From: ibuprofin@painkiller.example.tld.invalid
On Wed, 05 Jun 2013, in the Usenet newsgroup alt.os.linux.mandriva, in article
, Jim Beard wrote:
>Moe Trin wrote:
[film coated windows]
>> I can't say that I've noticed that much of a problem, though it is
>> detectable if the window is partially open.
>That was the neat part, for the instructors. If they tried to
>tell the GI's to quit looking out the window and daydreaming, at
>best it would have been a distraction if not a cause of immediate
>friction. The diminished attractiveness was not even noticed by
>most students, but the instructor recognized the effect!
Some of that is also the subject being taught. The (I don't want to
call them) boring subjects do have that problem. Some of the schools
I've attended tried to put the more tedious subjects into classrooms
with a lesser view - perhaps the upper floors. Many of the technical
classes, especially when taught by more savvy instructors had
relatively little difficulty holding the student's attention.
>> Because of the way I was trained (brainwashed), I was very leery
>> of using rootly powers - I _knew_ I was going to fumble-finger
>> something and have the whole world running up/down the halls with
>> pitchforks and torches looking for me.
>I was under strict instructions on what I should and should not
>do as root, and abided by them scrupulously. I had noticed early
>on what ensues when the system administrator as root ran rm -rf *
>not realizing he was in /.
I've mentioned this file before - essentially trimmed and undated
copies of Usenet posts from the "comp.unix.admin" group more than 20
years ago:
======================================================================
ftp://ibiblio.org/pub/docs/humor/unix.admin.horror-1.1.tar.Z (plus
the README)
-rw-r--r-- 1 root 25 63493 Mar 2 1993 unix.admin.horror-1.1.tar.Z
-rw-r--r-- 1 root 25 1174 Mar 2 1993 unix.admin.horror.README
======================================================================
but several of the other files in that directory are nearly as good
(if somewhat dated). One of the things that was beaten into me long
ago was that your ALWAYS ran the 'ls' before the 'rm' - ESPECIALLY
when using wild cards as/in a file-spec. That error/typo/what-ever has
probably bitten more admins than all others combined. Recursive
'chmod' and 'chown' may well be then next most common.
>He was in the user area, at a terminal about 8 or 10 feet from me,
>and I noticed him staring at the terminal with a puzzled look on his
>face. After a few more seconds, he hit a Cntl-C, took one last look
>at the screen, took a deep breath, and headed for the branch chief's
>office to report.
Somehow - even a Sparc Classic box (the Classic is a 4/15, bottom of
the Sun4m line) moves extremely fast when it comes to put in practice
a big scale fuckup (like chmod -R .* as root). I think even the old
PDPs had a "Turbo mode" that was automagically switched on to execute
such a command.
>The branch chief was not amused. Restoring from backup took a
>few hours.
Must have been about 1994, one of the junior admins was removing the
home directories of student interns after the end of term. Of course
this was on a major NFS server... at about 3:30 in the afternoon.
Sure, we got backups... made overnight. So about a quarter of the
users lost all the work, mail, what-ever since start of day. Not
only did they loose it, they couldn't do any work because their home
directories were gone. The junior admin soon decided to seek
opportunity elsewhere.
>> Of course - they knew that your real purpose was to break things
>> and cause more work for them. ;-) I think I learned more from a
>> college text book I found for Version 6
>It was only the IBM systems folks who held that attitude.
I've certainly encountered the attitude elsewhere, not limited to a
brand... or even an operating system.
>I called up the help desk, described what I was trying to do, and
>asked for instructions, plus anything else they might have handy
>that might help me get used to the new systems. "OK. We'll send
>you something."
>Seven volumes. More than a linear foot of 8"x11" paper-version
>help files. The things must have weighed over 15 pounds.
New users who lacked experience spent the first week reading some
elementary books before being allowed on, and tended to be tightly
restricted. When I started on BSD, I'd been using computers for
about 10 years, but those were all "single user" systems, and while
you did have near-unlimited access. there wasn't a whole lot you
could do to _accidentally_ screw things up (you could if you worked
at it, but you generally knew enough not to try). We were strongly
encouraged (polite way of putting it) to take *NIX classes at the
local colleges as part of the continuing education bit (reimbursed
if you passed and your manager felt the class useful). Not 100%
perfect in the late '80s/early '90s because the two schools nearest
our Bay Area facility used HP-UX and IRIX (both SysV flavored) while
we were SunOS (strongly BSD).
>The systems were overloaded to the point they did not have space to
>store the files on disk, nor memory or cpu power required to provide
>acess on-line, but paper was available for anyone who would use it.
On-line documentation had to wait until not only space (and CPU)
available, but also multiple access points. On-line system docs
were useless when the system was down. The on-line versions were a
lot easier to maintain, and not everyone really needed access to it
anyway.
>When on loan, I had a special pass to park in the "Visitor" lot. As
>a regular employee, the hike from parking lot to building got a lot
>longer.
-) Not as much help in our case - the "Visitor" lots are near the
main entrance of the facility - while the employee entrances were
closer to where we worked (often, a different building). Also, at
the Phoenix facility, the employee parking were covered structures,
while the visitor parking was not - can you say "sun loading"?
Old guy
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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