[rescue] Re: [geeks] THIS. MAKES. ME. SICK.

[David Cantrell]

"Devin L. Ganger" <devin at thecabal.org> wrote:

> One of the oft-touted "reasons" why Unix is so much superior to W2K/NT
> is the "lack of command-line support" that *everyone* knows Windows
> suffers.  Well, two months as a contractor in a test job for Microsoft
> taught me the lie in that.

There was no such thing in NT4 back when I had to admin it.  Or at least,
no such thing in any of the documentation I had.  I fixed that bug with
JPsoft's excellent 4NT, and bash from the cygnus toolkit.  In an MS
environment, I far prefer 4NT FWIW - picking the right tool for the
right job, and all that.

Yes, you'd be quite correct in thinking that I don't believe command.com
or cmd.exe count.

> The comment above was in direct response to someone on this list who
> posted in such a fashion as to imply that one could not remotely
> administer and/or reboot a Windows box without having to buy add-on
> software.

Of course you don't have to *buy* such software - you can, as I say,
download a usable shell (there's a free evaluation version of 4NT IIRC)
and you can get remote access via vnc or many other free addons.  Then,
of course, there's the copious remote exploits :-)  However, if MS had
any kind of remote access software bundled with NT4, then they must
have forgotten to document it.  And if it ain't documented, then it
ain't supported (obviously), and if it ain't supported then it ain't
usable.

> Flat-out, most people who slag NT/W2K have no fucking idea what they
> are talking about.

Sadly true.  Luckily, I'm not one of them, having spent plenty of time
adminning NT - 3.51 and 4.  Haven't used 2K for anything that matters
though.

> Does "Faster, cheaper, better -- pick two" ring any bells?

It sure didn't for the people who wrote NT4.  They didn't manage any
of them IME :-)

> I'm no $150,000/year admin, but it doesn't take one to make NT
> work and work just as reliably as your favorite variant of Unix.
> I've been doing it for several years.  My mentor *is* one of
> the $150K guys -- and he makes Windows do things that no one
> else I've ever seen can make it do.  More importantly, he can
> pass that knowledge along. [snip "but people don't want to know"]

Ah, now being able to pass the knowledge on is worth a lot of money.
Now, it seems, he just needs to learn how to motivate and inspire
his pupils.

[aside: why is it that teachers are so undervalued in western
civilisations? why is France the only possible exception? - answers
on a postcard to geeks :-) ]

[sees Bill's message as next in the digest, tries to remember to post
this to geeks and not rescue]

-- 
David Cantrell | david at cantrell.org.uk | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david/

      Good advice is always certain to be ignored,
      but that's no reason not to give it            -- Agatha Christie