... On Tue, Jun 15, 2010 at 4:16 PM, Ben Scott <[email protected]> wrote: > On Tue, Jun 15, 2010 at 6:56 PM, Steven Peck <[email protected]> wrote: >> Debian had the Drupal CMS in their distributions for >> years and despite many attempts we could not get that thing out of >> their despite it being old/unsecure/not-desired all because some guy >> refused to remove it from the repo. >> >> At least with MS OS and Applications we have a central point. > > I've heard that before. Never, *ever* have I encountered or seen or > heard of the "central point of blame" actually helping a situation. > Not for mere mortals like me and my colleagues, anyway. > > Say Microsoft screws up. *What then*? I call PSS and pay $250 and > if I'm lucky, the call center monkey I got has a half a brain and > acknowledges the issue.
So as I have said. Pretty much every issue has not been patch related. But having called MS we had help identifying the actual cause of the issue. > From then on, I'm helpless. I don't know what group in Microsoft > has responsibility for fixing it; I don't know when or *if* it will be > fixed. It's all a faceless corporation. At least you knew which guy > in Debian to blame. Maybe someday Microsoft publishes a hotfix, or > maybe they just say "This behavior is by design" and tell me, politely > and professionally, to pound sand. Or maybe they even say, yah, > that's a problem, but we won't be fixing this any time soon, sorry. > Maybe in the next release of Windows. Or the one after that for sure. I guess your support experience has not been as good as mine. With only one or two exceptions in years, every issue has been the result of configuration or third party software, not an MS fix. > Please tell me how "having a big company to blame" makes this better > for me or my employer. I've heard that line so many times, and yet it > never happens. You consistently post this viewpoint. It has become expected. > (Plus, if you really want the company-to-blame thing, that's > available for Linux, too. Novell or Red Hat or Canonical will happily > take your money and let you blame them all you want.) You keep saying blame. If you pay Redhat you get the same time of service you get from MS. A person will help you diagnose and troubleshoot the issue. But you have to be using their stuff and they will help you see if it was their fix / update or something specific to your system / install. This is the exact same advantage of having quality paid vendor support. >> We have had very few actual patch related issues. >> We have had many claims that the issue were patch >> related but when drilled down on turned out >> to generally be not a patch issue. > > When I compare Linux and Windows, I often say that it's not that one > *can't* do this or that on Windows, but that it costs more. Same > thing here. More stuff in this area is built-in, and what's there is > more sophisticated in functionality and is easier to maintain. All > that adds up to lower costs. > No it doesn't. It only costs 'less' if you fail to value your time and the time it has taken to acquire your expertise. The 'you can fix it yourself' part is a myth. Very few people can actually do this and those that can are generally not cheap. I say this having been the Drupal Documentation Team lead and ran and built their forums for several years. Cost comes from somewhere, paying a dev, learning it yourself, the kindness of random strangers.... >> Vendors need to get on the band wagon and begin to leverage the tools >> Microsoft has supplied them ... > > To the best of my knowledge, with MSI, I can't do half of what I can > do with RPM (see my other posts in this thread for examples). If I > can, please point me at an FM that I can R; I will shower you with > thanks and buy you the frosty beverage of your choice. This applies > to Windows components and Microsoft applications as much as it does to > third-party stuff, so this isn't a "third party vendors all suck" > issue, as far as I can see. > -- Ben Our desktop guys have been packaging the adobe updates, the java updates, the whatever weird in house custom app updates we have for years now. I shall ask them what they use. For straight MS updates, MS SCCM, select what you want and fire away. Steven ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~
