I've installed Vipre on a pc after doing a refresh, and it doesn't "automatically uninstall" software, what it does is index potentially conflicting software at the very start of the install process and gives you a prompt asking if you wish to continue with the install, ignoring the fact that the software is installed on your pc. Even when I had AVG, Avast, security essentials or anything else installed on another pc did I get it attempting to automatically uninstall the software it had concerns about.

I used to work for a Telco and our customers had tight timeframes on their service with rather significant penalties. One of their customers would see their connection go down once to twice a week for about twenty minutes at 8pm local time.

The cause was tracked down by a field tech attending site before the regular downtime and discovered the cause was the cleaner chocking the comms room door open so he could vacuum the floor. The only problem was that the power cable for the site router was directly in the way between the door and the cabinet and the door being wedged open twice a week against the cable eventually killed the cable via metal fatigue. The immediate fix was not chocking the door open hard like that. The long term fix was replacing the cable with one with a 90' connector that sent the cable straight down instead of out to be vulnerable to this.

This may be voted funny, but it's true.

Common courtesy can both go a long way and is certainly not common enough.

Agreed, go through the hoops.

if anything, use first level as a "sanity check" as you may well have missed something that you didn't realise. Consider it tech support proof reading.

Keeping a log is a brilliant idea. Especially if it starts out as a small problem and then progresses to something much larger. However by the time it HAS escalated it may be too late to actually go back and keep track of these important little details.

I know I'm flogging it, but http://www.reddit.com/r/talesf... would love to hear from you. :)

have a read of http://www.reddit.com/r/talesf... I'm sure you'll appreciate it.

This makes me feel a bit better. Also makes me feel like a bit of an ass for being so lame about my computer organisational skills, both on my pc and on backups.

Actually, Australia has similar laws.

r.e. falling behind, yes that sucks.

My old employer fell so far behind on cisco call manager that the version they had were out of support and cisco would only touch their issues when billed at a T&M rate (i.e. it ran on windows). Their system was so big complex and unwieldy that it took the better part of 18 months planning to even update to a version of ccm that was even remotely current. I left shortly before that mess went live, that would have been a shitty teething period.

The magic words here are "accountability" and "Support contracts". Some people are willing to either do things with open source software and wing it with the potentially marginal support they get. Others do things in-house and have support agreements with their support teams, with virtual money flowing in between groups to provide the support. Others are happiest with support contracts so that they can lever the supporting groups to MAKE them find a solution if they have to.

I'm not saying "linux isn't for the big boys", there are versions of linux that are at the enterprise level (i.e. RHEL), but there are significant differences between those willing to fly by the seat of their pants, and those whom take these risks seriously.

This isn't just in business, most political decisions made don't consider looking past the next election, let alone looking into how it will impact ten let alone thirty years down the line. Smart decisions like that require someone to be brave, and brave doesn't win more votes than "shiny thing, here's money" that most political promises seem to have.

It makes the product sound like a steam "early release" rather than a production system and totally impractical for a live business environment. Some of this stuff is just too "seat of the pants" material.

I remember working in system admin and the product testing hoops that had to be jumped through by the testers was phenominal. They'd have products in test for three or more months before they'd even start raising notions of sending it out to get approval/review for sending to a live system. Hell I treat my mythtv system at home like a production environment as it isn't worth the wrath of my wife and two year old if it breaks and he cannot watch Peppa Pig.

That's it, I'm going back to watch it again. Curiosity has gotten the better of me here.

This just reminded me.

I've got a two and a half year old kid and he sounds so much more grown up now than he did when he first started trying to throw words together, he laughs differently now as well.

Record that shit. If you don't, one day you'll wake up and regret it. I ran across some recordings of our kid just yesterday that I'd forgotten I'd made, and he was babbling and trying to talk and laughing and I felt so happy that I had recorded it. I'm going to do it again shortly so that I've got him as he progresses.