[ale] A little gripe

[Michael Smith]

	I can vouch for cables being a pain to make.  I like to know how
things work and I am also cheap so I like to make my own cables.  If people
only knew how much money they could save by buying the crimpers and the
cable(at least rj45 and telephone) and do it themselves but this isn't the
subject.  The subject is gripes.  

	I don't think we can generalize here.  I don't want to say that all
Windows people or Unix people are lazy.  I think it's a different mindset.
In Windows, you run setup.exe and everything is installed and you're happy.
In Unix, you have to work a little harder to reap the rewards.  Here's my
phrase of the day comparing Windows to Unix - "You don't learn how to build
an engine by only changing the oil".  I think people that use Windows are
only allowed to change the oil.  Unix(particular open sourced versions of
Unix) people are allowed to look at the engine and learn see how it works.
That's my analogy for the day.  

	I think that people coming into IT today are just not interested in
learning the intricacies of the hardware.  People now tend to specialize in
areas be it Development, QA, Systems Administration, Network Administration,
or Hardware Administration.  They aren't really interested in moving around
or understanding the different areas.  The best thing I did when I was in
school was to co-op with IBM.  I learned all kinds of crazy stuff from
setting up machines for Novell lans to creating token ring cables.  I got a
feel for all the areas in IT.  I don't think kids today are coming out with
this kind of experience or appreciation for the different areas.  They go to
radio shack and buy a parallel cable and tell you to hook it up to their
serial port......


-----Original Message-----
From: chrisf at computone.com [mailto:chrisf at computone.com]
To: ale at ale.org
Sent: Thursday, April 19, 2001 3:01 PM
Subject: [ale] A little gripe


I have a little grip concerning old technology.  It seems that everyone of
my customers that
I deal with expect to go purchase DCE or DTE cables from stores like Radio
Shack and make it work between our Terminal Server and there equipment.
This is compounded by ports that at RJ45 and not DBs.  It seems to me that
no one understand TxD, Rxd, DTR, DSR, DCD, etc anymore and do not
know how to make a serial cable.  They even whine "I can't get my cable to
work" or "Nothing is coming up in HyperTerminal"  and my favorite, "All I
see
is hieroglyphics".  Has the flood of so called talent and Microsoft products
made people
dumber?  Even today,  I get customers who ask:

Why do I have to "telnet termserver 9001" to gain access to port 1?  Can
I just put the 9001 in /etc/hosts and then telnet to hostname and
automagically
be connected to 9001?

or

Will you make my cable for me

How many more stupid people do I have to deal with?   Those people who ask
me to
make cables do not even have the sense to know how to get the pinouts
for their product.  We have to find it for them.  Ironically,  These same
people
have Suns, HPs, and even Linux boxes.  But, when it comes to networking,
The most
stupid by far, are those who rely on MS products for all networking
services.

Sorry to scream but please reply and give me therapy.
Chris



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