Sponsored Content
The Lounge What is on Your Mind? Things i Hate (Or: Rants by an Old Man) Post 303030467 by gull04 on Monday 11th of February 2019 08:11:15 AM
Old 02-11-2019
After 10 years at Sea I decided on a career switch and in 1979 is started work as an Electronic Engineer, I worked for a number of companies like Ferranti, Olivetti, Norsk Data, Motorola, Phillips, DEC and a number of others over the 40 intervening years.

Floppy drives were 8 inches in diameter, memory was made of ferrite and came in wooden boxes and a steel carrier - it weighed about 2 pounds per Kb. You could fix things, for some of the equipment I worked on you had to write your own diagnostics to do this - but you could fix things. Now systems are not repairable, all these things are just throwaway - and sad to say attitudes have followed. We went through the discrete components, to integrated circuits in Ceramic and Plastic encapsulations, then we went through the low power versions of it all. Now we have integrated circuits that have densities that were undreamt of just fifteen years ago.

But essentially all that has happened is that the skill set has been replaced by a courier, who will take a replacement unit to site and plug it in - possibly transferring a hard drive from one chassis to the other.

As to the commercialisation of the experience - in my opinion one of the worst decisions ever made, there was an earlier reference to "Altavista" - it was brilliant but it did cost a significant amount to run. Forgetting to renew the domain was also a problem in this particular case.

I watch the vendors (usually sales or value added resellers) repeatedly mislead customers, I could give you numerous quotes of things I have heard over the years - lead people into a place that they don't want to be. This isn't done maliciously, it's normally through ignorance - the job of a sales person is to sell and few of them undestand the technology.

It's usually left to some techie to make things work, even things that weren't meant to work together. Which is where the good old Google search really comes into it's own, a generic search for an item of equipment will bring you a couple of pages on how to buy one - followed by in most cases nothing of any use!

Arrrrrrgh!!!!!! Many thumps on the keyboard!
These 2 Users Gave Thanks to gull04 For This Post:
 

8 More Discussions You Might Find Interesting

1. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Don't hate me because I'm stupid...

Hi all, I don't know the first thing about Unix, but I would like to learn. I would like to know what the difference between Linux and Unix is, and where I can obtain a copy of either. Thanks :o (8 Replies)
Discussion started by: ThisIsNewToMe
8 Replies

2. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

i hate gtk and kde!

i don't want to install any themes, but i do want to get rid of the god awful color scheme it defaults to. i've tried editing /usr/X11R6/share/themes/Default/gtk-2.0/gtkrc, but to no avail. i've also changed, and even removed the .gtkrc-kde that kde generates automatically, also to no avail. ... (12 Replies)
Discussion started by: brandan
12 Replies

3. Programming

Complicating things?

So basically what im trying to do is ... Open file, read that file, than try to find .. We or we and replace them with I, but not replace the cases where words contain We or we, such as Went, went, etc a and replace them with the, but not replace the cases where words contain a, such as... (1 Reply)
Discussion started by: bconnor
1 Replies

4. Programming

Question about several things in C

Hey guys, first of all I'd like to say Hi to everyone. I am new here and this is my first post. I have a question about some C stuff. I am in Computer Science and I have an assignment for a UNIX Applications course. It is really complicated, however. We're using the C language for this and... (1 Reply)
Discussion started by: V4D3R
1 Replies

5. Shell Programming and Scripting

I hate SED - please help!!

Hi all I have been googling for ages but with no prevail hence this new thread. I would like to add a new line after a particular text string. For example, assume the original file contains the following text: .. line1 line2 line3 .. I would like to insert the text string... (3 Replies)
Discussion started by: robbiegregg
3 Replies

6. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Just trying to find out a few things ....

Hi everyone Just a couple of quick questions if I may. Can I ask what is meant by "flavours"?? I've come across it many times in the forums and I'm guessing that it is a variery of either Linux or UNIX (I know nil about either) which has developed but not really got a clue. ... (1 Reply)
Discussion started by: Tiramisu
1 Replies

7. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

things root can't do

Hey all my co-workers and I are trying to put together a list of things root "Can't" do on any *NIX OS, so I wanted to come here and see what all we could come up with. Here are two to start this off: write to a read only mount FS kill a tape rewind Please add what you know. Thanks,... (5 Replies)
Discussion started by: sunadmn
5 Replies

8. Solaris

man and ldm man

According to Sun documentation (Ldoms 1.1 Administration Guide), To access the ldm(1M) man page, add the directory path /opt/SUNWldm/man to the variable $MANPATH. When I add the lines: MANPATH=$MANPATH:/opt/SUNWldm/man export MANPATH to .profile, exit root and re-login, I would have "man ldm"... (5 Replies)
Discussion started by: StarSol
5 Replies
apropos(1)						      General Commands Manual							apropos(1)

NAME
apropos - Locates reference pages by keyword SYNOPSIS
apropos keyword... The apropos command shows which reference pages contain instances of any of the given keywords in their purpose lines. OPTIONS
Specifies the word(s) for which apropos should search. DESCRIPTION
In looking for keywords, apropos considers each word separately and ignores the case of letters. Words that are part of other words are also considered; thus, when looking for the word compile, apropos will also find all instances of compiler. If the output of the apropos command begins with a name and reference section number, you can enter man section name. For example, if the output of the apropos command is make(1u), you can enter man 1u make to obtain the reference page on System V version of the make command. The apropos command works just like the man command with the -k option. EXAMPLES
To find reference pages with the keyword password in the purpose line, enter: apropos password FILES
Keyword database. SEE ALSO
Commands: man(1), whatis(1), catman(8) apropos(1)
All times are GMT -4. The time now is 11:44 AM.
Unix & Linux Forums Content Copyright 1993-2022. All Rights Reserved.
Privacy Policy