[wplug] suggestions on Unix/Linux machines at Pitt labs?

[Michael Semcheski]

Juan Zuluaga wrote:
> "As for you advising professionals how to do their
> jobs more efficiently...by means of relaying
> suggestions not your own...from a novice standpoint...
> is a little rediculous. "
> 
> What would you prefer to receive? an uninformed
> suggestion from a `novice'? or an informed suggestion
> from a `novice'? And I, for once, if I have to get
> flames, prefer them to be spell-checked. Else, they
> appear ridiculous.  

I would like to backup Juan on this.

Here's an example of why:

Someone I work with was having a great deal of difficulty transfering
her files to the dedicated fileserver we built for her.  As far as I
could tell, everything was working fine.  She generates lots of data,
every day, and its simply a matter of copying the right stuff to the
file server.  She complained that the files were taking way too long.

It turns out that a switch wasn't autonegotiating the correct line
speed.  So our 100Mb full duplex connection became a 10Mb half duplex.
If she had not said anything, we would have had this very inefficient
setup going indefinitely.  If I had brushed it off and said "You're not
framing that question correctly!" I never would have been able to fix
the problem, because she isn't about to learn the ins and outs of this
stuff.

Just my $.02.

Mike