Re:Not absorption...less obstinance.
on
Ageism in IT?
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· Score: 2, Interesting
You are exactly right. I do tech support. Without question, the MOST annoying calls we get are from older tech who will start off the phone conversation with, "By the way, I've been programming for over 20 years, and I think..."
When I worked doing phone tech support, I always hated these calls (almost as much as the people who are physically incapable of single-clicking) because they are some of the most stubborn people I've ever had to talk to. It didn't matter that I knew the answer that they were looking for. The simple fact that they couldn't find the answer with their own reasoning was enough for them to not accept any answer I was about to give them.
Now, when I need to make a call in to a tech support hotline, I never make the statement "I've been a network engineer for the last 5 years" but rather "I seem to be having this problem, I've checked this, this, and this, and I still can't find the solution..."
There is something to be said for people who get so set in their ways that they refuse to learn new things, but I don't think that age is a sole component of this mentality. Its generally true that younger people are more succeptable to picking-up a new or different way of thinking, but (as in just about everything else that involves people) it really does depend on the individual.
The problem is, the other 1% are usually those who make the decisions about what office packages to purchase for an organization, as they are often the largest stakeholders when it comes to office products in an organization.
IIRC if you change your default save format from OpenOffice's to.DOC, for example, I believe it saves the file directly to MS Word format without presenting you with that dialog box.
I did this on my wife's PC for that exact same reason-- she got tired of that little popup box and everyone she communicates with uses MS Word anyway.
Um... where were you during all of the coverage with this "War on Iraq"? Fox News (if it can be called such) was so blitheringly slanted towards the pro-war mentality that they never bothered to even cover many of the anti-war protests that occured.
Of course, when someone's view differes from that of the media giants, it isn't really news anyway...
Re:RedHat is lame
on
fvwm Turns Ten
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Just use Slackware...
Default install of 9.0 contains fvwm-2.4.15-i386-2.
I highly reccomend Practical Unix & Internet Security by O'Reilly Associates. It a good primmer on the broad concepts that encompass security architecture.
IIRC one of the Space Quest games (I or II me thinks) had a boss key, which would bring-up a DOS spreadsheet-looking application. Even back then, IT had its slacker moments.
If there's an doctor or nurse lurking around here, I'm SURE they could tell a different story. My mom's an ER nurse and on the rare occation when we're out and she has a few drinks, strange stories of messed-up non-anything-savvy people abound!
Running as root makes NO DIFFERENCE whether or not you're capable of getting an email virus. If you're running as a default user, an email virus can still potentially remove your entire home dir with everything in it. This is quite likely MUCH MORE devastating to your average Joe-user than having his system files deleted.
If a user has access to a networked system, he has the potential to receive some email trickerly that will wipe-out everything he's worked for, regardless of whether or not he's the superuser when he does it.
You can find a pantload of cheap music if you're willing to look past the Big5(tm) labels in order to find it.
I sell my CDs at around $6.99 a pop (the lowest mp3.com will let me go). I'm thinking of moving to CD Baby, in which case I imagine I'll sell them at about $.50 above cost. I don't plan to make any money off of my music, I'm more about exposure. You wouldn't believe the high you can get when someone you've never met comes up to you and tells you how much they enjoyed some of your music.
And with free software, they are legally allowed to do as such. I agree that it probably wasn't the most tasteful move, but they are selling their package to companies that find such unification of desktop environments useful (particularly if the purchaser is interested in running its own internal helpdesk to support its own RedHat installations).
I personally don't like KDE's bastardization in RH 8+, but I don't think anything less of RedHat for it-- they're selling a unified product to their customers who want it as such. I don't use RedHat (haven't since 6.0, and even then it was the non-trademarked GPL download version), so I'm not in a position to make them listen to me about their desktop.
Libranet is nothing special outside vanilla Debian, so that makes it even more irrelevant in this case.
Considering that Libranet offers support for users who purchase their distro, that is one offering over Debian. I'm not talking about mailing lists or newsgroups, but full "corporate approved" support. Granted, their support staff doesn't equate to that of RedHat or IBM, but I imagine there are a few small businesses who have gone with Libranet because its a company designed around their distro.
RedHat has a bit of a gap between their support tiers (30 and 60 day installation support vs. RH Enterprise support), so I suspect Libranet is getting by quite nicely by providing support that fits somewhere in the middle. They obviously seem to be doing well to have been around for this long without having to resort to begging for money (ala Mandrake).
If peole want to buy the distro, more power to them. I personally don't find it very appealing, but I only speak for myself.
In the context of the interview, they mentioned installing OpenOffice off of a CD which was distributed. I honestly don't know if the exact filename was openoffice-1.0.1_4.tgz, but substitute the correct filename on the CD for openoffice-1.0.1_4.tgz and the aformentioned pkg_add command would work just fine.
I pulled my copy of the tarball from http://projects.imp.ch/openoffice/ and used pkg_add to install.
Unless you specifically disable it on the Linksys, your SSID (which you mention was "Linksys") is broadcasted. Anyone with a wireless card and the right software (which WinXP includes) can see the SSID of your home WiFi LAN. The Linksys also has 2 options for WEP encryption, disabled or manditory (at least for the version 2 WiFi Access Point, which I use). If its disabled, then all traffic sent across your WiFi LAN is plain-text, in the clear (unless you are using some encrypted protocols above the WiFi layer like IPSec, SSH, or https for web pages). If its manditory, then all users who connect to your WiFi LAN must provide the correct WEP key to connect to or see traffic on your network.
Even though WEP has been proven to be somewhat insecure (without weak iv filtering, you can break WEP by collecting only a few thousand packets), it is strongly reccomended that you enable it on your WiFi LAN. I also suggest enabling the MAC filtering option on your Linksys access point, as this will only allow registered MAC addresses to communicate with your access point-- the access point just ignores all traffic that isn't coming from the MAC addresses you allow. This is not an end-all security solution by any means, but it does help to deter the causual onlooker who might want to snoop some of your traffic. Of course, any accomplished cracker may very well try to crack your WEP key, but you can get around that by putting your WiFi LAN on an "unsecured" network segment and limiting access to/from the WiFi segment. You can also use things like SSH tunnels and IPSec to further restrict communication over your WiFi LAN.
All in all, much of the above is overkill if you are just using WiFi around the house, but I stand by my point that everyone who doesn't want to provide public WiFi should use both WEP and MAC filtering on their equiptment, as just about every WiFi APs offer these features, and they take (at most) 15 minutes to setup properly.
That will work really well in helping the already-crippled airline industry to get more business.
If an airline tells me that I can't being my laptop in the cabin (on or off), then I'll simply not fly with that airline. At this point, the customers are holding all the cards, and I suspect that a few airlines may start to allow these sorts of electronics to one-up the competition.
Considering all you need to do to get OpenOffice working on FreeBSD is "pkg_add openoffice-1.0.1_4.tgz", there are indeed more steps involved to get OpenOffice working under Linux. I didn't get any impression that the interviewees were expressing any hostility towards Linux (in fact, they explicitly mention several areas where Linux has excelled over FreeBSD). It does stand that there are things that are easier to do in FreeBSD than in Linux (installation onto a RAID partition is one of those things in my experience). I have noticed that many responses to this interview have put many Linux users on the defensive, however.
I use both Linux and FreeBSD in various roles, and they both have their strong and weak points. The interviewees just stated their personal preferences in some circumstances, which is what an interview will bring out in people.
Just because you (who I suspect is a geek who knows how to maintain a system) don't see BSODs anymore doesn't mean that LindowsOS's projected customer base (computer neophytes and others who don't get down-and-dirty with their systems) don't. My mom still gets BSODs in Win2k on what seems like a weekly basis (as I get the all the support calls). A bad driver here, funky hardware there, spyware and adware all over the place, leave plenty of room for the occational systems crash.
Remember, Lindows isn't marketing their systems to advanced users, they are marketing them to the lowest common demoninator of PC user (many of which are still using Win95 or 98).
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You are exactly right. I do tech support. Without question, the MOST annoying calls we get are from older tech who will start off the phone conversation with, "By the way, I've been programming for over 20 years, and I think..."
When I worked doing phone tech support, I always hated these calls (almost as much as the people who are physically incapable of single-clicking) because they are some of the most stubborn people I've ever had to talk to. It didn't matter that I knew the answer that they were looking for. The simple fact that they couldn't find the answer with their own reasoning was enough for them to not accept any answer I was about to give them.
Now, when I need to make a call in to a tech support hotline, I never make the statement "I've been a network engineer for the last 5 years" but rather "I seem to be having this problem, I've checked this, this, and this, and I still can't find the solution..."
There is something to be said for people who get so set in their ways that they refuse to learn new things, but I don't think that age is a sole component of this mentality. Its generally true that younger people are more succeptable to picking-up a new or different way of thinking, but (as in just about everything else that involves people) it really does depend on the individual.
Have you ever seen anyone screw-up Kraft Cheese and Macaroni? It is possible, and a terrible thing when it happens. I tried cooking it in beer once...
Who says you never learn anything useful in college?
The problem is, the other 1% are usually those who make the decisions about what office packages to purchase for an organization, as they are often the largest stakeholders when it comes to office products in an organization.
IIRC if you change your default save format from OpenOffice's to .DOC, for example, I believe it saves the file directly to MS Word format without presenting you with that dialog box.
I did this on my wife's PC for that exact same reason-- she got tired of that little popup box and everyone she communicates with uses MS Word anyway.
Does dual booting not work for you? Linux and FreeBSD can coexist quite happily together via multiboot.
This was my exact same thought when I got both my FreeBSD 5.0-RELEASE and Slackware 9.0 subscription copies THE SAME DAY.
Um... where were you during all of the coverage with this "War on Iraq"? Fox News (if it can be called such) was so blitheringly slanted towards the pro-war mentality that they never bothered to even cover many of the anti-war protests that occured.
Of course, when someone's view differes from that of the media giants, it isn't really news anyway...
Just use Slackware...
Default install of 9.0 contains fvwm-2.4.15-i386-2.
Go out of business.
I highly reccomend Practical Unix & Internet Security by O'Reilly Associates. It a good primmer on the broad concepts that encompass security architecture.
Works fine for me, in a Moz 1.3 browser compiled with glibc 2.3.1 and gcc 3.2.2 (Slack9).
IIRC one of the Space Quest games (I or II me thinks) had a boss key, which would bring-up a DOS spreadsheet-looking application. Even back then, IT had its slacker moments.
If there's an doctor or nurse lurking around here, I'm SURE they could tell a different story. My mom's an ER nurse and on the rare occation when we're out and she has a few drinks, strange stories of messed-up non-anything-savvy people abound!
Running as root makes NO DIFFERENCE whether or not you're capable of getting an email virus. If you're running as a default user, an email virus can still potentially remove your entire home dir with everything in it. This is quite likely MUCH MORE devastating to your average Joe-user than having his system files deleted.
If a user has access to a networked system, he has the potential to receive some email trickerly that will wipe-out everything he's worked for, regardless of whether or not he's the superuser when he does it.
You can find a pantload of cheap music if you're willing to look past the Big5(tm) labels in order to find it.
I sell my CDs at around $6.99 a pop (the lowest mp3.com will let me go). I'm thinking of moving to CD Baby, in which case I imagine I'll sell them at about $.50 above cost. I don't plan to make any money off of my music, I'm more about exposure. You wouldn't believe the high you can get when someone you've never met comes up to you and tells you how much they enjoyed some of your music.
Acceptable for everything but Libranet's custom administration console, which is not GPLed and hence can't be included.
Why do they need a NEW distrobution for this?
Because they can. What more of a reason is needed? If people are buying it, then its a good move for them.
And with free software, they are legally allowed to do as such. I agree that it probably wasn't the most tasteful move, but they are selling their package to companies that find such unification of desktop environments useful (particularly if the purchaser is interested in running its own internal helpdesk to support its own RedHat installations).
I personally don't like KDE's bastardization in RH 8+, but I don't think anything less of RedHat for it-- they're selling a unified product to their customers who want it as such. I don't use RedHat (haven't since 6.0, and even then it was the non-trademarked GPL download version), so I'm not in a position to make them listen to me about their desktop.
Libranet is nothing special outside vanilla Debian, so that makes it even more irrelevant in this case.
Considering that Libranet offers support for users who purchase their distro, that is one offering over Debian. I'm not talking about mailing lists or newsgroups, but full "corporate approved" support. Granted, their support staff doesn't equate to that of RedHat or IBM, but I imagine there are a few small businesses who have gone with Libranet because its a company designed around their distro.
RedHat has a bit of a gap between their support tiers (30 and 60 day installation support vs. RH Enterprise support), so I suspect Libranet is getting by quite nicely by providing support that fits somewhere in the middle. They obviously seem to be doing well to have been around for this long without having to resort to begging for money (ala Mandrake).
If peole want to buy the distro, more power to them. I personally don't find it very appealing, but I only speak for myself.
This is EXACTLY what QoS and traffic shaping is for. Throttle all P2P traffic to ~10kbps during peak usage and you're fine.
In the context of the interview, they mentioned installing OpenOffice off of a CD which was distributed. I honestly don't know if the exact filename was openoffice-1.0.1_4.tgz, but substitute the correct filename on the CD for openoffice-1.0.1_4.tgz and the aformentioned pkg_add command would work just fine.
I pulled my copy of the tarball from http://projects.imp.ch/openoffice/ and used pkg_add to install.
Unless you specifically disable it on the Linksys, your SSID (which you mention was "Linksys") is broadcasted. Anyone with a wireless card and the right software (which WinXP includes) can see the SSID of your home WiFi LAN. The Linksys also has 2 options for WEP encryption, disabled or manditory (at least for the version 2 WiFi Access Point, which I use). If its disabled, then all traffic sent across your WiFi LAN is plain-text, in the clear (unless you are using some encrypted protocols above the WiFi layer like IPSec, SSH, or https for web pages). If its manditory, then all users who connect to your WiFi LAN must provide the correct WEP key to connect to or see traffic on your network.
Even though WEP has been proven to be somewhat insecure (without weak iv filtering, you can break WEP by collecting only a few thousand packets), it is strongly reccomended that you enable it on your WiFi LAN. I also suggest enabling the MAC filtering option on your Linksys access point, as this will only allow registered MAC addresses to communicate with your access point-- the access point just ignores all traffic that isn't coming from the MAC addresses you allow. This is not an end-all security solution by any means, but it does help to deter the causual onlooker who might want to snoop some of your traffic. Of course, any accomplished cracker may very well try to crack your WEP key, but you can get around that by putting your WiFi LAN on an "unsecured" network segment and limiting access to/from the WiFi segment. You can also use things like SSH tunnels and IPSec to further restrict communication over your WiFi LAN.
All in all, much of the above is overkill if you are just using WiFi around the house, but I stand by my point that everyone who doesn't want to provide public WiFi should use both WEP and MAC filtering on their equiptment, as just about every WiFi APs offer these features, and they take (at most) 15 minutes to setup properly.
That will work really well in helping the already-crippled airline industry to get more business.
If an airline tells me that I can't being my laptop in the cabin (on or off), then I'll simply not fly with that airline. At this point, the customers are holding all the cards, and I suspect that a few airlines may start to allow these sorts of electronics to one-up the competition.
Considering all you need to do to get OpenOffice working on FreeBSD is "pkg_add openoffice-1.0.1_4.tgz", there are indeed more steps involved to get OpenOffice working under Linux. I didn't get any impression that the interviewees were expressing any hostility towards Linux (in fact, they explicitly mention several areas where Linux has excelled over FreeBSD). It does stand that there are things that are easier to do in FreeBSD than in Linux (installation onto a RAID partition is one of those things in my experience). I have noticed that many responses to this interview have put many Linux users on the defensive, however.
I use both Linux and FreeBSD in various roles, and they both have their strong and weak points. The interviewees just stated their personal preferences in some circumstances, which is what an interview will bring out in people.
Just because you (who I suspect is a geek who knows how to maintain a system) don't see BSODs anymore doesn't mean that LindowsOS's projected customer base (computer neophytes and others who don't get down-and-dirty with their systems) don't. My mom still gets BSODs in Win2k on what seems like a weekly basis (as I get the all the support calls). A bad driver here, funky hardware there, spyware and adware all over the place, leave plenty of room for the occational systems crash.
Remember, Lindows isn't marketing their systems to advanced users, they are marketing them to the lowest common demoninator of PC user (many of which are still using Win95 or 98).