From: Enrico Badella Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: 'why' of things was Re: TOPS-10 security model Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2000 09:15:43 +0100 Organization: SoftStar Lines: 55 Message-ID: <3A1397AF.9B297F4D@softstar.it> References: <8tbc1g$not$1@fe2.cs.interbusiness.it> <8th5pt$95b$6@bob.news.rcn.net> <8th77p$13dk$1@citadel.in.taronga.com> <8thb21$dob$1@bob.news.rcn.net> <8thfle$17q6$1@citadel.in.taronga.com> <8tufvo$slj$4@bob.news.rcn.net> <8u3p6a$hl2$6@bob.news.rcn.net> <8ubhgl$onm$1@bob.news.rcn.net> <3A0A6758.90BDE59B@softstar.it> <3A13226D.896F00BD@prescienttech.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: ns.softstar.it Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.75 [en] (WinNT; U) X-Accept-Language: el,en,it Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newsfeed-zh.ip-plus.net!news.ip-plus.net!news.tesion.net!news.belwue.de!news.uni-stuttgart.de!rz.uni-karlsruhe.de!schlund.de!newsfeed01.sul.t-online.de!newsfeed00.sul.t-online.de!t-online.de!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news-hog.berkeley.edu!ucberkeley!enews.sgi.com!newsfeed.nettuno.it!server-b.cs.interbusiness.it!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:1279 "Carl R. Friend" wrote: > > Enrico Badella wrote: > > > > True the seductive power of knowledge; I can't live without it! > > True, indeed. Curiosity is a "Good Thing" (Sorry, Martha.). Martha, who is she? ;-) Maybe a wonderfull red haired sysadmin.... ops sorry! > > Once you learn acronym RTFM your on the why of becoming the sorcerer. > > Was the "why" in that sentence a typo or an interesting slip of > the fingers? Now that was a typo but has some real truth in it. > One of the tenets I hold dear is that it's far more important to > know _why_ something works the way it does rather than know all > about _how_ it works. If you know _why_, "how" falls into place for > lots of other similar, but subtly different, things. OSes and > computers fall into that category. > > Sadly, "why" is not now taught, nor is learning it encouraged, in > today's world. In fact, in lots of circles, curiosity is discouraged. Apparently not many people care much about why today. reset reboot and the problem went away. This week I had a fight with a nut that just rebooted a Solaris server that had paniced; this person didn't even write down the panic message. This machine had been installed some weeks ago by support; savecore was enabled but to a non existant directory ... grrrrr ... thanks I'll never now the reason of the panic. Reducing the cost of docs and putting everything in a CD certainly discourages the curiosity. I hate doc on CDs; there is no way to annotate things, memories can't put paperclips, pencils, postits and other junk to mark interesting stuff. With the introduction of PC it is much too easy to apparently cure a problem with a reboot. Just think about the joke of the engineer, sw developer and whatever in a broken down car. The sw developer suggests to exit and re enter the car to fix the problem. e. ======================================================================== Enrico Badella email: enrico.badella@softstar.it Soft*Star srl eb@vax.cnuce.cnr.it InterNetworking Specialists tel: +39-011-746092 Via Camburzano 9 fax: +39-011-746487 10143 Torino, Italy Wanted, for hobbyist use, any type of PDP and microVAX hardware,software, manuals,schematics,etc. and DEC-10 docs or manuals ========================================================================== ###### Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!not-for-mail From: Neil Franklin Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: 'why' of things was Re: TOPS-10 security model Date: 16 Nov 2000 21:37:39 +0100 Organization: My own Private Self Lines: 29 Message-ID: <6uofzf4prg.fsf@chonsp.franklin.ch> References: <8tbc1g$not$1@fe2.cs.interbusiness.it> <8th5pt$95b$6@bob.news.rcn.net> <8th77p$13dk$1@citadel.in.taronga.com> <8thb21$dob$1@bob.news.rcn.net> <8thfle$17q6$1@citadel.in.taronga.com> <8tufvo$slj$4@bob.news.rcn.net> <8u3p6a$hl2$6@bob.news.rcn.net> <8ubhgl$onm$1@bob.news.rcn.net> <3A0A6758.90BDE59B@softstar.it> <3A13226D.896F00BD@prescienttech.com> <3A1397AF.9B297F4D@softstar.it> NNTP-Posting-Host: chonsp.franklin.ch X-Trace: chonsp.franklin.ch 974407059 623 10.0.3.2 (16 Nov 2000 20:37:39 GMT) X-Complaints-To: news@chonsp.franklin.ch NNTP-Posting-Date: 16 Nov 2000 20:37:39 GMT X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.7/Emacs 20.4 Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:1284 Enrico Badella writes: > "Carl R. Friend" wrote: > > > > Sadly, "why" is not now taught, nor is learning it encouraged, in > > today's world. In fact, in lots of circles, curiosity is discouraged. All too true. > easy to apparently cure a problem with a reboot. Just think about the > joke of the engineer, sw developer and whatever in a broken down car. The > sw developer suggests to exit and re enter the car to fix the problem. Thats a harmless version of the joke. Try the full one: Car with manager, engineer and sw developer driving down an mountain road develops an brake faillure. Driver just manages to stop by ramming an obstacle. Manager says they should call product support. Engineer says that is nonsense, we can fix it. Sw developer says that that is also nonsense, just carry on and see if the problem reappears. -- Neil Franklin, neil@franklin.ch.remove http://neil.franklin.ch/ Nerd, Geek, Hacker, Unix Guru, Sysadmin, Roleplayer, LARPer, Mystic