Norton Utilities vs. "the way things are"

[Robert Hartman]

In article <433 at bria> uunet!bria!mike writes:
>In an article, ms.uky.edu!kherron (Kenneth Herron) writes:
>
>In my "not-quite-so-humble" opinion, armchair sysadmins deserve DOS.
>You are talking about two things here: system administration and end-use.
>In the DOS world, "end-user" and "administrator" are one in the same.
>Not so in the UNIX world.

Just because this has been the way things are in UNIX doesn't mean that
it can or should stay that way in future.  Do you use a workstation
with windows, or are you still time-sharing with dumb terminals?  Have
you ever become root on your workstation to mount or unmount a
filesystem?  Whenever you do that, you become an "armchair sysadmin."

>The end-user does not and should not need to know about anything other
>than logging in, reading/sending mail, and using the application(s) that
>meet his/her job requirements.  This same end-user has no use for NU.

An end user sometimes needs to retrieve a deleted or clobbered file.
This is a perfectly reasonable requirement that UNIX has always
ignored.  Sine UNIX won't do it, it leaves the door open for NU, who
will.  No one's forcing you to buy it.

>There is a tradeoff here.  It seems to me that making things easier for you,
>things get more convoluted for me.  No thanks. ...
> ... A DC6150 is cheaper than a 150M disk, methinks.

Well, that's your choice.  If someone else chooses to spend their money on
NU and a bigger disk, why should this bother you?  If, in fact, people want
this feature in UNIX, and you don't like the idea of these DOS people horning
in on your market, why not write a PD undeleter and post the source?

>> ... The space taken by these backup 
>>files is reported as free by all the system calls, and is automatically freed 
>>for real if you need it (backup files are dumped in a user-configurable way).
>
>Oh, that's lovely.  So, you unlink a file, but in reality it moves it
>somewhere else, and to add to that, the system lies to me when I ask
>how much free space there is?  In my opinion, that _sucks_.

Well, I agree that reporting the space as free is somewhat ugly.
However, if it frees the space on demand, thus making it transparent to
you, I don't think that sucks at all.  Still, if you want do see what
space is accounted for by files pending deletion, you could include a
modified df in your PD package.

>People who are interested in being secrataries or accountants are not
>going to waste their time writing useless shell scripts that beep, or
>draw boxes, or whatever.

Well, here you seem to want it both ways.  The best assumption
underlying the design of UNIX is that you can't know beforehand what a
user will want to do.  Since the user base is broadening, you can no
longer limit this to what a computer professional might want to do.  We
must include amateur users in our thinking.  So if an amateur user
wants to cook shell scripts that beep, it would be a good idea to
provide him/her with a straightforward way to do that in the shell.

>If you're an accountant, then do accounting, not programming.

You're right.  I'll do the accounting or whatever, and if something
about UNIX gets in my way, I'll go buy someone else's package to get it
out of my way.  Your disdain for my computing problems means that I
won't buy the package from you, since you obviously don't understand my
needs or care about them.

>> ... The days when ordinary mortals bowed down to the
>>computer priesthood are supposed to be over.  For the sake of the other
>>employees of your company, I hope you don't manage any computers but 
>>your own. 
>
>Oh, I _do_ just love little digs like this.  I reject the argument that
>everyone should be able to administer a computer system.
> ...
>As an aside, why is it that there is always the argument that computers
>are being used by "real people" for "real work", but the disussion has
>to do with some esoteric nonsense that no end-user would even dream of
>trying to do?  Just a thought.

Retrieving a clobbered file is not, by definition, a job for a
sysadmin.  There's nothing privileged about it.  And people want to do
it all the time.  From the end-user's standpoint, the fact that I can't
do it myslef is simply a flaw in the implementation.  You may have grown
accustomed to it, and even grown to love it.  However, after working
with UNIX for over 10 years, I still see it as a flaw, even though it
hasn't bitten me in a very long time.  So, if someone comes along with
a fix, I say good for them!

> ... Hire someone who can do the job right.

Well, NU and a bigger disk is certainly cheaper than that!

-r