[PLUG] The house bill, a possible problem...

[david pool]

Carla Schroder wrote:

> David's absolutely right. When IT staff are freed from the Sisyphean task of 
> keeping winduhs "working", that releases money and resources for other 
> projects. Instead of being in repair mode all the time, it is possible to 
> move forward, and to make improvements. Buy new hardware, do major upgrades 
> and overhauls, work on user interfaces, wireless, better security, user 
> training.... there's all kinds of good things you can do when you're not in 
> constant crisis mode.
> 
> And believe it or not, windows admins can learn Linux. It's a lot shorter leap 
> than training former loggers and fishermen to 'do computers.'
> 

Carla's absolutely right. And she used a metaphor from Greek mythology 
to make her point. So she scores double by my count.

She's right about windows admins having the capacity to learn too. Many 
of the proprietary systems out there are reasonably good at letting 
people start into the learning curve. "Ease of Use" is helpful if you 
are a beginner.

Unfortunatly, many of those systems don't pull off the other half of 
"make the easy stuff easy and the hard stuff possible". By my 
experience, Filemaker Pro was a fun way to learn about databases, 
scripting, interface design and customer requirements. Then, I began 
bumping my head against the limitations. I briefly migrated to Access 
and ColdFusion before beginning the transitioning to PostgreSQL, Perl 
and Template Toolkit.

My point is that yes, I believe we should help out with the migration of 
people who are bumping their heads on MS product limitation. 
Unfortunatly, many of them won't switch without a fight. I see no point 
in fighting. They'll figure it out eventually, and when they do, there 
will be a migration path worn in the ground for them by the people who 
went before them (and who have a head start because they figured it out 
earlier or went along without a fight).

d