var is mysteriously clogged

[marius]

On 1/2/06, Meng Cheah <meng-D1t3LT1mScs at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> Sy Ali wrote:
> > On 1/2/06, Paul King <pking123-rieW9WUcm8FFJ04o6PK0Fg at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> >
> >>I have had those feelings too. And for me it is more because the computer has
> >>become for me less of a play-toy and more of a tool to use for serious work. It
> >>has become increasingly central to what I am doing at work and also at home.
> >
> >
> > That's exactly it.. I think about it more and more.. and yes, as I've
> > grown older with computers as a part of my life I'm leaning on them
> > more as tools and less as toys.  I'm valuing more of my time at a
> > computer for doing "work" than for exploration and play.
> >
> > I've also become exponentially more productive..  =)
>

At some point 2 or 3 years ago free operating systems and free
software became central to my work as apposed to something I
personally did for fun or for a few marginal clients. It was probably
around the time where I moved more than half my clients away from
proprietary software for the solutions I was developing or supporting.

My clients for the most part don't mind (or care) if their servers are
running OpenBSD or Linux, or that their intranet web site is Apache
and Perl on that old Mac in the corner that's running OS X. And if
they insist on running the web server on Win2K, it doesn't matter if
it's AMP underneath the hood. However when something breaks they do
suddenly care and mind and tell me all about it.

Someone on this list mentioned that it took him four tries to set up
RAID in Ubuntu, even though he did (as far as he could tell) the same
things each time. That's unacceptable. Computers should just work.
They're tools.

If I buy a hammer (or someone gives one to me), I don't want it
telling me that I don't have the right handle and that I have to carve
one from scratch or that I have to get a file and reshape the head. I
just want it to do its job. Of course, this problem is not unique to
FOSS, but is rife in the software industry in general.

The bottom line is that I would rather be doing the things that my
clients pay me for rather than troubleshooting obscure
software/hardware incompatibilities.  Often the latter falls outside
the scope of my contracts and I can't bill the clients for the hours
I've spent fighting with things that "should just work" and I have to
figuratively eat my time; then both I and the cats literally don't get
to eat.

//mts
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