"Nobody teaches assembly language"

From: Sean 'Captain Napalm' Conner <spc_at_conman.org>
Date: Wed Jun 23 23:34:38 2004

It was thus said that the Great Fred Cisin once stated:
>
> One of the campuses has a unix box that we host some
> websites on. The central administration has declared
> that that has to go, and that ALL faculty websites
> must be designed and administered by them.

  When I was in college, the department (non-academic) that ran the physical
network (and controlled DNS, plus the dial-up modem bank) wanted to run
email for the entire campus. I can see say, the English Department taking
them up on this, as their expertise is not system administration, but
English. But at that time, there were a few departments that refused to go
along (and it wasn't like the network department was offering to handle
email---no, they *wanted* to the *only* interface for email for the entire
campus), like Computer Science Department, and the Ocean Engineering
Department [1].

  That was then. I've since heard that this department [2] now handles
*all* email for the entire campus. Not even the Computer Science Department
can handle email. It actually wouldn't surprise me if you now have to jump
through hoops to get a public IP address at that college [3].

  -spc (As the professor I worked for used to say, "The politics are so
        fierce *because* the stakes are so small.")

[1] The Ocean Engineering program at my college was top in the nation,
        even beating out MIT's Ocean Engineering department.

[2] This is the same department that ran a widely used VAX system. One
        night when they shut down the VAX, they also shut down the dial-up
        modem bank, because, well, if the VAX is down, they didn't want
        people dialing up trying to use it. Never mind the fact that there
        were, oh, a hundred other computers that could be used on campus
        from the modem bank.

[3] It has a Class-B [4] network block.

[4] Or a /16 for those that now use CDIR.
Received on Wed Jun 23 2004 - 23:34:38 BST