Sad experience

From: Lawrence LeMay <lemay_at_cs.umn.edu>
Date: Fri Jul 20 17:45:36 2001

> >Boss #1 takes the box and heads for the back room,
> >where the disks will be "recycled" and the manuals
> >shredded.
>
> Time to write a few letters. Where does this destroy all old software
> mentality come from? Does it have a basis in fact?
>

Educational software discounts. I bet that since they cant determine
what software was purchased for educational use only, the easy solution
for them is to just destroy it all. The same mentality that requires
not only reformatting hard drives, but rewriting data so as to make the
drive immune to norton-utilities types of un-format commands...

The same issues come up when at the university where I work, we 'retire'
computers each year, giving them to student groups and departments. We
have to wipe all the software, because we pay for 300 or so licenses for
one type of operating system and hardware combination, and since we replace
the computers we retire, and since we buy educational licenses for that
many computers, we have to assume the people who get the hand-me-down computers
here at the university ae forced to pay for the operating system and software
they need.

Software suport is also an issue. If we leave the software installed, and
instruct the end-user to remove it, we get plenty of 'sure, sure, ok's...
and we get all sorts of support questions from people who obviously never
reinstalled the system.

Ah well, enough of this rant. its an imperfect world, just look at George
W. Bush...

-Lawrence LeMay
Received on Fri Jul 20 2001 - 17:45:36 BST