Right... he's competing against hungry *unproven* recent grads.

There's a difference.

Ageism: It's the new tech innovation.

Tech is still climbing the "rockstar ladder of media attention". At this point it's a feeding frenzy- and "journalists" with no clue about tech are running around everywhere looking for a story.

The difference these days is a good one though. The debates are not lost in history- because much more material is retained digitally. Unlike something in the past where only a handful of sources were available (like Roman history), people looking back 50 years from now will have a clearer view.

As volatile as digital storage is, the fact that so much is actually stored digitally, means that Steve Jobs may not be forgotten. Right down to his abuse of the handicapped parking spot.

For us old folks- Radio Shack.... or Ahem... Allied Radio has been dead and gone for a long time.

Just try finding a high quality capacitor in that place. Their staff doesn't even know what they are.

There was a time when you could get components through them for general electronics repair, breadboarding, and design. These days it's substandard computers and cell phones.

I think the name change to "The Shack" is a good thing. They have nothing to do with Radio, and with the changed name thay can start selling spicy chicken strips.

FWIW

LOL...

I would have fired you on the spot.

Wow- well said.

I happen to the the IT Director for a national charity.

I'm 43 years old, and the rest of the management team is 30 years older than me. These guys have no idea what I do. They gave me a mandate 5 years ago to bring the company up to date technologically. So I did that. And I'm still doing that.

About 6 weeks ago part of the management team showed up at my house on a Friday and fired me. It was surreal. I couldn't believe it.

Apparently- someone's poker buddy had trashed my work at a poker game- convincing several important people that I wasn't doing my job. And they fired me.

Needless to say it was one hell of a weekend while my wife and I scrambled to make sure bills would be payed.

By Monday things cooled off. And I was looking around for contracts and talking to a major linux vendor about coming on as a systems engineer. My phone rings and it's my former comptroller. He asks if I can meet my former management team for dinner. I wasn't so hot on the idea but since he is a friend I figured it was the right thing to do.

So I show up, and they offer me my job back with a massive raise, apologies, and major ass kissing.

Apparently, the so called "expert" who had trashed my work, had convinced them that the local computer store could do my job for them. The local computer store showed up and told the board that they were nuts for firing me, and they couldn't handle it. Then the "expert" lobbied for my job, took a look at the systems, and then decided he couldn't handle it.

So code monkeys aren't the only people with false assumptions.

But the upshot is that now the computer store offered me a nice fat contract to maintain their Linux clients in my spare time. And I still have my management position.

Karma is wonderful. Competence is king.

Although it would be nice to get a thank you for those 3am pager calls. That's what sysadmin day is about.

I'd wait and see what happens in a couple of weeks. Even if you continued your transition, the worse case scenario is having to by a RHE subscription for updates.

However, given past history- there will always be at least one full RHE clone around... It's a fairly safe bet.

And it turns out the wife is actually the *guy* respinning RHE3 and RHE4 over at Whitebox.

"That bastard killed my distro!!"

I believe it decends from debian unstable.

But if you've got 50 boxes around the world you are responsible for, the word "unstable" is a deal killer.

Ubuntu Server?

No offense to the Ubuntu team intended (or to you) but that's not exactly a hardened OS with the kind of long term support one needs in a data center.

If low budget to you is a simple LAMP stack- then maybe. But no one has been beating up on Ubuntu server- and it really needs professional QA before anyone tries to use it for more than a novelty.

The logical alternative for new deployments would be Debian, if you wanted to dump RPM based systems.

Replying to my own post...

Whitebox Linux went offline due to hurricane Katrina. Everyone folded into CentOS.

Actually- it's concerning... but not a crisis.

Some of my boxes have data continuity from RH 7-9, then Whitebox Linux, to CentOS 3-4-5.

The pain is in the migration. The joy is in the freedom.

If CentOS bellies up I have enough boxes to justify maintaining myself from source rpms, or moving to another RHE based distro. It's always a pain. But I bet I got 8 years of functionality from Whitebox/CentOS. A pretty good deal.

Somewhat concerning, considering the number of CentOS servers I have in the wild.

I'd suggest disabling yum updates on your CentOS boxes until this gets sorted out. Might want to do updates by rebuilding src rpms directly from Redhat.

Just the fact they even have to address an issue like this makes me nervous.

Um?

A surge protector doesn't help you if the EM field collapses on the wireless antenna.

At that point the charge created by the collapse goes directly *through* your electronics to the nearest ground. Which equals *poof* to your electronics.

A surge protector will protect you through a clamp circuit if the surge comes through the outlet.