On Sat, 2004-12-04 at 20:49, Bryan J. Smith wrote:
> Because you are _not_ "willing to examine it, discuss it, now and then."
> If you were, you wouldn't say, "the fact that some of us just aren't
> interested in trying Fedora out for ourselves any time soon."
> Experience is the ultimate knowledge. Unfortunately, I'm tired of being
> in the minority, and assumed to be wrong because I'm not in the majority
> who simply "learn about things they don't know about" through such
> discussions like this.
More calmly now ...
For anyone that may be new to the IT industry, if you want to go far as
a consultant or architect, you have to forgo what you've heard
second-hand and base decisions on experience. And that means first-hand
experience. Be honest about what you have and have not done, rely on
the experience of others and don't let your ego get in the way of
someone else being more knowledgeable.
My success has been because I know I don't know much in the grand scheme
of things. I can only share what I do know. I do not try to be
judgemental on companies and products, and let their underlying
technologies and feasibility stand on their own. In fact, one thing I
really dislike is to see some of the undeserving comments thrown towards
Red Hat that I see thrown towards Microsoft as well. If you want to
comment negatively on Microsoft, make it something technical and
detailed, not general. This is how I advise companies regularly when
dealing with top-tier Microsoft Solution Providers (and let _them_ look
like asses when they start going down the "anti-Open Source" route).
Now some may wonder how "successful" I could be the way I approach
e-mail. The honest to God truth is that I _avoid_ e-mail like the black
plague in my professional career. It's much easier to work with people
by walking over to their cube or, if they are not local, calling them on
the phone. In fact, people who know me in person know my e-mails, and
can better associate my use of sarcasm, tone and verbage with how I
present myself in person. It reads very differently to them.
But I _do_ sometimes have some "distain" and it shows. If you look at
every case, it's based when I'm consider of the "minority viewpoint,"
when in reality, that viewpoint is from experience. The "2nd hand" and
"3rd hand" commentary leads to a whole new set of "fact" that are easily
broken with "1st hand" experience. In fact, understand technical
specifics of Microsoft solutions is the best thing a Linux advocate can
have.
-- Bryan J. Smith b.j.smith@ieee.org -------------------------------------------------------------------- Subtotal Cost of Ownership (SCO) for Windows being less than Linux Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) assumes experts for the former, costly retraining for the latter, omitted "software assurance" costs in compatible desktop OS/apps for the former, no free/legacy reuse for latter, and no basic security, patch or downtime comparison at all.----------------------------------------------------------------------- This list is provided as an unmoderated internet service by Networked Knowledge Systems (NKS). Views and opinions expressed in messages posted are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of NKS or any of its employees.
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