🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Mar28.192225.15354@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> timm@void.ncsa.uiuc.edu (Tim McClarren) writes:
>Jim De Arras <jmd@banana.handheld.com> writes:
>
>>ANYBODY who blindly runs an executable mailed to them unexpectedly deserves
>>whatever happens!
>
>Sounds like someone wants to keep computing in the hands of the high preists.
>Whatever happened to 'computing for the rest of us', blah, blah.  I find
>this attitude to be pervasive, and I don't understand it.  How is someone
>who is an utter novice at computing supposed to know not to do such a thing?

As a system administrator, this is what I tell *all* my users, both novice
and expert:

Save often (every 5-10 minutes), save before switching applications or doing
fancy stuff, put your data on the net where it is backed
up daily by the sysadmin, and if it's super-duper important make spare
backups onto floppies.  And if you're doing anything top-top-top secret, unplug
your network cable, save it on two floppies and put them in separate
data-certified vaults.

This covers all kinds of contingencies anyone can expect to run into: power
glitches, software bugs & crashes (DOS/Windows!), goof ups, and viruses.

I've never seen anything happen that I couldn't just tell the user,
"Why didn't you save every 5 minutes instead of every 3 hours if it was so
important?".

I don't expect any end-user to know that if you are in Windows and have 5 
applications going at the same time while your DOS is loaded high and the files
variable is set to less than 100 that if you go shell out to DOS you probably
won't be able to come back....if they just safe often they don't have anything
to worry about.

And luckily for me, our Novell fileserver saves all deleted files for at least
24 hours (which end up on the tape within that time, anyway).


Christos