Re: Re: [Micronet] Upgrades and Security Requirements

Tom,

I did not say it would always work. I was primarily addressing those who
suggested they had to be invited. I worked at Berkeley for 36 years and
rolled a lot of boulders uphill. Most often it had to be done over and
over even to achieve occasional success. I am sure many others have had
this experience.

Sometimes I simply did the research and testing myself without the explicit
support of the group responsible. I would like to say this got results,
but often it just just allowed me to say "I told you so" with
proof. Occasionally it paid off richly and it usually put me in a position
to help when the change or crisis came.

It seems so obvious that multi-platform planning and preparation are
essential at Berkeley, that I was repeatedly stunned by the lack of it. It
is harder and more time consuming, and hence tends to slide under time
pressure and insufficient resources (hence almost always at Berkeley). We
always pay for it in the end.

Despite this gloomy analysis, there has been progress. It is hard for us
to remember the cross-platform ignorance and strife that characterized the
late 1980's and early 1990's. This discussion thread and others like it in
the past have gradually expanded awareness and acceptance.

Greg Small, Retired On a network, paranoia is
Security Infrastructure Project just good thinking!
Workstation Software Support WSS/IST Systems Programmer for 36
University of California at Berkeley years and it's still fun!
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The opinions or statements expressed herein should not be taken as
a position or endorsement of the University of California, or of
Workstation Support Services. After all, I am retired :-).
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At 11:12 AM 6/24/2004, Tom Holub wrote:
>On Thu, Jun 24, 2004 at 10:49:38AM -0700, Greg Small wrote:
> >
> > Whenever you get wind of something afoot on campus, jump into
> it. There is
> > no need to be invited! You may not succeed if you do but you certainly
> > will not succeed if you do not. The main difficulty here is lack of staff
> > time to pursue such issues, but that is also a reason why majority staff
> > does not get around to checking with a minority. You may decide that
> other
> > priorities preempt but please then do not complain that you were not taken
> > care of.
>
>I take severe exception to this.
>
>I have asked questions about Mac support for every major campus application,
>early in the development process, and have offered my staff's help in
>troubleshooting Mac problems. In most cases, my requests are ignored,
>or the response is "we don't have any Macs, so we can't test it." (One
>need only look back in the Micronet archives about 3 weeks to see an
>example).
>
>--
>Tom Holub (tom_holub@LS.Berkeley.EDU, 510-642-9069)
>College of Letters & Science
>249 Campbell Hall

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Received on Tue Jul 6 14:32:21 2004