On Nov 10, 2006, at 9:45 AM, Jim Maul wrote:
Bart Silverstrim wrote:
On Nov 9, 2006, at 2:09 PM, Jim Redman wrote:
Folks,
I have to say, of all the lists I subscribe to, the vocal members
of this list are the most arrogant and insulting. However, I
consider comments such as Luca Gibelli's, bandwidth wasting, "We
are happy to suffer this loss." and Dennis Peterson's "His
specific problem is he lacks the skill to install and manage the
product" reflect more about the person making the comment, rather
than the target.
You're forgetting one detail that probably was the most provoking,
though. He started right off saying he "cherishes his ignorance".
How many of our problems as sysadmins come from user ignorance?
How much worse is it when you have to deal with another peer's
ignorance, and worse yet, WILLFUL ignorance? "Hi, I'm hired to do
a complicated and skillful job as a sysadmin, but want to know
nothing about how or why this software stuff works...can you help
me? By, like, doing it for me?"
Maybe i missed it, but where in his original email did he ask
anyone to help him by doing something for him? From what i can
see, he didnt even ask for help at all. The way i took it was:
Gee, I downloaded this package for clamav and installed it and now
there are all sorts of other things that still need to be done to
get it working correctly. Maybe clamav developers could work with
the package maintainers to make this process go more smoothly?
Here is what I was reading from the original (I believe)
email...correct me if I'm wrong...
*****
I WANT to know NOTHING about ClamAV, I wish to remain ignorant.
*****
Instead the packages need me to learn some of the inner workings of
ClamAV and FreshClam (forget editing the conf files, the packages don't
even seem to work together out of the box)
******
This means that much of the developers work is wasted, because I take
the easiet way around an error, no clamav user, the hell with it,
freshclam runs as root.
*******
config file, just take out "Example" keep hacking until it stops
complaining.
*******
Sorry if this sounds like a rant, it's not, it's an appeal to make a
priority of simplifying the installation.
*******
If anything, these highlight that the user posting the message:
A) wants to remain ignorant, despite being in charge of whatever
system this is he's administrating
B) is asking for others (packagers, clamav devs...) to fix his
unwillingness to read a config file.
If you want to know where it sounds like he's asking someone to do it
for him, the last quoted line is making an appeal to make a braindead
install routine a priority. That sounds like it's asking someone to
do something to me.
Is what he's asking for out of line? Not necessarily. But if I were
one of the devs doing an install package, I would not be overly
motivated to help someone who is SOOO not willing to work with me on
it that his idea of making it work is to run the software as root and
just delete the word "example" from the conf file instead of reading
what the line says and comprehending what he's doing.
He COULD have mailed in saying, "I'm running distro XYZ and am
looking for opinions on what the simplest installation package is,
and where I can download it with as much preconfiguration as
possible..."
Instead, he sends a message proclaiming that he wants to remain
ignorant of what is going on despite being a sysadmin because things
like the conf file are just too hard to comprehend. He works with
other sourceforge projects, so how can it be so hard for him to
understand a conf file? Worse, he just runs it as root, and then
people talk about not knowing about configurations having security
holes in it? Um...
What kind of sysadmin proclaims it's too hard to read a conf file and
wants everything as braindead simple as possible so he doesn't have
to think? It's nice not to have to get headaches configuring things,
but it kind of goes with the territory!
If he's not a sysadmin, why is he running a mailserver on the
Internet in the first place? How much spam and crap mail comes from
misconfigured mail servers because their admins were too lazy or
incompetent to configure it properly?
To me it seems like everyone missed the point and made their own
assumptions as to what he *really* meant. Maybe the title was
worded poorly, or his post looked too similar to others that people
have seen in the past and it triggered an immediate negative
response from them, or maybe its just that some people on this list
havent gotten any lately and are grumpy - who knows. But to berate
someone like this over a post they made which i believe was
interpreted incorrectly to begin with is completely wrong. I mean
cmon, the subject clearly states its directed at packagers. Give
the guy a flippin break.
And it was posted to the users list, and sorry, but one of the neat
things of the list is that you can only be judged on your words, and
as a fellow system administrator it isn't exactly very wise to
proclaim yourself ignorant and wishing to remain ignorant and that
you take pride in just being ignorant because it's too hard to read a
conf file that so many others have found to be more than adequate at
describing features and what they do. He does the absolute minimum
to make it work and considers it a hassle that he can't just click on
the Staples Easy button to make the server magically work?
Give the list a flippin' break. There are just some things that you
should know better than to do.
_______________________________________________
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