From owner-freebsd-questions Wed Sep 19 17:58:11 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from IMGate1.cshore.com (imgate1.cshore.com [63.237.136.14]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id BBAB137B407 for ; Wed, 19 Sep 2001 17:58:08 -0700 (PDT) Received: from sephiroth (dialup-uu-dynamic10.cshore.com [63.112.158.10]) by IMGate1.cshore.com (Postfix) with SMTP id 2C2BE2406F; Wed, 19 Sep 2001 21:16:57 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2001 21:01:42 -0400 From: Matthew Graybosch To: Stanley Hopcroft Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: How does FreeBSD make a difference in a government context ? Message-Id: <20010919210142.7fcc9d8b.matthew@starbreaker.net> In-Reply-To: <20010920101628.B5729@IPAustralia.Gov.AU> References: <20010920101628.B5729@IPAustralia.Gov.AU> X-Mailer: Sylpheed version 0.5.3 (GTK+ 1.2.9; i686-pc-linux-gnu) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Sorry, I just got word from my boss that he INSISTED that I buy a copy of Windows XP professional and use it on my home box instead of FreeBSD. I'm still a little riled. On Thu, 20 Sep 2001 10:16:29 +1000 Stanley Hopcroft wrote: > > Dear Ladies and Gentlemen, > > I am writing to ask your advice about demonstrating the value > of FreeBSD servers (DDNS, DHCP, routers, Samba) in a 'public > service'/'Government context'. Mr. Hopcroft, I hate to say it, but you're dealing with the wilfully ignorant. No LART is potent enough to deal with such people. In a similar situation, a close friend of mine told her employers that if they dumped Linux for Win2K, she would quit and burn the network docs on her way out. They switched. She quit. The network docs made great kindling when we had a barbecue to celebrate. 2 weeks later they called, begging her to come back and put everything back the way it used to be. She told them to suffer the consequences of their idiocy, and expressed a desire to attend their funerals. She's a hell of a woman -- I'll have to marry her someday. All I can suggest is that you drown them in favorable numbers. Cost benefit analyses, Total Cost of Ownership, and above all BENCHMARKS. Luser managers dealing with tech seem to treat benchmarks like some kind of holy Revelation. Make sure the benchmarks favor your position, of course. Drown them in propaganda, bury them up to their necks in the shit. Lacking that, you can always get somebody to infect the MS boxen with the Nimda and Code Red virii. I hear there's also a Code Blue virus going around. Tell the managers that the virus problem will continue to get worse, rendering any MS box utterly 99.99999% useless. ****** Matthew Graybosch [matthew@starbreaker.net] http://www.starbreaker.net :: where dreams and reality collide "Screw Sartre. Hell isn't other people. Hell is debugging other people's code." To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message