----- Original Message -----
From: "Jim Henderson"
Then again, that's your choice as a system user. I personally think waiting until the first major attack to go "oh, wow, we need an AV solution *now*" is the wrong time to start developing a solution or looking at the options. I really don't understand what's so wrong about being proactive.
If there is no technical justification for an action, that is all the reason necessary for resisting doing it. Also as for "then fine you don't have to use it" that's true as far as it goes but there is more to the story than that. It's damaging to me when stupid things become popular. I end up being forced to do stupid things myslelf even though I know better. It's very difficult to do very well while being to deviant or subscribing to unpopular philosophies or opinion, regardless of their technical merits or lack of same. If OAS becomes seen by the unwashed masses as necessary for safety, how do I sell my companies services and software to business owners who ask if we do it and we say no we don't? It doesn't matter that we've never had a virus in our lives and no customer ever lost data or even uptime due to an virus on any unix or linux server in the last 15 years. My boss and the sales people will sooner or later simply demand that we do it simply so that they can say yes more often, and thus sell more. And it will have absolutely no technical justification but it will cost not only my machines, but me, time and effort that I'd rather spend on anything else, since there's not enough to go around already. The same interaction applies in lots of other similar contexts. I never learned perl because I happen to have never yet met a problem I didn't solve with ksh and awk or other much more universal and lighter weight tools. What?? Your companies head genius IT guy, complete with beard and ink-blot for a sleep/eat pattern, doesn't know something as basic and universal as perl???? Ah, he bathes, so he's not a _real_ geek, that explains it. :) Luckily that one's merely amusing and not harmful. Then there are all the other people I have no control over but who's efficiency has some influence on me. I'm not saying OAS is going to make all my various isp/hosting bills go up, or power or groceries for that matter, or that a hospital will be one doctor poorer because their computers were more expensive, etc etc... I'm just saying that in this day of uber communication where a silly email joke or video can become known to the whole world overnight, it is actually important to resist bad ideas (if you beleive them bad) early while they are still small, because practically overnight something can become effectively a requirement just to be able to interoperate with everyone else. Or almost as bad, the other thing that happens is, maybe no one cares what I think or do about idea X, but I can't buy goods & services that don't come with whatever the bad idea of the day is built-in. -- Brian K. White brian@aljex.com http://www.myspace.com/KEYofR +++++[>+++[>+++++>+++++++<<-]<-]>>+.>.+++++.+++++++.-.[>+<---]>++. filePro BBx Linux SCO FreeBSD #callahans Satriani Filk! -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org