[nycbug-talk] fave BSD tips/tricks?

[George Rosamond]

Jerry B. Altzman wrote:
> on 8/26/2009 6:49 PM Miles Nordin said the following:
>>>>>>> "jba" == Jerry B Altzman <jbaltz at 3phasecomputing.com> writes:
>>    jba> Why are you developing on production servers?
>> You're not.
> 
> Well, that's a grand relief! I can let my breath go now!
> 
>> What I think Jerry's really saying is ``why do I have to put up with
>> people smarter than me with all their fancy smart-person tools using
>> my machines?  I should have a separate space where I don't have to
> 
> Ah, well you see, there you're wrong. Please note that I don't deign to 
> put words in your mouth. Yet, it seems that you have enough words for 
> both of us! This must be my lucky day!
> 
> I have never claimed that you don't need tools on development servers. 
> Yes, wireshark is k-ool and 1338 and all that...but YAGNI. Capture with 
> tcpdump, carry it offline, and analyze it later.
> 
> It works for us physicists, and we found the top quark.
> 
> (Dtrace is something of a special case, for which I'd venture to say 
> that I'd make accommodations for it. X11? Why? I'm still curious why 
> you'd want to log onto a production server only to throw up an xcalc 
> window from there? You can't run xcalc on your local machine?)
> 
>> accomodate them, so I'm maximally free to do the small job for which I
>> was hired, a job at which I'm provably quite good.''  I think this is
> 
> Sigh. Well, whatever, I'm sure you're the smartest person in the room 
> there with yourself.
> 
>> a really valid view and a strong point.  yeah these guys do break
>> things.  so long as you state it honestly, that what you're really
>> doing is making your box deliberately rude, ponderous, and unwelcoming
>> to keep other authorized people off of it, maybe people your
>> management told you ``let them on,'' not defending from outside
>> attackers.
> 
> Or, alternatively, you're doing things not to make it friendly for 
> users, but to make it friendly for processing. You know, computing 'n' 
> stuff.
> The box isn't there to make the developers' lives easy. It's there to 
> run the frikkin nuclear bomb simulation. While we're at it, by the way, 
> it ALSO has the added bonus of making it hard for unauthorized users to 
> do nasty things. Moby win!
> 
>> however...using some of these powerful complicated observational tools
>> is, serious win, like night and day, and if you can welcome these
>> people in comfortably instead of talking obstructionist circles in
>> meetings, you will all win big.  I wish I'd brought it up so clearly.
> 
> I know I know...and you CAN do that...but you don't have to do it on 
> production servers. Or you can bring in your specialized tools - when 
> you need them - and take them off again. (An aside with performance 
> measurement: be careful, lest you carefully measure your tools. But 
> that's a different issue--one that by and large people also ignore.)
> 
>>    jba> Once again, how can you have MORE clutter when FEWER things
>>    jba> are there?
>> haha yeah.  I leave this as an exercise for the reader.
> 
> You're the smartest guy in the room there, I'm sure you and Euler can 
> figure it out.
> 
> Thanks, Miles, I'm sure you're a fun guy and all, go put words in 
> someone else's mouth.

Okay guys. . . enough.  Jerry, Miles, etc., shhhh.

end of this tangent of the thread.

no more posts on this crap.

g