linuxlock.blogspot.com— This is a complicated story but one that must be told. I'm not sure there is anything that can be done about it except rage at the moon...
Nov 15, 2009View in Crawl 4
I'm not sure how much I believe his version of the story. Think of it this way, when someone says they got into an argument with a manager at the store, the person telling the story will invariably say they said everything calmly and cleanly without offending anyone, but the manager flipped out because he is crazy. 10 to 1 the person talking to the manager was belligerent and a demanding ass, but when he tells you the story he was more angelic then Mother Theresa.
Oh my god! People at IBM do some development on Windows boxes! That MUST mean they hate Linux!Thats probably because PPC is a very embeddable processor, so a lot of development tools are written on Windows. Because if you are developing code for an embedded device, it doesn't have a native OS to run your dev tools on. So you run Windows and use cross-compilers.
This guy does not know the contractor game at all. Never try to outsmart management. Contractors make money by filling a chair and getting assigned work done on time.
" it's completely unreasonable to force IE on him"No it's not, he's a contractor."I would WANT an employee to be so familiar with Linux that they use it exclusively."Why? Why would you want to hire someone that has fewer abilities as a contractor?"which is an EXTREMELY reasonable request considering the rest of the world is largely standards-compliant in this day and age, while IE is off in its own little world breaking things and forcing badly designed proprietary software on people who prefer to keep it simple."It's right here that you make it blindingly obvious that you've never worked in any enterprise situation. The whole reason IE6 is still around is outdated web apps that can't handle the upgrade to a different browser. It's a situation entire corporations put up with- one contractor ought to be able to bite the bullet."There is no reason that any publicly accessible (or OS-independently accessible) website, whether meant for internal use *or* otherwise, should fail to be standards-compliant."Except that there is. IE isn't standards compliant. However, it's the only browser available that can be installed as a package from official sources through the whole Windows Server/Active Directory setup. It also allows domain passthrough, which Firefox doesn't by default. Do either of these things matter to non-corporate users? Of course not. But they do matter to the very organisations that end up using IE, which is why intranets end up being coded for IE.The main issue here for me is this- apparently it's a big contract. Big company. Lucrative. So when you come up against something that only runs on IE, do you:a) Get a copy of Windows. Borrow someone's computer. Go the library.b) Ask them to sort it for you.The initial person may have been happy to sort it out and ship a laptop, but once it got to the higher ups, they may well have said "f**k that, I want to hire someone that WANTS this job".
To all the people who are wondering why he didn't just install windows, it probably takes less time to overnight someone a laptop with windows on it than to get a windows system up and running just to view one frigging website. For people who are used to using windows and occasionally installing linux, going the other way is considerably more difficult and anybody who isn't a windows tech is going to think twice about that for a single website. Besides that, anybody who has done any amount of Linux development gets in the habit of reporting bugs when they come up...it's a good habit to be into when you're doing OSS work. And it's good to have employees who report things and don't just ignore problems when they come up. He probably thought he was just doing his job by making someone aware of a problem with the system.
diemunkiesdieNov 16, 2009
I'm not sure how much I believe his version of the story. Think of it this way, when someone says they got into an argument with a manager at the store, the person telling the story will invariably say they said everything calmly and cleanly without offending anyone, but the manager flipped out because he is crazy. 10 to 1 the person talking to the manager was belligerent and a demanding ass, but when he tells you the story he was more angelic then Mother Theresa.
civikmindedNov 17, 2009
Oh my god! People at IBM do some development on Windows boxes! That MUST mean they hate Linux!Thats probably because PPC is a very embeddable processor, so a lot of development tools are written on Windows. Because if you are developing code for an embedded device, it doesn't have a native OS to run your dev tools on. So you run Windows and use cross-compilers.
gorftronNov 17, 2009
This guy does not know the contractor game at all. Never try to outsmart management. Contractors make money by filling a chair and getting assigned work done on time.
chocksterNov 17, 2009
" it's completely unreasonable to force IE on him"No it's not, he's a contractor."I would WANT an employee to be so familiar with Linux that they use it exclusively."Why? Why would you want to hire someone that has fewer abilities as a contractor?"which is an EXTREMELY reasonable request considering the rest of the world is largely standards-compliant in this day and age, while IE is off in its own little world breaking things and forcing badly designed proprietary software on people who prefer to keep it simple."It's right here that you make it blindingly obvious that you've never worked in any enterprise situation. The whole reason IE6 is still around is outdated web apps that can't handle the upgrade to a different browser. It's a situation entire corporations put up with- one contractor ought to be able to bite the bullet."There is no reason that any publicly accessible (or OS-independently accessible) website, whether meant for internal use *or* otherwise, should fail to be standards-compliant."Except that there is. IE isn't standards compliant. However, it's the only browser available that can be installed as a package from official sources through the whole Windows Server/Active Directory setup. It also allows domain passthrough, which Firefox doesn't by default. Do either of these things matter to non-corporate users? Of course not. But they do matter to the very organisations that end up using IE, which is why intranets end up being coded for IE.The main issue here for me is this- apparently it's a big contract. Big company. Lucrative. So when you come up against something that only runs on IE, do you:a) Get a copy of Windows. Borrow someone's computer. Go the library.b) Ask them to sort it for you.The initial person may have been happy to sort it out and ship a laptop, but once it got to the higher ups, they may well have said "f**k that, I want to hire someone that WANTS this job".
antoniukNov 17, 2009
This account has been closed by the user
jv2kNov 18, 2009
Linux is free and easy to install though. If you find yourself needing it it's not going to take you long to fix that problem.
valisNov 20, 2009
I still doubt it ever happened. It sounds like fiction for dramatic effect.
neddiwDec 4, 2009
<a class="user" href="http://digg.com/linux_unix/After_3_5_year_hiatus_VLOS_returns_with_2_0_Alpha_release" rel="nofollow">http://digg.com/linux_unix/After_3_5_year_hiatus_V ...</a>
andy16666Dec 9, 2009
To all the people who are wondering why he didn't just install windows, it probably takes less time to overnight someone a laptop with windows on it than to get a windows system up and running just to view one frigging website. For people who are used to using windows and occasionally installing linux, going the other way is considerably more difficult and anybody who isn't a windows tech is going to think twice about that for a single website. Besides that, anybody who has done any amount of Linux development gets in the habit of reporting bugs when they come up...it's a good habit to be into when you're doing OSS work. And it's good to have employees who report things and don't just ignore problems when they come up. He probably thought he was just doing his job by making someone aware of a problem with the system.