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Re: Linux Event: A Clarification



> There is no way to prevent sabotage in the name of linux-il by overzealous
> list participants or by Microsoft Israel for that matter.

I do not believe MS-IL will. From my experience on them, they are more of
PR thing and a gate to bounce user requests. At least from public side -
maybe inside they are great. Anyway, why the poor (or reach :) guys
sitting there in offices would care? Microsoft's position is Israel is
unchallanged and will remain so for long time. At least they think so...

And, departing from the topic - they aren't so mistaken. Clue level in
Israel is way too low - most users think that "OS" is the same as Windows.
One horror story, which I have to share (busy people stop reading here ;)

Some time ago I had problems connecting 2 computers (bad cabling, as it
turned out later), and had surrendered to my GF's claim to seek advice of
some "very clueful programmer" she knew. The man was (and is) at charge
of all network in some education institution in the center of the
country, IIRC, so he should have experience in the field, which I do lack
(I hate HW-things of any kind ;)  
At this point I've already heard about 10 times from people who sold
me the HW that the HW is fine (which was partially true - it just wasn't
the right HW for my case, which they should know better) and all my
problems was that one of computers is running Linux. This I was
accustomed to, so I didn't care much. But the "very clueful programmer"
(a.k.a. "network specialist for a college") struck me almost senseless. He
claimed that there can be no network (of any kind!) without NT server. At
all. I said - just a minute, I do not need NT network, I just need to
physically connect them. NT - was the answer. I said "Man, you don't
understand - there's no even ping, what NT". This point I've got
suspicious - he asked "no WHAT?". "No ping!" - "No WHAT?!" (3 times). 
Ok, I thought to myself - he's network guy for an institution, and got
some good reccomendations -  he can't be *so* ignorant - maybe he's just a
hardware guy and doesn't care much for software? I've explained the HW
part. The answer was - "yes, I see, it's all OK (which was blatant lie,
as I saw later - SMaF), just add there NT and it'll work". Then I said
"Thank you very much for your help, now everything is clear for me" and
hunged up.
But this is not the end - a true horror story. Week later, when everything
was solved, two comps happily live together, talk via SAMBA, jointly abuse
phone line via masquerading, etc. - we've talked to the "clueful
programmer" again on the other subject. And mentioned that we've resolved
the problem and everything is OK now. The answer was - "It can't be, you
can't have network without NT, because there's no network without NT. This
should be not network but something else what you've got". Until there's
such people in our lands, MS-IL does not need to be worried a bit, even if
they do nothing except charging users and slapping every third in face
"just in case". And those people are in our land en masse. 
-- 
frodo@sharat.co.il	\/  There shall be counsels taken
Stanislav Malyshev	/\  Stronger than Morgul-spells
phone +972-2-6245112	/\  		JRRT LotR.
http://sharat.co.il/frodo/	whois:!SM8333