IT Job creations... IT job losses?

[JoeHill]

On Thu, 30 Oct 2003 20:11:44 -0500 (EST)
"Keith Mastin" <kmastin-PzQIwG9Jn9VAFePFGvp55w at public.gmane.org> uttered:

> > I guess the point is, do we want the IT industry to consist of
> > people filling sand bags against the latest and greatest MS blunder,
> > or do we want an IT industry creating jobs by developing new ways
> > for people to be more productive, creative, etc.?
> 
> If it's not an M$ blunder, then it will be a blunder of equally
> massive porportions by someone else. God knows that OSS has seen it's
> share of blunders, and some of them still continue (sendmail f.ex)

Well, sendmail, that goes without saying, doesn't it...? ;-) I do think
though, that MS is responsible for faaaaaar too much "makework", as it
were, which is why I posted those links. Check out this quote from one
of them:

<QUOTE>

One such user, Jeffrey Barczak, a network support specialist with the
Pennsylvania State University, says that he first experienced problems
with the OWA security update only hours after installing it on one of
his personal test systems.

"Mail began accumulating in the 'Outboxes' on the Outlook clients that
my Exchange 2000 Server supports. And for the few POP3 clients that I
support, their mail got stuck in the SMTP queue," he explains.

The problem, Barczak discovered, was that Exchange 2000's Information
Store (MSExchangeIS) and POP3 (POP3Svc) services were apparently hanging
shortly after start-up. An e-mail to the Windows NT Systems
Administrators mailing list confirmed his suspicions: at least one other
IT manager responded and acknowledged that he'd experienced similar
issues. Both Barczak and the other affected IT manager found that simply
removing the patch didn't solve their problems.

Sometime on Friday, Microsoft pulled the OWA security update from its
TechNet Web site and replaced it with a cryptic message indicating that
the patch was "temporarily unavailable" and that it would likely "be
returned to the Web shortly." As of Sunday night, however, the software
patch was again available on Microsoft's Download Web site.

</QUOTE>

So, you see, this poor guy who probably could be doing so many more
productive things, instead he's dealing with the morass that MS patches
bring on.

> Then these linux-windoh$ wannabes are releasing Lindoh$s... making
> things worse by releasing a honeypot as a desktop.

Yeah, don't get me started on Lindows... ;-)
 
> > Software developers and admins seem to spend too much time trying to
> > react to the latest threat, rather than building more useful
> > software and systems.
> 
> Been to sourceforge lately? They've gotten so huge so fast they can't
> keep up with the leaps. So many projects...

Of course, and with any luck that will continue to be so. As I said on
another list, though, there's more to this than just carrying on "doing
the right thing", I really believe an active fight is in order, how to
model that fight, I guess, I don't really know.

-- 
JoeHill
Registered Linux user #282046
Homepage: www.orderinchaos.org
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But there's nothing wrong with getting a good head start.
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