" and still are to a degree. If you get on the Internet you touch a Sun box somewhere Everyone uses you but the average person don't know who you are even if they were using your products. I have talked to people that have bought Cisco stock and have NO IDEA what Cisco makes or sells. They have just heard the name over and over again and heard from there broker they are a good investment. How can anyone buy from you if they don't know your name asshole. Hell it was easier selling Linux more people have heard of it more than Sun and you've been around longer and Linux has no marketing budget and Sun had one. Seems the problem lies with you asshole. You should have done your job and got your good name to the public.
The truth is you could have made money with Sun if you tried. I fully believe you've been setting up this sell for awhile to line your own pockets with gold and to hell with your customers (oh wrong word "Consumers") and to hell with your employees.
You said in your article you did it for the stockholders and the employees. Well most of the good employees didn't get to keep their jobs. They quit. They couldn't work for an asshat company like Orcale. So did that work for you??? No. so shut up about jobs. Yes your "Customers" the stockholders did ok. You and Jonathan will never hurt for anything sitting on your pile of cash.
You wrote 'You gotta take care of your shareholders or you end up very vulnerable like we got." This is where you went wrong. You should have taken care of your NAME and branding and the people that used your products and sold them to the public. People like me. No matter how much money shareholders put into a company it isn't going to be for shit if your NOT SELLING PRODUCTS! People can't sell your name if no one knows it you fuck up.
So quit your crying and quit doing interviews its all you fault so go cry to your money and just shut up and go away. Your done here. No one likes you no one wants to hear from you. just go and spend you money on someone like yourself a two dollar whore and have a good time on us.
Oh yes please tell your buddy Jonathan that if I see him I will cut that pony tail off of his head. He doesn't deserve to wear it. He's no pony tailed geek. He's just another corporate asshole.
As to why I left, it's difficult to answer: just about an anything I could say that would be accurate and honest would do more harm than good.
The only harm honesty and truthfulness would bring is showing what lying and thieving asshole Oracle is.
It is wrong to tell the truth and bring harm on others that are harming others with their lies and money?
I would like to point out that serving in war is a good thing before sending young people into battle. Look at the present state of affairs. Maybe if Bush hadn't been a coward and hid in the National Guard and had smelled the burning flesh of his best friend maybe he would have thought twice before sending people into a war over a lie. War is something that cannot be described it has to be experienced. Once you have experienced it the horror never leaves you. I know been there done that.
The reason? Its call money. This is the only thing the IOC has an interest in. Believe me I live in Atlanta and when the games were here I have never seen such a rip off of the local people, and those stupid ring logos they make a ton of money selling the "use" of that emblem. I did have a lot of respect for the games until they were here and I saw for myself how theres people operate. They are just a group of thieves.
Article the sixth [Amendment IV]
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Did you forget about NT? 3.51 was around during the Win 3.1 days and NT4 was around during the Win95 days. All ran on the same hardware, NT just needed a bit more RAM to work well.
Windows was designed for a PC (Personal Computer) which in the beginning the only network it used was "Sneaker Net" and a floppy. They had no NIC cards so in Microsoft's weak minds there was no need for security except for locking the room the PC was in.
Actually what you are looking at Slashdot with is not a PC but a "Network Workstation". Herein lies the problem using an operating system that is designed so that its security depends on a locked physical door on an open network. Open networks go right around the physical door through the wall.
UNIX and all its family (Linux, BSD, OSX, Solaris) were designed from the start to be a networked operating system so ACL's and user controls were built in from the start.
NT was built to be a networked operating system and had a decent security model. Some said that it was too clunky because you had to set user permissions, users where set up as "Users" and not Administrators so in order to Admin the box you had to log out of your user account and log in as Administrator. (Gee what a novel idea!) So in XPee they used the NT kernel and threw away a decent security model for "Ease of Use" so that people that are either to lazy or too stupid to learn how to use a computer can use one.
Yes they built the UAC to annoy users but it has nothing to do with developers and their code. It is to annoy users to the point they turn it off and then the user is responsible and not Microsoft when the machine gets 0wned. A simple fix to a problem. Shift the blame. You have to remember Microsoft's own development application VS compiles dll's to the system directory to where your app must run in "God mode" for you. Developers are not really to blame as much as the platform they are using to develop with.
I'm glad I don't have to put up with such sh_t anymore.
I know for me. I work on systems all day. Yes Linux and Solaris are the only operating systems I "use". I do work on Windows Server when I have too. When I do get time to kick back the last thing I wan to do is stare at the same screen I have been looking at for the last ten hours. Yes people come over to my house and say "I bet you have a lot of cool games." I say no and I don't. The truth is I'd rather sit on the porch and watch the squirrels jump from tree to tree in my off time. I don't mean this in a bad way but I do think that most people that use Linux "work" on computers and have other ways to "play". Well it is that way for me.
You are right these days most of the complaints and spam mail that is getting by the filters and being sent to our Abuse Department is coming from Yahoo. Yes we've sent over 100 of these through their little form with the header information and still the next week more 419 spam with the same! FROM: address.
I called Yahoo and after an hour of being dropped and calling back I could not talk with anyone connected with the mail system. The ONLY thing I got was "Fill out the form." They actually told me that their was no phone in the office where the Postmaster was at. They really expected me to believe that too.
So here we have a site promoting and using Domain Keys (yes they're in the headers of these email so they must be vaild!) Yet they are enabling the abusers of the network. Domian Keys aren't going keeping this shit out it has a vaild key!
The only thing that will help is that companies like Yahoo and Hotmail clean up their own back yard and for them to somehow allow Engineers from one network talk and work out issues with THEIR! network. If they don't stop accounts that are doing this they are accessories to this crime and this IS a crime. You can only stop something at its source and the source is the orginating email account. These email accounts are being hosted by Yahoo.
There was a day when you had a problem and you did a whois lookup and called the Techinal Zone Contact and got things worked out. Sadly these days when dealing with the Big Boys like Yahoo and Hotmail are gone.
There is a method to deal with this and I am working on getting it approved here. Block all mail from Yahoo and explain to our customers that this is where their spam is coming from and to tell who ever is trying to send them mail to get a real email account somewhere.
Sure we're a little company and if we do this it will only cause a small issue with them but if more networks just started refusing Yahoo Mail soon it would make an effect on their user base.
Let's not forget about Indian Reservations. They are not part of the "United States" but land held (seized) "In Trust" by the US Government. Tribes are still Nations. I don't think you could call us Foreign Nations either. You are right there is a lot more to the US than just the States.
I still can't get over the fact that he managed to get elected again after he stole an election,
I totally argee with you but I must say. How do you think he won in the first place. Remember Joesph Stalin said "Its not how you vote, but counts the votes."
Tony Fratto said he has no reason to believe any e-mails were deliberately destroyed."
To this I must say. "Do you REALLY expect me to believe this shit?"
When are the people of the US going to wake up and get the rope.
Don't buy wireless products with Broadcom chipsets and you won't have this problem. It is not Linux's fault that Broadcom will not support Linux or UNIX and release the driver specs. With Intel or Atheros chipsets you will fine that you will have no problem installing and NO! NDIS wrapper. REMEMBER!! NDIS is a Windoze protocol and it NOT! a part of the real TCP/IP stack. Why won't these cards work? Closed source BS and Windoze lock in.
You have a valid point. 4 years ago I set up a PC for a 86 year old Grandma that had never used a computer before. For the first 8 months when it was running windoze I got calls every two weeks that something was broke or it was doing weird things. After 8 months and the system got severely infected I ask her to try Linux. So I loaded Fedora and set it up for her. Well it has been running for three years now and not one call of problems. I hear from her about every 2 months to say "Hi!" and the only thing she has to say is how well "Linus" (that is what she calls her computer) is doing. About every 3months or so I shell into the box from my house and run yum to update the system and check on things. Yes Grandma loves Linux running on a older used PC. It does email. It surfs the web. She can look at and save photos of the Grand Kids. She can write and print a letter. Thats all she needs and the icons are on her desktop. She loves it.
Maybe the parent was modded insightful because he doesn't hardly use it. my living depends on computers. It used to depend on MS too, but not anymore. Linux and Sun work just fine. I still do my job and I don't have to put up with MS shit anymore. If you have trouble well you chose to run it.
Thank you! Yes you understood my point we spend 70% of our time working on 40% of the systems. Its not a matter of experience on a system either. It is on what breaks. Terminal servers get infected due to application HAVING to run under Administrator. SunRay server don't. Yes we use images to rebuild with still this takes time. Time we don't spend on the SunRay's. Windows breaks Sun and Linux doesn't. I'm not saying that SUN and Linux doesn't ever have problems. All systems have problems sometime. If they didn't none of us would have a job. The Sun boxes and Linux boxes just keep running and all we do is check the logs and do the backups. Add a user to the system or whatever.
Thank you again! Yes we will support Vista but try to dissuade them. Actually all but a few of our customer that insisted on Vista have after a month or so of using it have called us to have it replaced by XP. This was THEIR! call not ours. Yes we gladly installed XP and they are happier with it. I have yet to see a call where they wanted to go back to Vista.
Thank you again for actually reading my post an understanding what I am talking about.
Our customers like us. We save them money. In four years we have lost one customer and they returned after a year with another company.
We call Microsoft when something goes wrong that we don't understand instead of wasting hours on Google randomly changing registry settings.
We NEVER randomly change registry settings! We're not fools.
This way, when ISA decides to randomly no longer accept FTP connections,
You actually use ISA?? Well we don't have that problem we use Linux based firewalls. ISA is one of the most in-secure firewalls out there. Check with any well known security site they will tell you the same. Check CERT. Given an IP number and 15 mins. I'll own the network an ISA box is protecting. If our firewall stops accepting connection I just fix it. I don't need support. I AM support.
"Well, we don't know why it's doing this, but, hey, give us a few hours with a phone list and a search engine and we'll figure something out."
We rarely have to call someone or look anything up. We just fix it. Maybe we just have a well trained experienced staff. We don't say "We don't know why" We always know "why" its broke. Its a matter of fixing it. Its called troubleshooting a system.
Glad to hear you support Windows 95 but you don't support Vista.
My point was you don't "need" Vista. As far as the Win95 machines. Why would I talk my customer into upgrading a machine that its only use in life is to print banners and to upgrade the printing software will cost $20,000.00. The machine is on a segmented network and needs no outside access and it still happily prints banners. My point was when it does feel a little sick we will work on it. We don't care what it is running. We care that it does run and keeps running. If it ain't broke don't fuck with it. Well you got me. We don't have anyone on staff for BeOS or OS/2 but let me make ONE! phone call and I will have someone over to work on it.
3. What operating system our customer uses is guided by the software they use. Simply put, if our customer relies on software from Sage (many of 'em do - I'd be lying if I said I was thrilled) and they don't support Vista, many of our customers don't get Vista. If Sage doesn't support Linux, Solaris, Mac OS X, FreeBSD, Plan 9, or Amiga OS 4, guess what we're not recommending? In the end, it's not our call - we make our recommendations based on what fits the needs of our customers, not based on our personal preferences.
You are caught up in Branding. What is in a name? Users use applications to do work related tasks. The name does not matter. The function of the application matters. You are not getting work done if you are fooling with the application and the OS all the time. Do I or a customer really "need" MS Office if Star Office or Open Office works just as well? Do I "need" Exchange if Java Messaging System does the same job without breaking all the time?
You are right about customers sometime have to have a certain application. For an example a lot of our customers use QuickBooks. (Yes I hate it with a passion but when their accounting records are "LOCKED IN" by propriety software and they have eight years of records that you can't mass export what do you do? You give them QuickBooks. BUT! Hey I can give you a Quickbooks icon on your Sun Desktop and you can use it till the cows come home and you are still using a more secure and more stable desktop. Maybe Windows is on the backend but your desktop is not exposed to spyware, maleware and all the other nasties out there. Its stable, secure, and you don't have to run out an buy a new machine to support the new OS.
Software is just a means to an end. Getting a job done.
we make our recommendations based on what fits the needs of our customers, not based on our personal preferences.
Actually we don't bill the customer for research on a problem. When we do have to research a problem it doesn't take as long as the phone call would. We know what we are doing. When I have called MS in the past they were NO! help just a waste of time and money. 1/10th the time? Maybe for you but not for us.
See, here's the part where I realized you're just another slashdrone trying to make your reality fit your anti-MS worldview.
No its not an Anti-MS that I am about. It is an Anti-BS world that I am about. Running a company on lies and FUD like MS does I cannot support.
No real outsourced help desk vendor would ever suggest the customer do something to decrease their reliance upon said vendor.
Why would I NOT decrease a customer's reliance on a vendor's who's OS is in-secure and broken by design? I serve our customers NOT MS. MS is not our customer. They still stay our customer when they are running something else. They are happier and not spending as much money on their systems. Savings and stability a good selling point. Explain to me why a help desk vendor would not suggest to their customer to something better.
If you do, in fact, work for an outsouced IT provider, you're likely near the bottom of the totem pole, and absolutely not in management.
Actually I am the Senior Engineer and CTO of the company. I am second in command and only answer to the Owner and the Customers. I've been doing this work for over thirty years now. Yes I am one of the ponied tailed old farts. I've worked with Windows since NT 3.51 and was a MS fanboy until XP and saw how MS was screwing their customers and breaking their OS by design to so they and their partners could make more money.
Your company, in reality, does not have any official polices to steer customers away from Vista. Am I right?
No your wrong. Like I said I am second in command I write the friggin policies! Also the one boss I have agrees with me! It not that we don't support Vista we will. We just try to talk them out of it before they buy. If they have to have Windows then we suggest XP. If we build a desktop we build it with XP. We also offer an alternative. Whats wrong with a more efficient way to work? Whats wrong with doing away with spyware, malware, and all the other nasties that come with MS products by replacing it with something better? I serve our customer not MS.
Like it or not, Microsoft is good for business, especially if you're in the business of providing support or consulting for their platform.
I will agree with you on one point. Yes if you are in the business on a per hour level for support then yes it is good for business because by being broken by design the customer is calling you more thus spending more money with you. You can make a commision on selling anti-virus and setting it up, so on and so on. Selling a bad product just to make more money to me is just another form of theft. Sorry I do have morals. So does my boss.
We sell our phone and online help service on a flat rate per user per month charge. If Joe Users calls in one time or a hundred times the charge is the same. We sell server maintenance service on a flat per server rate. So with this model the less things are broken the more money we make. Efficiency and stability is what drives this model. Not "We'll make more if its broke."
At the end of the month I have to make a maintenance report showing where the time at the NOC is spent. We are about 40% Sun, 20% Linux and 40% Windows servers. Yet 70% of the time is spent on the Windows servers (Terminal Servers & Exchange) wheres the savings with Windoze? Whats wrong with decreasing our reliance upon said vendor if said vendor is costing us money? Less time at the NOC more profit! More uptime! a happier customer. The truth is a customer just wants it to work and be running.
I worked for a company once with an attitude like yours. I quit when we put in a system I knew would continue to break and cost the customer a ton of money. I pointed out the flaws in the system and provided a better way. My boss admitted that my way was more stable but his reply was "Just think of the money we'll make!" I replied "sorry I'm not a theft."
I see you don't work in "IT Support". If you did you would know how stupid that is. Large and even small companies either hire individuals or hire outsource IT companies for "Support" These individuals that "do" the actual support work are trained Techs or Engineers. They don't need to call MS and never do. When they do get stumped with a problem they either call a cohort in the business and ask them if they know of a fix or go online and in the case of Windoze go to the TechNet site or check the forums of answers. I know this for a fact I work for a company that does Outsourced IT for small to medium sized businesses. We NEVER! call Microsoft! We are engineers and most likely know their OS better than they do so why call and waste time?
Now for Joe and Jane user that works for a company that we support who are they going to call? They call us. That is what we get paid for. We are "Support" not Microsoft. We still support Win95 if needed. MS doesn't. Hell we will even support DOS if needed. We are Systems Engineers where I work. We work on systems. We don't care what it runs on. We will work on it. A MCSE is NOT a System Engineer. A real Systems Engineer maybe better at one system OS than the other but he can work on any of them. All systems are not Microsoft.
So what if Joe and Jane user decide to run Linux or a Sun desktop? Who are they going to call for support? They are going to call us that is what we get paid for and yes they will get support! You might get transfered to a different person but you will gladly get support. We support most flavors of Linux and Solaris. Most of our customers don't realize it but they may have an XP desktop but most of the backend servers that are serving them are running Solaris or Linux.
Actually we discourage the use of Vista and say that we don't really support it. Any Windoze boxes we put online are XP. We beg our customer NOT to get Vista. These days we are encouraging our clients to really look at Sun and Linux. One of our big points is if your going to have to learn a new desktop and a new office suite. Why not make the change to Linux or Solaris and be done with client licenses, malware, spyware, viruses, blue screens O' death, changing desktops, and on and on...
Personally I haven't even looked at Vista. I did watch my boss play with it for a week and then reload XP. (yes he's a Windows engineer) His evaluation? "What a piece of shit." I must admit I have turned Vista off a couple of times to load FC7 or Solaris10 on the machine infected by Vista. Vista is not an OS. It is an infection in itself.
Why will I not learn it or touch Vista? Anyone that has worked Windows support knows the scenario. You work on a system and it fails again it is now YOUR FAULT its broke. If I never touch it, then it is never my fault. What do I tell people when they cry to me about their Vista machine? "I told you not to buy that crap. Sorry I don't work on Vista."
Remember the "The Suit" that is screaming about support isn't the poor bastard that has to work on it. I am.
Silly question, but why upgrade all the time anyway? If something works, why replace it? What's going to come out that will magically increase productivity? People tend to forget one of Murphy's Laws of Engineering. "If it ain't broke don't fuck with it."
The sad truth is even if laws are past they will not be upheld. Look at the "Can Spam Act". Did it reduce the amount of spam we all see? I don't think so.
You've got a valid point. About 30 years ago I worked with at the time one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world. It would fill my two bed room apartment and it was considered "Compact" at the time. Now I carry more processing power and throughput on my belt in a little thing called a CrackBerry. Yes in those days a NIC was the size of a refrigerator and ran at a blazing speed of 64K. Yes a time when monitors had 16 colors and the only mice in the building were under the sub-flooring.
Dave: Let's go home. I had a really bad day at work today.
Car: What can I do to make you happy?
Dave: How about a blow job on the way home.
Car: I'm not that kind of car Dave.
Dave: You do want to make me happy don't you?
Car: Yes! I am programed to try to make you happy and keep you from being depressed.
Dave: Well?
Car: OK Just this one time.
Dave: Great!
By the way do you have a vibrate setting?
Car: You have to promise not to tell anybody.
Dave: Sure OK. (zipppp!) Here ya go.
Car: Boy that sure is small. No wonder you drive a BMW to make up for you "short" comings.
Dave: I thought you where programed to make me happy?
Car: I am Dave. Here ya go Big Boy... (The sound of a high pitched hum starts in the background.)
Dave: Ahh! That's good.
Dave swerves into a School Bus killing 23 school children. They find Dave dead in the car with his pants down to his knees clutching his Robot Helper(tm) with a smile on his face and a far away look in his eyes.
Slashdot Mirror
Dear Scott
The poster is right you and Jonathan Schwartz were the ones that killed it. I was a Solaris Engineer for over 15 years. Our shops back end ran on Solaris (around 300 machines) but we are now in the process of phasing out Solaris for Linux thanks to you. All the training I have with your system is now worth nothing.
I read the article and you missed what killed your company. You didn't do any marketing. Now I am one that hates the marketing department but still it does have it place especially when playing with the big boys that also use it.
When we would try to sell your products our customers would ask "Sun who?". Look at Cisco everyone knows the name. The average Joe's knows the name Cisco. They have no idea what Cisco does or sells but Joe knows the name from the cute little media ads "The Human Network".
I asked many times to your sales and engineers people "Why not get your name out?" and was told "Management doesn't think it is a good idea." Well no one knew your name so why buy Sun? Sun who????
Damn guys why didn't you run ads showing where you all shined. Little robots on Mars designed to run 90 days and RAN FOR YEARS! The fact that your old tag line was still true you guys where "The Dot in Dot Com" and still are to a degree. If you get on the Internet you touch a Sun box somewhere Everyone uses you but the average person don't know who you are even if they were using your products. I have talked to people that have bought Cisco stock and have NO IDEA what Cisco makes or sells. They have just heard the name over and over again and heard from there broker they are a good investment. How can anyone buy from you if they don't know your name asshole. Hell it was easier selling Linux more people have heard of it more than Sun and you've been around longer and Linux has no marketing budget and Sun had one. Seems the problem lies with you asshole. You should have done your job and got your good name to the public.
The truth is you could have made money with Sun if you tried. I fully believe you've been setting up this sell for awhile to line your own pockets with gold and to hell with your customers (oh wrong word "Consumers") and to hell with your employees.
You said in your article you did it for the stockholders and the employees. Well most of the good employees didn't get to keep their jobs. They quit. They couldn't work for an asshat company like Orcale. So did that work for you??? No. so shut up about jobs. Yes your "Customers" the stockholders did ok. You and Jonathan will never hurt for anything sitting on your pile of cash.
You wrote 'You gotta take care of your shareholders or you end up very vulnerable like we got." This is where you went wrong. You should have taken care of your NAME and branding and the people that used your products and sold them to the public. People like me. No matter how much money shareholders put into a company it isn't going to be for shit if your NOT SELLING PRODUCTS! People can't sell your name if no one knows it you fuck up.
So quit your crying and quit doing interviews its all you fault so go cry to your money and just shut up and go away. Your done here. No one likes you no one wants to hear from you. just go and spend you money on someone like yourself a two dollar whore and have a good time on us.
Oh yes please tell your buddy Jonathan that if I see him I will cut that pony tail off of his head. He doesn't deserve to wear it. He's no pony tailed geek. He's just another corporate asshole.
b0
Damn I do feel better now!
As to why I left, it's difficult to answer: just about an anything I could say that would be accurate and honest would do more harm than good.
The only harm honesty and truthfulness would bring is showing what lying and thieving asshole Oracle is.
It is wrong to tell the truth and bring harm on others that are harming others with their lies and money?
I would like to point out that serving in war is a good thing before sending young people into battle. Look at the present state of affairs. Maybe if Bush hadn't been a coward and hid in the National Guard and had smelled the burning flesh of his best friend maybe he would have thought twice before sending people into a war over a lie. War is something that cannot be described it has to be experienced. Once you have experienced it the horror never leaves you. I know been there done that.
The reason? Its call money. This is the only thing the IOC has an interest in. Believe me I live in Atlanta and when the games were here I have never seen such a rip off of the local people, and those stupid ring logos they make a ton of money selling the "use" of that emblem. I did have a lot of respect for the games until they were here and I saw for myself how theres people operate. They are just a group of thieves.
They seem to forget this law....
Article the sixth [Amendment IV] The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Did you forget about NT? 3.51 was around during the Win 3.1 days and NT4 was around during the Win95 days. All ran on the same hardware, NT just needed a bit more RAM to work well.
Windows was designed for a PC (Personal Computer) which in the beginning the only network it used was "Sneaker Net" and a floppy. They had no NIC cards so in Microsoft's weak minds there was no need for security except for locking the room the PC was in. Actually what you are looking at Slashdot with is not a PC but a "Network Workstation". Herein lies the problem using an operating system that is designed so that its security depends on a locked physical door on an open network. Open networks go right around the physical door through the wall.
UNIX and all its family (Linux, BSD, OSX, Solaris) were designed from the start to be a networked operating system so ACL's and user controls were built in from the start.
NT was built to be a networked operating system and had a decent security model. Some said that it was too clunky because you had to set user permissions, users where set up as "Users" and not Administrators so in order to Admin the box you had to log out of your user account and log in as Administrator. (Gee what a novel idea!) So in XPee they used the NT kernel and threw away a decent security model for "Ease of Use" so that people that are either to lazy or too stupid to learn how to use a computer can use one.
Yes they built the UAC to annoy users but it has nothing to do with developers and their code. It is to annoy users to the point they turn it off and then the user is responsible and not Microsoft when the machine gets 0wned. A simple fix to a problem. Shift the blame. You have to remember Microsoft's own development application VS compiles dll's to the system directory to where your app must run in "God mode" for you. Developers are not really to blame as much as the platform they are using to develop with.
I'm glad I don't have to put up with such sh_t anymore.
I know for me. I work on systems all day. Yes Linux and Solaris are the only operating systems I "use". I do work on Windows Server when I have too. When I do get time to kick back the last thing I wan to do is stare at the same screen I have been looking at for the last ten hours. Yes people come over to my house and say "I bet you have a lot of cool games." I say no and I don't. The truth is I'd rather sit on the porch and watch the squirrels jump from tree to tree in my off time. I don't mean this in a bad way but I do think that most people that use Linux "work" on computers and have other ways to "play". Well it is that way for me.
You are right these days most of the complaints and spam mail that is getting by the filters and being sent to our Abuse Department is coming from Yahoo. Yes we've sent over 100 of these through their little form with the header information and still the next week more 419 spam with the same! FROM: address.
I called Yahoo and after an hour of being dropped and calling back I could not talk with anyone connected with the mail system. The ONLY thing I got was "Fill out the form." They actually told me that their was no phone in the office where the Postmaster was at. They really expected me to believe that too.
So here we have a site promoting and using Domain Keys (yes they're in the headers of these email so they must be vaild!) Yet they are enabling the abusers of the network. Domian Keys aren't going keeping this shit out it has a vaild key!
The only thing that will help is that companies like Yahoo and Hotmail clean up their own back yard and for them to somehow allow Engineers from one network talk and work out issues with THEIR! network. If they don't stop accounts that are doing this they are accessories to this crime and this IS a crime. You can only stop something at its source and the source is the orginating email account. These email accounts are being hosted by Yahoo.
There was a day when you had a problem and you did a whois lookup and called the Techinal Zone Contact and got things worked out. Sadly these days when dealing with the Big Boys like Yahoo and Hotmail are gone.
There is a method to deal with this and I am working on getting it approved here. Block all mail from Yahoo and explain to our customers that this is where their spam is coming from and to tell who ever is trying to send them mail to get a real email account somewhere.
Sure we're a little company and if we do this it will only cause a small issue with them but if more networks just started refusing Yahoo Mail soon it would make an effect on their user base.
pi r round
cobbler r square
Let's not forget about Indian Reservations. They are not part of the "United States" but land held (seized) "In Trust" by the US Government. Tribes are still Nations. I don't think you could call us Foreign Nations either. You are right there is a lot more to the US than just the States.
I totally argee with you but I must say. How do you think he won in the first place. Remember Joesph Stalin said "Its not how you vote, but counts the votes."
To this I must say. "Do you REALLY expect me to believe this shit?"
When are the people of the US going to wake up and get the rope.
Don't buy wireless products with Broadcom chipsets and you won't have this problem. It is not Linux's fault that Broadcom will not support Linux or UNIX and release the driver specs. With Intel or Atheros chipsets you will fine that you will have no problem installing and NO! NDIS wrapper. REMEMBER!! NDIS is a Windoze protocol and it NOT! a part of the real TCP/IP stack. Why won't these cards work? Closed source BS and Windoze lock in.
You have a valid point. 4 years ago I set up a PC for a 86 year old Grandma that had never used a computer before. For the first 8 months when it was running windoze I got calls every two weeks that something was broke or it was doing weird things. After 8 months and the system got severely infected I ask her to try Linux. So I loaded Fedora and set it up for her. Well it has been running for three years now and not one call of problems. I hear from her about every 2 months to say "Hi!" and the only thing she has to say is how well "Linus" (that is what she calls her computer) is doing. About every 3months or so I shell into the box from my house and run yum to update the system and check on things. Yes Grandma loves Linux running on a older used PC. It does email. It surfs the web. She can look at and save photos of the Grand Kids. She can write and print a letter. Thats all she needs and the icons are on her desktop. She loves it.
Crush depth for Linux is 500 Meters.
Maybe the parent was modded insightful because he doesn't hardly use it. my living depends on computers. It used to depend on MS too, but not anymore. Linux and Sun work just fine. I still do my job and I don't have to put up with MS shit anymore. If you have trouble well you chose to run it.
Thank you! Yes you understood my point we spend 70% of our time working on 40% of the systems. Its not a matter of experience on a system either. It is on what breaks. Terminal servers get infected due to application HAVING to run under Administrator. SunRay server don't. Yes we use images to rebuild with still this takes time. Time we don't spend on the SunRay's. Windows breaks Sun and Linux doesn't. I'm not saying that SUN and Linux doesn't ever have problems. All systems have problems sometime. If they didn't none of us would have a job. The Sun boxes and Linux boxes just keep running and all we do is check the logs and do the backups. Add a user to the system or whatever.
Thank you again! Yes we will support Vista but try to dissuade them. Actually all but a few of our customer that insisted on Vista have after a month or so of using it have called us to have it replaced by XP. This was THEIR! call not ours. Yes we gladly installed XP and they are happier with it. I have yet to see a call where they wanted to go back to Vista.
Thank you again for actually reading my post an understanding what I am talking about.
Our customers like us. We save them money. In four years we have lost one customer and they returned after a year with another company.
We call Microsoft when something goes wrong that we don't understand instead of wasting hours on Google randomly changing registry settings.
We NEVER randomly change registry settings! We're not fools.
This way, when ISA decides to randomly no longer accept FTP connections,
You actually use ISA?? Well we don't have that problem we use Linux based firewalls. ISA is one of the most in-secure firewalls out there. Check with any well known security site they will tell you the same. Check CERT. Given an IP number and 15 mins. I'll own the network an ISA box is protecting. If our firewall stops accepting connection I just fix it. I don't need support. I AM support.
"Well, we don't know why it's doing this, but, hey, give us a few hours with a phone list and a search engine and we'll figure something out."
We rarely have to call someone or look anything up. We just fix it. Maybe we just have a well trained experienced staff. We don't say "We don't know why" We always know "why" its broke. Its a matter of fixing it. Its called troubleshooting a system.
Glad to hear you support Windows 95 but you don't support Vista.
My point was you don't "need" Vista. As far as the Win95 machines. Why would I talk my customer into upgrading a machine that its only use in life is to print banners and to upgrade the printing software will cost $20,000.00. The machine is on a segmented network and needs no outside access and it still happily prints banners. My point was when it does feel a little sick we will work on it. We don't care what it is running. We care that it does run and keeps running. If it ain't broke don't fuck with it. Well you got me. We don't have anyone on staff for BeOS or OS/2 but let me make ONE! phone call and I will have someone over to work on it.
3. What operating system our customer uses is guided by the software they use. Simply put, if our customer relies on software from Sage (many of 'em do - I'd be lying if I said I was thrilled) and they don't support Vista, many of our customers don't get Vista. If Sage doesn't support Linux, Solaris, Mac OS X, FreeBSD, Plan 9, or Amiga OS 4, guess what we're not recommending? In the end, it's not our call - we make our recommendations based on what fits the needs of our customers, not based on our personal preferences.
You are caught up in Branding. What is in a name? Users use applications to do work related tasks. The name does not matter. The function of the application matters. You are not getting work done if you are fooling with the application and the OS all the time. Do I or a customer really "need" MS Office if Star Office or Open Office works just as well? Do I "need" Exchange if Java Messaging System does the same job without breaking all the time?
You are right about customers sometime have to have a certain application. For an example a lot of our customers use QuickBooks. (Yes I hate it with a passion but when their accounting records are "LOCKED IN" by propriety software and they have eight years of records that you can't mass export what do you do? You give them QuickBooks. BUT! Hey I can give you a Quickbooks icon on your Sun Desktop and you can use it till the cows come home and you are still using a more secure and more stable desktop. Maybe Windows is on the backend but your desktop is not exposed to spyware, maleware and all the other nasties out there. Its stable, secure, and you don't have to run out an buy a new machine to support the new OS.
Software is just a means to an end. Getting a job done.
we make our recommendations based on what fits the needs of our customers, not based on our personal preferences.
Its not a matter of pers
Actually we don't bill the customer for research on a problem. When we do have to research a problem it doesn't take as long as the phone call would. We know what we are doing. When I have called MS in the past they were NO! help just a waste of time and money. 1/10th the time? Maybe for you but not for us.
No its not an Anti-MS that I am about. It is an Anti-BS world that I am about. Running a company on lies and FUD like MS does I cannot support.
No real outsourced help desk vendor would ever suggest the customer do something to decrease their reliance upon said vendor.Why would I NOT decrease a customer's reliance on a vendor's who's OS is in-secure and broken by design? I serve our customers NOT MS. MS is not our customer. They still stay our customer when they are running something else. They are happier and not spending as much money on their systems. Savings and stability a good selling point. Explain to me why a help desk vendor would not suggest to their customer to something better.
If you do, in fact, work for an outsouced IT provider, you're likely near the bottom of the totem pole, and absolutely not in management.Actually I am the Senior Engineer and CTO of the company. I am second in command and only answer to the Owner and the Customers. I've been doing this work for over thirty years now. Yes I am one of the ponied tailed old farts. I've worked with Windows since NT 3.51 and was a MS fanboy until XP and saw how MS was screwing their customers and breaking their OS by design to so they and their partners could make more money.
Your company, in reality, does not have any official polices to steer customers away from Vista. Am I right?No your wrong. Like I said I am second in command I write the friggin policies! Also the one boss I have agrees with me! It not that we don't support Vista we will. We just try to talk them out of it before they buy. If they have to have Windows then we suggest XP. If we build a desktop we build it with XP. We also offer an alternative. Whats wrong with a more efficient way to work? Whats wrong with doing away with spyware, malware, and all the other nasties that come with MS products by replacing it with something better? I serve our customer not MS.
Like it or not, Microsoft is good for business, especially if you're in the business of providing support or consulting for their platform.I will agree with you on one point. Yes if you are in the business on a per hour level for support then yes it is good for business because by being broken by design the customer is calling you more thus spending more money with you. You can make a commision on selling anti-virus and setting it up, so on and so on. Selling a bad product just to make more money to me is just another form of theft. Sorry I do have morals. So does my boss.
We sell our phone and online help service on a flat rate per user per month charge. If Joe Users calls in one time or a hundred times the charge is the same. We sell server maintenance service on a flat per server rate. So with this model the less things are broken the more money we make. Efficiency and stability is what drives this model. Not "We'll make more if its broke."
At the end of the month I have to make a maintenance report showing where the time at the NOC is spent. We are about 40% Sun, 20% Linux and 40% Windows servers. Yet 70% of the time is spent on the Windows servers (Terminal Servers & Exchange) wheres the savings with Windoze? Whats wrong with decreasing our reliance upon said vendor if said vendor is costing us money? Less time at the NOC more profit! More uptime! a happier customer. The truth is a customer just wants it to work and be running.
I worked for a company once with an attitude like yours. I quit when we put in a system I knew would continue to break and cost the customer a ton of money. I pointed out the flaws in the system and provided a better way. My boss admitted that my way was more stable but his reply was "Just think of the money we'll make!" I replied "sorry I'm not a theft."
I see you don't work in "IT Support". If you did you would know how stupid that is. Large and even small companies either hire individuals or hire outsource IT companies for "Support" These individuals that "do" the actual support work are trained Techs or Engineers. They don't need to call MS and never do. When they do get stumped with a problem they either call a cohort in the business and ask them if they know of a fix or go online and in the case of Windoze go to the TechNet site or check the forums of answers. I know this for a fact I work for a company that does Outsourced IT for small to medium sized businesses. We NEVER! call Microsoft! We are engineers and most likely know their OS better than they do so why call and waste time?
Now for Joe and Jane user that works for a company that we support who are they going to call? They call us. That is what we get paid for. We are "Support" not Microsoft. We still support Win95 if needed. MS doesn't. Hell we will even support DOS if needed. We are Systems Engineers where I work. We work on systems. We don't care what it runs on. We will work on it. A MCSE is NOT a System Engineer. A real Systems Engineer maybe better at one system OS than the other but he can work on any of them. All systems are not Microsoft.
So what if Joe and Jane user decide to run Linux or a Sun desktop? Who are they going to call for support? They are going to call us that is what we get paid for and yes they will get support! You might get transfered to a different person but you will gladly get support. We support most flavors of Linux and Solaris. Most of our customers don't realize it but they may have an XP desktop but most of the backend servers that are serving them are running Solaris or Linux.
Actually we discourage the use of Vista and say that we don't really support it. Any Windoze boxes we put online are XP. We beg our customer NOT to get Vista. These days we are encouraging our clients to really look at Sun and Linux. One of our big points is if your going to have to learn a new desktop and a new office suite. Why not make the change to Linux or Solaris and be done with client licenses, malware, spyware, viruses, blue screens O' death, changing desktops, and on and on...
Personally I haven't even looked at Vista. I did watch my boss play with it for a week and then reload XP. (yes he's a Windows engineer) His evaluation? "What a piece of shit." I must admit I have turned Vista off a couple of times to load FC7 or Solaris10 on the machine infected by Vista. Vista is not an OS. It is an infection in itself.
Why will I not learn it or touch Vista? Anyone that has worked Windows support knows the scenario. You work on a system and it fails again it is now YOUR FAULT its broke. If I never touch it, then it is never my fault. What do I tell people when they cry to me about their Vista machine? "I told you not to buy that crap. Sorry I don't work on Vista."
Remember the "The Suit" that is screaming about support isn't the poor bastard that has to work on it. I am.
There are many words for slavery. Many words... It's still slavery.
The sad truth is even if laws are past they will not be upheld. Look at the "Can Spam Act". Did it reduce the amount of spam we all see? I don't think so.
Terms are relative to the time.
Dave: Hi Car.
Car: Hello Dave.
Dave: Let's go home. I had a really bad day at work today.
Car: What can I do to make you happy?
Dave: How about a blow job on the way home.
Car: I'm not that kind of car Dave.
Dave: You do want to make me happy don't you?
Car: Yes! I am programed to try to make you happy and keep you from being depressed.
Dave: Well?
Car: OK Just this one time.
Dave: Great!
By the way do you have a vibrate setting?
Car: You have to promise not to tell anybody.
Dave: Sure OK. (zipppp!) Here ya go.
Car: Boy that sure is small. No wonder you drive a BMW to make up for you "short" comings.
Dave: I thought you where programed to make me happy?
Car: I am Dave. Here ya go Big Boy... (The sound of a high pitched hum starts in the background.)
Dave: Ahh! That's good.
Dave swerves into a School Bus killing 23 school children. They find Dave dead in the car with his pants down to his knees clutching his Robot Helper(tm) with a smile on his face and a far away look in his eyes.
Oh Lordy bee. Think of the children.