Date: Fri, 10 Apr 1998 21:08:04 +1000 From: Sue Blake <sue@welearn.com.au> To: Nicholas Charles Brawn <ncb05@uow.edu.au> Cc: chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Fw: Your Article "Freeware: The Heart & Soul of the Internet" Message-ID: <19980410210804.52297@welearn.com.au> In-Reply-To: <Pine.SOL.3.96.980410200949.18216F-100000@banshee.cs.uow.edu.au>; from Nicholas Charles Brawn on Fri, Apr 10, 1998 at 08:42:55PM %2B1000 References: <19980410200542.08150@welearn.com.au> <Pine.SOL.3.96.980410200949.18216F-100000@banshee.cs.uow.edu.au>
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On Fri, Apr 10, 1998 at 08:42:55PM +1000, Nicholas Charles Brawn wrote: > On Fri, 10 Apr 1998, Sue Blake wrote: > > If you go to Dymocks in Sydney and ask for FreeBSD, all you will be offered > > is a dusty old Turbo FreeBSD 2.1.5. > That's where I found that "dusty old Turbo FreeBSD 2.1.5" cd. :) Aha! I wondered whose thumb print that was. It's still there as far as I know. > As a lowly student, I couldn't afford to send away for the cd, although I > would do so given the opportunity to support the great work being done. In > the end I d/l it on my trusty 14.4 and installed it from dos. Just as well you weren't using one of those $8/hr Internet providers :-) > Heh, as a result of all the recent postings about the lack of marketing > of freebsd, and the overshadowing of the great work being done with > freebsd in favour of Linux, i've decided to change the os i'll be writing > a security paper on. I was initially going to write my paper tentatively > titled "Assessing and Auditing System Security in Linux". But now in a > flurry of evangelistic fervor, i've decided to do it on freebsd. It'll > give the people at the university's computer security research group > (www.itacs.uow.edu.au/ccsr) something to think about, seeing as they > appear to focus more on Linux as the default free os of choice, and will > also save me the inevitable flame-wise feedback of "oh but that problem > only affects redhat distributions, not slackware" or vice-versa. :) Of course, this is where the vicious circle begins. Texts and other materials are chosen with several things in mind, one being whether sufficient quantities can be obtained by everyone enrolled in the course. I've had to recommend a less than ideal text book when the good one wasn't guaranteed available. If it's an option, you still tend to recommend whatever the students can find easily. Business people sometimes tell me they've been urged to change over to Linux by some enthusiastic young employee who's been using Linux for a few years at uni. They have someone on staff with a few Linux skills which were obtained primarily because Linux was readily available to them and their mates. FreeBSD is not put down; it's unknown. > > Is there any way around this bottleneck, or is general promotion as well as > > sales to be targeted at the USA until we get that warm trickle-down feeling? > > A friend of mine is seeking to become a local .au equivalent of > cheapbytes.com selling such things as free *nix software as well as cheap > hardware. I had a cursory look at www.cdrom.com and it offered information > on current resellers, but not information on how to become one (apart from > emailing the people @cdrom.com). Perhaps some information along these > lines should be available via the web? I'd like to see information about where FreeBSD can be purchased. If you met someone shopping in Dymocks what would you say to them? In my experience there's strong resistance to sending money overseas for the first time. For the last couple of years I've been badgering the nice guy at Cetus Technology to get the CDs in for me and a few friends, and he seems to always have the latest version these days. Now he's got the book as well. While the service is very good (COD or courier) it's a small company without a shopfront (http://www.cetustech.com.au) that doesn't seem to advertise widely. How's anyone supposed to know? We need a list or something. -- Regards, -*Sue*- find / -name "*.conf" |more To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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