On Thu, Jan 24, 2002 at 04:00:41PM +0000, Jonathan Peterson wrote: > > > Anyone who chooses a fileserver which won't work reliably over one that > > will - > > Neither of you can predict the future. I don't know the specifics of > this case, but Win2K (or even NT3SP3) is hardly an unreliable file > serving platform*. And Penderel is hardly a testament to the reliability > of Linux machines.
Penderel is a testament to the unreliability of x86 machines. It is my experience, however, that on any particluar x86 box, Linux is more stable than Billware. With Linux you only have to worry about the shitty hardware. With Billware, you need to worry both about that and about the shitty OS. </handwave> > I doubt the pretty login screen counts for much, although possibly some. > Seriously, what do you suppose this manager's reasons were for making > his/her decision? Was it a simple case that he sees Microsoft as a > predictable if unspectacular option versus Linux as a high risk option? If he sees it as a high-risk option, then he is at best ignorant. > Does he just think you recommended Linux only because you can't be > bothered to learn how to administer NT properly? If he thinks Roger is unprofessional then he should say so, and should fire him. That he didn't shows that he is an idiot if that is his reason for choosing NT. > Does he have a friend > who had real trouble setting Samba up for some reason and now he's wary > of it? If he values the advice of a random friend over the advice of the person he pays good money to to know about these things, then he's an idiot. > Was it that the decision over this file server was entirely > trivial as far as he was concerned, and he just couldn't care less what > gets used? If that is the case, then he's an idiot. > Occasionally you do get incompetant people. But usually, people have > good reasons for making decisions, even when they make the wrong > decision. This seems to boil down to a pointy-hair not paying attention to the people who he pays to know about these things. Not paying attention to your hired experts whilst continuing to pay for the service of those hired experts is idiocy. > Until you understand why people decide to choose technically > inferior products, it's hard to make your technically superior product > more popular with them. Agreed. But I see no non-technical reasons above which would justify choosing something which is technically inferior. > I've met a lot of resistance to Perl based on 'bad past experiences'. We > all know these were usually caused by bad programmers and stupid > timescales. But your bad experience counts for a lot more than someone > else's good experience, which is why the 'Perl success stories' are not > alway so convincing. That's OK then. Soon *everyone* will have been burnt by Java and come flocking back :-) > [stuff about negative campaigning being bad] all true. -- David Cantrell | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david One person can change the world, but most of the time they shouldn't -- Marge Simpson
