[geeks] Re: [SunRescue] yet another new list

[Joshua D. Boyd]

On 11 May 2001, Gregory Leblanc wrote:

> Why don't they want procmail installed?  If you went to my school, I'd
> be your sys admin, although we don't have any computer programs, so you
> wouldn't get to touch my *nix machines.  :-/

I don't know.  Something about cutting complexity, and they think no one
needs it.  I guess that's true enough.  It's not like I "need" to be on
geeks, rescue, or any of the development lists I'm on (I get over 100
messages most days, sometimes hitting 150 or higher, and almost non of it
spam).
 
> > Currently, few students work in the labs other than during the official
> > lab period (CS classes have a lab component to justify being 4cr instead
> > of 3cr.  I forget why they wanted to change the number of crs.)  The
> > exception is the people who work on one professor's projects.  Those
> > students get to use super powerfull machine with lots of cool peripherals.
> > See a connection?  All other labs seem to be doing almost everything
> > possible to drive away students, then wonder why lab useage is down so
> > much and why they try to keep them (the labs) up to date.  
> 
> You mean work as in use the labs, or work as in employed as student
> workers to help out students in the labs?  

I mean as students using the labs for non-official projects, not student
workers, although there is significant amounts of cross-over there.

> It sounds to me like whoever
> is in charge of IT doesn't understand what their purpose is.  We're here
> to provide a service to the students, in order to help them get a better
> education.  We try to provide them with the tools they need in order to
> solve their problems.  We don't necessarily install some piece of
> software because a student asks for it, but we tell them what we have
> available which will allow them to get the same job done.

I've only asked for two things installed, GTK+ and procmail.  I think they
are reasonable things.  I kinda got GTK, meaning that for a research
project I worked on a while back, I was given an account on an SGI without
quota's, so when doing gooey work on campus, I just pipe the SGI's display
to whereever I'm sitting.

Procmail is still a no-go because said SGI doesn't recieve email.
Actually, it seems that I might be able to shoe horn it somewhere on one
of my sun accounts.  It makes the account a tight fit though (well, it was
already tight, now it is tighter).

--
Joshua Boyd