Thank you for your inquiry concerning our 'Year 2000' readiness and what impact it may have on your business continuity.
As executive manager of all information technology at a Fortune 100 firm in charge of 1500 data processing professionals, I was completely unaware of this potential software 'bug'. Now that you mention it, there may be a few mission critical business database programs on our IBM 360 that could very well be century-date sensitive. As the thing has been running a drum memory based database flawlessly for the past 35 years, save for routing maintenance, we felt no need to upgrade to whatever the latest passing data processing fads were at the time.
Please be assured that I will dispatch a junior programmer to look into this situation immediately and recommend any corrective actions that need to be taken to ensure that our 25,000 workstation system will continue to provide the high quality of service that you have come to expect from ***.
Sincerely Chuck From the 14th hole Greenstate Golf club
A) If NT was all it's cracked up to be, that is delivered a business EXPEDIENCY to set up servers and workstations quickly and flexibly - I'd love it. If we could just buy the licenses and go thru a simple setup and it actually worked it'd be a dream come true. And some of it does, setting up printers and disks is usually quite painless.
B) BUT, if I have to spend hours grepping thru MSFT 'TechNet', smoozing with other McSE's trying to find out which registry edit needs to be done to get some tricky config running and workaround for this bug and that glitch and some other 'issue' then FAGHITABOUTIT. I'd rather spend the time to learn the gory details of some open industry standard system any day than what BG's favorite color or domain/directory scheme of the month is.
Bottom line - if it works (and so far it's usually embarrasing) I'd recommend it. If it takes learning something I'd rather use *nix.
MSFT has been collecting the benefit of the doubt for so long (i.e., 'trusted', as in trusting the fox to guard the henhouse) that now the tide has turned and even HONEST MISTAKES are perceived as wilful and malicious anti-competitive measures.
Spread enough FUD and it'll eventually come back to haunt you!
politics is such a thinly veiled influence peddling racket - with W's war chest bulging at the seams Big Al has to snuggle up to some real loud free speech. Whether he fires up the bullhorn and shouts, "We must leave business alone to innovate and create jobs!" or "We must protect consumer rights!" all depends on how many zero's are on the soft money check.
How's that for cynicism? Reporting from the Gerrymandered Bob Scott district, this is
that they put Linux oriented "how-to" articles in, that can only boost circulation (and also how much they can charge for adverts) - there will probably always a vocal minority of people, a 'niche' market, of folks who love to 'do it yourself', like home depot weekend carpenters - why spend a lot of time getting blueprints, buying lumber, pouring 'crete, etc to build a back deck yourself (Linux) when you can just pay an experienced contractor to do it for you (Windows)? Because you can! Some folks have the time and talent and looking for a tech challenge. There will always be a minority of people who love to learn by experimenting and trying things out, exploring (colloquially called 'hacking'). Anyway, the point is there WILL be people who get their Linux up and running and will be jonsing for articles and software to feed it.
Allow me to beat my drum on one issue - we repeated hear how Microsoft is the system for the 'common user', the Aunt Edna's who could care less about techie details, the appliance users, just want to type a letter and fax it, browse the Web and send mail to a grandchild in college.
Now, MSFT is no Saint either! How do the laity deal with the MSFT obvious quality problems, particularly when adding/removing hardware/software? As one with a little reputation I constantly get people bugging me to try to get help for their home pc's running Windows 9x, and recently have been telling them I just don't do home pc's, sorry. Also at work I constantly have to go and reboot X's pc because the inbox got hung up - recently had to redo a Win95 install when another inbox would fail to start w/ "registry error" (-ugh-). Another guy told me recently how he'd d/l some kind of Japanese language enabler or something and it bunged up his browser, etc., etc. Don't most grannies depend on some family 'pc guru' to turn to when Windows9X hoses itself? Or do they, like I recommend to people, take it to a c shop where they have to pay $60/hr for someone to TRY to straighten out a hosed disk but with the usual software disclaimer (no backups? Too Bad!!). I get the feeling that a LOT of MS users are just 'suffering in silence' with glitches, weirdities, what-was-that's etc and just blame it on their own ignorance (impune the user) because it was made by a multi-billion dollar outfit so it MUST be good.
Granted, there are probably lots of Windows PC's that were setup for say Office97 and an Internet package that have been running for over a year or so - but, what do they do when something DOES go wrong?
MicroSoft Windows does launch the browser every time it boots.
... and then it automatically brings up a MSFT site to get your name/phone/address/email and sell you more stuff that you didn't know you have to have to keep up with the Gates'.
that IS a smart move - and will make purchasing easier than ever - just look for the MSFT part to get bigger and bigger while the ShadioRack part gets smaller and smaller over time (gobble!). ("Let's move this headphone display back here so I can move our Office2k display up front").
I guess the 25000 strong knowledgable sales force includes the one who recently sold an acquaintenance a wall wart/power pack with backwards polarity which fried her modem! ("Duh, is that center negative or center positive?")
I used to know a fairly wealthy older engineer who was interested in computers in the 80's and everything he bought was Rat Shack - need more memory, disk or a joystick ? pop into the shack and pay their outrageous prices for the 7-11 style convenience.
"As Stacker for DOS became popular, Mr. Bill became interested in the technology and asked the president of Stac to contact Microsoft about including it in DOS. Keep in mind that DOS's main competitor, DR-DOS from Novell, already includes compression capabilities. "
"Stac and Microsoft negotiated licensing issues, and Microsoft refused to pay any royalty to Stac for the license, making it clear that if they didn't use Stac's technology, they would use someone else's, and even at one point showing Stac a spreadsheet outlining the adverse impact on Stacker's sales if this happened. "
{Cooperate, or we will squash you like an insect with our powerful DOS monopoly; Hahaha - amazing that we have it with bozo's like DR and Novell adding features we don't have, those LOSERS!}
"As negotiations continued, it became clear that Microsoft wanted Stac's technology but didn't want to pay for it. Irritated, Stac broke off the talks. Finally, Microsoft called Stac again, because they determined that their own compression code infringed on at least one of Stac's patents. Microsoft promised to send Stac a licensing proposal and a beta of DOS 6.0. A month or so later, in January of 1993, Microsoft sent the beta, but included a note saying essentially "Don't worry about the patent stuff. We are just going to keep our changed code which does not infringe."
"All fine and nice, but when Stac examined the beta, they determined that it infringed on two of Stac's patents. That's not the end of the story though. Microsoft sent Stac a preliminary press release that Microsoft plans to license, for free, the compression code in DoubleSpace, to all comers to create an opportunity for third parties to enhance DOS 6.0's compression features with add-on boards, chips, and software. Needless to say, Stac was not pleased, and brought in the legal howitzers.
{Anyway, disk compression is no big deal - but this is just one example of 'business as usual' at the helm of a company pushing the envelope of 'competition' which more than once croses the line into bullying and predation.}
Everybody who bought Microsoft products (from OEMs and partners to end users) did so by their own choice. If no one wanted microsoft products, no one is forced to buy them.
What crack have you been smoking today?
Here's a real live situation where our company would have thought they had to cought up another$95 - we largely use Word6 - someone gets a document in Word97+ format (little square boxes) using my vast experience with M$ schenanigans, I just email the.doc to the machine w/ Word97, open it, save it in Word6/95 and email it back - voila, perfectly readable with NO loss of content. Even my boss gets a chuckle out of sending people docs in the latest Word format to show how 'with-it' he is - a games M$ knows how to play on - and profit immensely from. Completely useless as far as word-processing goes, but great game for crowbaring dollars for M$ stockholders!
Give the prime motivator and whip cracker a LONG stint on the blower getting flamed and bitched at for those OH SO RARE times that Windows® ever gives anybody a problem.
"Reboot?!? I don't have time for this garbage, Gates!"
Chuck {astounded that you can rpm install SAMBA, setup shares and mount sharesw/o a single restart! WooHoo }
really - nothing motivates me to grab things I've no interest in other than hearing is about to be BANISHED! Part of fighting lost freedoms and self determination I guess. Cell phone scanners outlawed, had to get one. Religious groups protests a film, had to go see it. Bill Cosby won't sell copies of "Little Rascals", had to buy a complete set. Etc, etc,etc. Now I've got DeCSS.exe and livid.tar. Maybe make a T-shirt.
about his new CNC machine - and abuilding a simple one years ago.
Chuck
If anyone's crazy enough to want to build one....
on
Lightning On Demand
·
· Score: 1
...by all means go for it! Almost all parts can be had at Home Cheapo - except for secondary magnet wire and a neon sign transformer. Lots of people use PVC pipe (altho lossy), some al duct bent in a circle for the top toroid corona discharge terminal, 1/4" copper pipe for the primary - a good capacitor can be made from a roll of al flashing ($12 for 50' x 12" or so) and sheets of poly (thickest they have, 6mil, use about 6 sheets between plates for 18Kv dielectric) - plus TONS of info on the net to design by - that really helps in tuning, which is key to getting max spark. Mine currently only gets a lousy 7" spark but working on it - still fun for zapping AOL disks etc and general night time light show.
Is not at all my experience - the people I know who are casual 'appliance' non-geek computer users are more often 'sold' MS products by 'hook or by crook', by hyperinflated claims, marketing tie-ins, preinstalls, etc. What do they end up with? Sometimes a working system, more often a fragile rickety system that starts spewing strange error boxes after the first attempt to install or change something. Like I've always advocated, all the 'friendly' computer expurts should let the egg hit the faces of M$ and stop doing 'free' repairs of friends and acquaintances MS products, at their loss and M$'s gain. Make it patently clear to people that they're paying M$ for a license and they'll need to pay a 3rd party to maintain M$ products, NO MORE FREE SERVICE to owners of M$ licenses (I have even worse things to say about all the M$ pirates who want someone to fix their hosed PC's - heehee), at least not by competant people - let them have the wanna-be's, posers and fakirs to fix their MS stuff - they deserve each other.
Slashdot Mirror
but I'm postponing Christmas 2 days :))
Chuck
recently spotted this in LinuxJournal and was rofl.
Chuck
Dear Y2K Coordinator:
Thank you for your inquiry concerning our 'Year 2000'
readiness and what impact it may have on your business
continuity.
As executive manager of all information technology
at a Fortune 100 firm in charge of 1500 data processing
professionals, I was completely unaware of this potential
software 'bug'. Now that you mention it, there may be a few
mission critical business database programs on our IBM 360
that could very well be century-date sensitive. As the thing
has been running a drum memory based database flawlessly for
the past 35 years, save for routing maintenance, we felt no
need to upgrade to whatever the latest passing data processing
fads were at the time.
Please be assured that I will dispatch a junior programmer
to look into this situation immediately and recommend any
corrective actions that need to be taken to ensure that our
25,000 workstation system will continue to provide the high
quality of service that you have come to expect from ***.
Sincerely
Chuck
From the 14th hole
Greenstate Golf club
Corporation to be the first one's up against the wall when the revolution comes ? :))
Chuck
A) If NT was all it's cracked up to be, that is delivered a business EXPEDIENCY to set up servers and workstations quickly and flexibly - I'd love it. If we could just buy the licenses and go thru a simple setup and it actually worked it'd be a dream come true. And some of it does, setting up printers and disks is usually quite painless.
B) BUT, if I have to spend hours grepping thru MSFT 'TechNet', smoozing with other McSE's trying to find out which registry edit needs to be done to get some tricky config running and workaround for this bug and that glitch and some other 'issue' then FAGHITABOUTIT. I'd rather spend the time to learn the gory details of some open industry standard system any day than what BG's favorite color or domain/directory scheme of the month is.
Bottom line - if it works (and so far it's usually embarrasing) I'd recommend it. If it takes learning something I'd rather use *nix.
Chuck
we McSE's are regularly baffled and defeated,
but we can always resort to lying and obfuscation.
Chuck
http://www.ddj.com/articles/1993/9309/9309d/9309d. htm or just click here.
Chuck
MSFT has been collecting the benefit of the doubt for so long (i.e., 'trusted', as in trusting the fox to guard the henhouse) that now the tide has turned and even HONEST MISTAKES are perceived as wilful and malicious anti-competitive measures.
Spread enough FUD and it'll eventually come back to haunt you!
Chuck
it's a tradition now.
MSFT - jack of all software, masters of none.
Chuck
politics is such a thinly veiled influence peddling racket - with W's war chest bulging at the seams Big Al has to snuggle up to some real loud free speech. Whether he fires up the bullhorn and shouts, "We must leave business alone to innovate and create jobs!" or "We must protect consumer rights!" all depends on how many zero's are on the soft money check.
How's that for cynicism?
Reporting from the Gerrymandered Bob Scott district, this is
Chuck
that they put Linux oriented "how-to" articles in, that can only boost circulation (and also how much they can charge for adverts) - there will probably always a vocal minority of people, a 'niche' market, of folks who love to 'do it yourself', like home depot weekend carpenters - why spend a lot of time getting blueprints, buying lumber, pouring 'crete, etc to build a back deck yourself (Linux) when you can just pay an experienced contractor to do it for you (Windows)? Because you can! Some folks have the time and talent and looking for a tech challenge. There will always be a minority of people who love to learn by experimenting and trying things out, exploring (colloquially called 'hacking'). Anyway, the point is there WILL be people who get their Linux up and running and will be jonsing for articles and software to feed it.
Chuck
Final Exam!
(where'd that go....can't find it)
Chuck
Allow me to beat my drum on one issue - we repeated hear how Microsoft is the system for the 'common user', the Aunt Edna's who could care less about techie details, the appliance users, just want to type a letter and fax it, browse the Web and send mail to a grandchild in college.
Now, MSFT is no Saint either! How do the laity deal with the MSFT obvious quality problems, particularly when adding/removing hardware/software? As one with a little reputation I constantly get people bugging me to try to get help for their home pc's running Windows 9x, and recently have been telling them I just don't do home pc's, sorry. Also at work I constantly have to go and reboot X's pc because the inbox got hung up - recently had to redo a Win95 install when another inbox would fail to start w/ "registry error" (-ugh-). Another guy told me recently how he'd d/l some kind of Japanese language enabler or something and it bunged up his browser, etc., etc. Don't most grannies depend on some family 'pc guru' to turn to when Windows9X hoses itself? Or do they, like I recommend to people, take it to a c shop where they have to pay $60/hr for someone to TRY to straighten out a hosed disk but with the usual software disclaimer (no backups? Too Bad!!). I get the feeling that a LOT of MS users are just 'suffering in silence' with glitches, weirdities, what-was-that's etc and just blame it on their own ignorance (impune the user) because it was made by a multi-billion dollar outfit so it MUST be good.
Granted, there are probably lots of Windows PC's that were setup for say Office97 and an Internet package that have been running for over a year or so - but, what do they do when something DOES go wrong?
Chuck
real users toggle an application boot loader in with switches!
Chuck
Seriously - I wanna PDP-8
MicroSoft Windows does launch the browser every time it boots.
... and then it automatically brings up a MSFT site to get your name/phone/address/email and sell you more stuff that you didn't know you have to have to keep up with the Gates'.
Chuck
that IS a smart move - and will make purchasing easier than ever - just look for the MSFT part to get bigger and bigger while the ShadioRack part gets smaller and smaller over time (gobble!).
("Let's move this headphone display back here so I can move our Office2k display up front").
I guess the 25000 strong knowledgable sales force includes the one who recently sold an acquaintenance a wall wart/power pack with backwards polarity which fried her modem!
("Duh, is that center negative or center positive?")
I used to know a fairly wealthy older engineer who was interested in computers in the 80's and everything he bought was Rat Shack - need more memory, disk or a joystick ? pop into the shack and pay their outrageous prices for the 7-11 style convenience.
Chuck
All I want to do is setup my Samba print server so the workstations can use it - can I transfer out of this class!?! :))
Chuck
From TidBits :
"As Stacker for DOS became popular, Mr. Bill became interested in the technology and asked the president of Stac to contact Microsoft about including it in DOS. Keep in mind that DOS's main competitor, DR-DOS from Novell, already includes compression capabilities. "
{Hmmm, M$ behind again! Gotta start 'innovating' haha!}
"Stac and Microsoft negotiated licensing issues, and Microsoft refused to pay any royalty to Stac for the license, making it clear that if they didn't use Stac's technology, they would use someone else's, and even at one point showing Stac a spreadsheet outlining the adverse impact on Stacker's sales if this happened. "
{Cooperate, or we will squash you like an insect with our powerful DOS monopoly; Hahaha - amazing that we have it with bozo's like DR and Novell adding features we don't have, those LOSERS!}
"As negotiations continued, it became clear that Microsoft wanted Stac's technology but didn't want to pay for it. Irritated, Stac broke off the talks. Finally, Microsoft called Stac again, because they determined that their own compression code infringed on at least one of Stac's patents. Microsoft promised to send Stac a licensing proposal and a beta of DOS 6.0. A month or so later, in January of 1993, Microsoft sent the beta, but included a note saying essentially "Don't worry about the patent stuff. We are just going to keep our changed code which does not infringe."
"All fine and nice, but when Stac examined the beta, they determined that it infringed on two of Stac's patents. That's not the end of the story though. Microsoft sent Stac a preliminary press release that Microsoft plans to license, for free, the compression code in DoubleSpace, to all comers to create an opportunity for third parties to enhance DOS 6.0's compression features with add-on boards, chips, and software. Needless to say, Stac was not pleased, and brought in the legal howitzers.
{Anyway, disk compression is no big deal - but this is just one example of 'business as usual' at the helm of a company pushing the envelope of 'competition' which more than once croses the line into bullying and predation.}
Have a nice day!
Chuck
Everybody who bought Microsoft products (from OEMs and partners to end users) did so by their own choice. If no one wanted microsoft products, no one is forced to buy them.
.doc to the machine w/ Word97, open it, save it in Word6/95 and email it back - voila, perfectly readable with NO loss of content. Even my boss gets a chuckle out of sending people docs in the latest Word format to show how 'with-it' he is - a games M$ knows how to play on - and profit immensely from. Completely useless as far as word-processing goes, but great game for crowbaring dollars for M$ stockholders!
What crack have you been smoking today?
Here's a real live situation where our company would have thought they had to cought up another$95 - we largely use Word6 - someone gets a document in Word97+ format (little square boxes) using my vast experience with M$ schenanigans, I just email the
Chuck
Give the prime motivator and whip cracker a LONG stint on the blower getting flamed and bitched at for those OH SO RARE times that Windows® ever gives anybody a problem.
"Reboot?!? I don't have time for this garbage, Gates!"
Chuck
{astounded that you can rpm install SAMBA, setup shares and mount sharesw/o a single restart! WooHoo }
really - nothing motivates me to grab things I've no interest in other than hearing is about to be BANISHED! Part of fighting lost freedoms and self determination I guess. Cell phone scanners outlawed, had to get one. Religious groups protests a film, had to go see it. Bill Cosby won't sell copies of "Little Rascals", had to buy a complete set. Etc, etc,etc. Now I've got DeCSS.exe and livid.tar. Maybe make a T-shirt.
Chuck
about his new CNC machine - and abuilding a simple one years ago.
Chuck
...by all means go for it! Almost all parts can be had at Home Cheapo - except for secondary magnet wire and a neon sign transformer. Lots of people use PVC pipe (altho lossy), some al duct bent in a circle for the top toroid corona discharge terminal, 1/4" copper pipe for the primary - a good capacitor can be made from a roll of al flashing ($12 for 50' x 12" or so) and sheets of poly (thickest they have, 6mil, use about 6 sheets between plates for 18Kv dielectric) - plus TONS of info on the net to design by - that really helps in tuning, which is key to getting max spark. Mine currently only gets a lousy 7" spark but working on it - still fun for zapping AOL disks etc and general night time light show.
Chuck
re your comment:
"We like the stuff MS makes"
Is not at all my experience - the people I know who are casual 'appliance' non-geek computer users are more often 'sold' MS products by 'hook or by crook', by hyperinflated claims, marketing tie-ins, preinstalls, etc. What do they end up with? Sometimes a working system, more often a fragile rickety system that starts spewing strange error boxes after the first attempt to install or change something. Like I've always advocated, all the 'friendly' computer expurts should let the egg hit the faces of M$ and stop doing 'free' repairs of friends and acquaintances MS products, at their loss and M$'s gain. Make it patently clear to people that they're paying M$ for a license and they'll need to pay a 3rd party to maintain M$ products, NO MORE FREE SERVICE to owners of M$ licenses (I have even worse things to say about all the M$ pirates who want someone to fix their hosed PC's - heehee), at least not by competant people - let them have the wanna-be's, posers and fakirs to fix their MS stuff - they deserve each other.
Chuck
load vintage 1976 Micro-soft 4K BASIC (license PAID) into my Altair today - cheezus, what a long, strange trip it's been! :))
Chuck
Waaaa, I wanna PDP-8