Amen.

Like it or not - sysadmins do not get to write the rules, no matter how right they may be. When they break them, they should suffer the consequences.

Nah, they have all just decided to get paid, rather than work for free... (end.sarcasm)

In all seriousness, a lot of the new generation of programmers are starting out in large corporations, as a means to repay student debt, get themselves established - and are able to do that code work in the open-source world, as corporate acceptance and utilization of OSS for application development grows. This, unfortunately, comes with a flipside - those same developers are not available to do the work the hobbyists were doing a few years back, leading to the perception that the OSS movement is losing developers. The movement actually isn't losing developers - more and more of them are just being absorbed by NDA's :)

Either that, or they have all decided to start writing flash games for Adult Swim.

"Giiit yer Mime Hunting tags right hyere, folks... step right up, one a ta time, just 5 dollars each..."

Anyway... back to your regularly scheduled program.

Indeed, I do. I'll consent that in alpha/early beta releases, various functionality can be completely broken. However, I have the benefit of working with one of the Ubuntu developers, and we tried everything remotely possible - including up-porting/back-porting packages to get the wireless on my laptop working. Unfortunately, it continued to remain a complete disaster.

I'll probably come back and visit it again once the final version is released on 4-29, and see if it improved any. Hopefully, it does.

@WeatherGod - Nope... I meant Lucid. Karmic was a joke, wireless support wise on my laptop, and it was a hope that things would improve under Lucid that led to that failed experiment. Wireless is an absolute must for me, as finding a viable network jack is rarely an option when I am in the field.

@bert64 - As I did clearly state above - I am only speaking from my experiences, and, as such, they may be, in fact, different from yours. As I stated above, from my experience, OOo 3 is slow performing, buggy, nearly unusable release of OOo. Having used OOo for a number of years prior, and in comparing my experiences, as well as the cross-platform compatibility (my XLS files open anywhere, ods files do not. Thus, regardless of the client used, XLS files are better).

If we were discussing Vista or ME, I agree with you wholeheartedly. After playing with Win7, my opinion has changed, to the point where instead of running Windows in a VM with a base of Linux, I am running Win7 as the base, and Linux in the VM.

Wireless support is better in Win7 than in Lucid, hibernation/sleep is better, UI is better, and it doesn't choke on my hardware. Win/Win/Win, I say.

Plus... Office2K7 is a much better suite (IMHO) than OOo 3. Faster performance, better stability, and cross platform compatibility.

As with such things, my experience may not be the same as yours, however, I am only speaking from my experience, and am not trying to be a fanboi of either Linus OR MS.

I find this interesting, and wonder - how many of the users are the inverse of those above?

Specifically, I run Ubuntu only in a VM - under Win7. The only thing I use it for is SSH tunnelling... and it works beautifully for it.

My main concern with jailbreaking is the "Rick roll" exploit on the iPhone from earlier this year, when the jailbreaking gave clueless users SSH access with a default password. As a network security consultant and project manager, the thought of devices like that being connected to my network is highly discomfiting to me.

And, to echo my point from below, this device is a appliance, not a general purpose computer. As such, it is designed to do certain tasks well, and certain tasks not at all. When deciding on devices to purchase, I consider whether or not they fit my perceived needs. If it doesn't, I don't purchase. Jailbreaking these devices for the purposes of "adding functionality" seems like a waste of resources and time to me, hence my question above.

re:signature

I can see why my signature may be taken as hostile, so allow me to explain its origin.

Way back in the day, when I was working second and third line tech support, there was an ... accident ... due to a technician not understanding the blueprints for a new build-out. In the process of powering up the facility, a very old, very temperamental server was finally killed, and my department got brand new shiny equipment to replace the new destroyed hand-me-down crap we had been forced to deal with.

And that, is the heart of my question. Like the Kindle, the iPhone, and the upcoming Courier, these "middle ground" devices are nothing more than appliances. Maybe I am in the minority here, but when considering whether or not I am going to buy such a device, I first analyze whether or not the device is going to fit the need I have (or percieve to have) for it. If it doesn't, I don't buy it.

why do we care?

People who buy this device are buying into the environment created for the device by Apple. As such, someone gaining root access to the device that Apple will analyze and patch, and you *still* won't be able to use the app store for... seems like a waste.

So, I ask again... why do we care?

I think they call them "The Underground". Or, in popular parlance, "The Sewers"

...smells like a rotten egg to me.

Really? Having any random browser installed does not make a PC any less or more secure? Please, please tell me you are not in any way affiliated with any environment subject to federal regulations.

Prime example:
Let us say your environment is exclusively a MS shop. You have all the development resources, security resources, and vendor support to ensure that environment is safe, secure, and compatible with your applications. Then, bam, a problem shows up. Joe User cannot use X web application. Security starts seeing strange traffic coming across the network, traffic that is malicious in nature. Lo and behold, that is because Joe User installed a browser not supported within the organization, which, in this case, happens to be copy of Firefox 3.5 (http://www.mozilla.org/security/known-vulnerabilities/firefox36.html). Suddenly, your organization has just been hacked, corporate data is being siphoned off the network, federal regulators are crawling down your boss's throat, the organization gets hit with a huge fine and other costs related to the data breach, and why?

Because you believed that installing any old browser on any system in any environment doesn't make the PC any more or less secure.

Moral of the story? Don't be a fucking idiot, and understand the need for prioritization and standardization within a corporate network, especially one of those corporate networks that is subject to regulatory oversight regarding information technology.

Never worked on one, have you?

If you did, then you would know that directly linking through Cat5 doesn't work. The serial cable that Cisco ships with their gear may have an RJ45 end on it, but it ain't anywhere near Cat5.

Not too mention that whole cable-terminates-in-a-serial-end thing. But hey, I guess you you are smarter than the engineers that say "ship this cable with our gear".