[wplug] The Open Pitt, Issue 8

[cdemarco at fastmail.fm]

On Mon, Jan 17, 2005 at 03:50:25PM -0700, Vance Kochenderfer wrote:

> At this point    he  was in    the  process of  reloading   all  his
> applications  onto his freshly-wiped system,  and I helped him enter
> his e-mail settings into Netscape.

And, I hope,  have helped him find   a backup solution for  the *next*
time this happens,  or e.g. when  (through no vendor's fault) his hard
drive dies.  In  their defense, doesn't MS  advise  you to backup  all
important data  before  installing hotfixen?  Doesn't  Sony  ship with
some  sort of backup  utility (IIANM most  boxpushers, viz. Dell, IBM,
et. al. do)

Interesting story, but IMHO the moral isn't simply "most big companies
don't  care  a whit  for  anything  other than  'enhancing shareholder
value'" (and,  insofar as a  corporation is  an entity  able to effect
self-preservation, it *must*   prioritize shareholder value  above all
else); you're preaching to the choir on that point.  How about showing
us how  you used partimage,  AMANDA,  a SAMBA box   or some other  OSS
technology to keep him safe from further FUBARs?  

That proprietary software and big corporations  suck is old news.  The
story that  most people haven't heard is  how excellent OSS is.  

"Most people basically good - news at 11"


-- 
% You are in a maze of twisty passages, all alike.
Christopher DeMarco <cdemarco at fastmail.fm>
PGP public key ID 0x2E76CF5C @ pgp.mit.edu 
+6012 232 2106

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