Solid Block of Ise

This is just me needing a place to vent about two dumb things. Don’t worry, I’ve got something more philosophical lined up and ready to write about, but in the meantime I need to let off steam about two things.

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The first dumb thing isn’t a thing, but a man. That man is named Anders Wahlberg and is in charge of IT in Hörby municipality here in Sweden. He recently got named CIO of the Month, and pretty much immediately after having been interviewed several commenters raised the issue that Hörby is exclusively Microsoft-dominated and also that Microsoft sits on the committee that decides on this matter. Many found this rather interesting, also considering that for some reason Hörby has been actively testing new and unreleased Microsoft-software, among them the new Windows Server 2008.

He responded to the criticisms. Or well, first he said that the comments were stupid and that he wouldn’t respond to stupid comments, then he responded anyway. One of the chief criticisms was why Hörby hadn’t invested in Open Source rather than proprietary software. Anders responded that:

Working with IT in a municipality is about finding systems to manage sensitive information, such as patient-journals and information about students in schools. It’s not a game, you can’t rely on open source alone. So we had to choose between Novell and Microsoft. We chose Microsoft.

(Translated by me)

He further goes on saying that the tesing of Windows Server 2008 was because he wanted to keep his IT-crew on their toes, and made some sweeping claim about them always being interested in new software and always ready for a challenge.

Allow me to retort.

First off: not only CAN you rely on open-source alone - you SHOULD rely on open-source alone. Free/Open Source Software might look like a toy because of it’s perceived lack of monetary value and percieved lack of accountability. Many naive persons believe that since there’s no company behind it, there’s no responsibility for the software. This is an illusion that Microsoft is very happy to propagate and nourish. In the real world, Microsoft themselves is very quick to not give you any help at all, unless you have a very, very expensive service contract with them in which case they will jerk you around unnecessarily long and then give you no help at all.

FOSS is accountable. It’s completely transparent and verifiable, as well as modifiable to better suit your needs. There are no guarantees about what goes on behind the pretty Vista-facade, or what happens behind the scenes in your Windows Server 2008. It’s my firm opinion that government counties should invest in Free Software rather than closed, proprietary software. It will save them headache in the long run, and end this stupid tradition of giving money to Microsoft.

Secondly, I’ve known a lot of sysadmins in my days, and if there is one thing they don’t like it’s getting new stuff dumped in their lap and expected to play around with it. Sysadmins are by nature conservative and believe that if things aren’t broken there’s no need to fix it; this goes double in the UNIX/Linux-community. Only the most naive, freshly-baked MCSE will still be willing to play around with new software.

Sysadmins are always overworked and under-equipped. They rarely have the time, interest or motivation to play around with new things when they already devote most of their waking time making sure that the ship doesn’t all of a sudden spring a leak and sink without a trace. Even when they sleep, they often dream of datacenters going down in flames because they weren’t there to make sure the fecal matter didn’t hit the oscillating unit. I imagine that admins in datacenters based on Windows sleep even less and are even more neurotic, since Windows by nature require several times more cuddling with in an Enterprise-environment.

So Anders, I’m completely convinced that you’re just another Microsoft-podperson and I take no stock in anything you say.

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The second dumb thing actually is a thing. It’s the new phone from SonyEricsson, called the T303. I don’t know if it’s been released yet (and I really don’t care either way) but after reading the specs for the thing it just seems very retarded.

I mean, who in the blue blazes comes up with the great idea to make a phone WITH NO MEMORY and then slap a camera and MP3-player into it and market those two as “features”. Well, alright, the phone has memory - 8 megabytes. With no slot to add flash-memory to it. So those 8MB are what you’re stuck with, and that’s expected to not only hold stuff needed by the phone (such as contacts, phone numbers, ringtones) but also whatever you photograph with the 1.3mpix camera and music you want to listen to.

To quote Ellen Ripley: “Did IQs just drop sharply while I was away?”

License

This work is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.5 Sweden License.