Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2005 17:05:48 +0100 From: Anthony Atkielski <atkielski.anthony@wanadoo.fr> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Anthony's drive issues.Re: ssh password delay Message-ID: <818883554.20050322170548@wanadoo.fr> In-Reply-To: <7c2cf9b1abb85ee648b5764f9c7915f4@chrononomicon.com> References: <20050321095647.R83831@makeworld.com> <LOBBIFDAGNMAMLGJJCKNIEOAFAAA.tedm@toybox.placo.com> <1907678552.20050322101315@wanadoo.fr> <1111486000.751.221.camel@lorna.circlesquared.com> <1181508865.20050322114009@wanadoo.fr> <7c2cf9b1abb85ee648b5764f9c7915f4@chrononomicon.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Bart Silverstrim writes: > Instead of a five year old version of Windows? :-) Why should it matter? > Because dumb terminals are just smart serial modems? Serial modems are largely obsolete, too. And I haven't seen too many modems that behave like VT100 terminals. > Because those specs haven't been obsoleted? Who is using VT100s today? Is anyone interconnecting FreeBSD and GECOS? There's still a field in /etc/passwd records for that purpose. > Um...if the hardware wasn't working with FreeBSD, why did you install > it, or try getting people to support it now that it's so old that most > people aren't running it and you want a special effort devoted to > getting it to work? I had no way of knowing whether it would work without installing FreeBSD. It ran fine with Windows NT, and I assumed that FreeBSD could at least match that. > No one is stopping you from doing the work yourself. Nobody is stopping me from building my own metropolis, either, but that doesn't mean that it's a viable option. > They're not out to please just you. They don't seem to be out to please anyone, which means that they'll be spending most of their time in the secret treehouse club, instead of out in the big scary world of real IT. > When they're obligated to do so, it's a job, not a hobby. They're not > out to take over the business world. They're scratching an itch, or > working for a principal or philosophy...try listening to Stallman's > speeches on what Open Source means. So open source is just a fad. A hobby. > Out of curiosity...what changes? I persuaded them to fix some things with patches instead of a new release, or something like that--I don't remember the specifics. > And did they give you credit? No, but I never cared about credit. My objective was to make sure that people didn't stop using NT because of a stupid policy decision on the part of Microsoft. > Why did you replace the OS and stress out when it didn't fit your bill > of needs? I'm not stressed by it, so much as I'm amazed by the attitudes I'm encountering. There's a big gulf between projects like FreeBSD and real-world IT, apparently. > Wow...take this much further and I'd suggest you find someone on the > list that wants to really really prove you wrong you could arrange to > have that person take the hardware and run the diagnostics for your and > ship it back to you afterwards with their findings... I'm not going to take the hardware apart. First I want someone to tell me what the error messages in FreeBSD mean. > Oddly enough, for us the hardware solution is correct about 95% of the > time after going through the list of things the "user didn't do" with > the configuration. For a ploy it sure tends to be accurate. Given the character of the user community (if my intuition is correct), that wouldn't surprise me, but that's not the way it works in the larger world of IT. > If it's usually what actually had caused the problem, you're damned > right they're going to suggest that be checked. You know it's almost certainly not the problem, but it lets you shelve the issue so that it doesn't come up on your status reports for a week or more. > Why devote the man-hours to debugging and reconfiguring if it's a > cable that worked loose? It's almost never a cable that has worked loose. Checking the cables is almost invariably just a way to kill time. > See, this is part of what's supposed to be natural selection in > business. If you treat a customer like crap, you lose customers, and > eventually go out of business, unless you're a monopoly. Virtually all computer companies are doing this right now, today, and they aren't all monopolies. > If what you're suggesting were true and this system works, then they > would go away. It _is_ true; that's how it is done. They don't go away any more than FreeBSD goes away with no support at all. > You're saying as a blanket statement that tech support is terrible. It is, as a general rule. > Well, then do something about it. I'm not managing these companies. > If the market is truly that bad and the customer is truly as competent > as you're giving them credit for then it should be no problem at all > for you to start a tech support company that can beat the pants off > everyone else. You can't make money in honest technical support, especially as a third party. > And replying like that will surely be conducive to getting other people > to suggest things to help you. I have no illusions about there being wizards out there who actually know what they are doing. If they were there, they would have spoken. I lose nothing by ignoring the kiddies. I keep hoping, but I'm really less and less optimistic. > Or you just do what people suggested then post the results instead of > just saying that their suggestion won't work because you're certain > what the problem is and demand satisfaction with your solution. As I said, I want to know what the problem is. What is FreeBSD reporting? What do all the messages mean, EXACTLY? Unless and until someone can tell me that, I'm not going to waste my time indulging the armchair experts with their roll-the-dice support philosophies. > And when people are saying that it's more likely X but you insist it's Y > and you don't want to take the time to do Y because there are others > who should be more competent with it, what are you going to do to > compensate them if they drop everything to do Y and find out it wasn't, > in fact, their fault? Anything? Who's going to pay me for the time I lose indulging them? The fact is, they aren't any more competent than I am. It's obvious from the suggestions they come up with. Not a single analysis of the messages I've posted thus far--because nobody has any idea what they mean. But nobody wants to sound stupid, so they suggest things like changing hardware, or doing whatever it is that they feel they can explain without making embarrassing mistakes. Unfortunately, that doesn't necessarily correlate with the real source of the problem. -- Anthony
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?818883554.20050322170548>