For the last year CIS has been talking about how great the EXCHANGE will be and how evil Unix mail is. Well they spend 100 grand on the exchange system and they can't get it up and running! They could have spend $4 k on a nice dual computer running FreeBSD that would have accomplished the same task as their 100 grand pet project. Unix has a lot of email server apps that will let you share calendars and schedule appointments very similar to exchange. In addition they are invulnerable to Visual Basic Viruses.

That aint no shit... we should sue them, especially if any email is lost... I mean people have job offers and other important things that are sent to the UMR Email... Can we sue them?

Of course you can try to sue them, that's the whole point of the US Justice System, you can do anything you want if you think they have performed an injustice towards you. Whether or not they accept your case or if you win...... well that's still to be decided.

Instead of suing them, how about getting a new CIS department? While I can't name a specific example, I bet there are a lot of places out there running exchange servers without any problems (is Hotmail run on exchange servers?). The problem is that the people in CIS are too stupid to maintain anything. Is there any real reason that it takes two minutes to log into the NT machines? I never took the time to figure out all of the scripts that are run when you log in, but I'm sure it does a lot more then set up the AFS crap. Did anyone in CIS stop and ask if that was really needed? Their track record with hardware is worse. There were some problems with one of the machines in CS 207. It was gone for more the two months. None of the sound cards seem to ever work in any of the machines. I have a feeling stupidity has a lot more to do with the problems then software.

Yep, they are pretty much incompetent. I worked in a lot of places that use Exchange and it works.
According to CIS, they bought state of the art Dell servers and there are some hardware issues that are making the exchange crash. I think CIS did not do enough testing before they started moving people. We need to sign a petition and send it to the chancellor and have him look into this matter. I told CIS that they need to leave the Unix system alone and maybe get some people to upgrade their machines. I am sure a Dual Athlon MP machine running FreeBSD can handle mail for the entire campus :) But hey, lets spend 100 GRAND. Tuition is going up next year because the university does not have enough money but they can always spare 100 GRAND on a computer system to be the most "wire" campus in the universe. Heck, if the campus is not "most wired" then people won't go there, right?

And while we are ranting about wasting money, does anyone want to talk about Peoplesoft? I believe that came with a $7 million price tag.

if it's so easy, then why don't all you assholes go apply for a job at CIS.

I don't deny the total lack of competence shown by CIS but...

If you guys didn't spend so much time bitching and whining like little girls, I'm sure you could MAINTAIN our email servers in the time saved. (since it's so EASY) OR graduate from here in less than 8 years, and get a job with a company that can pay its computer nerds decent money.

so be grateful for the scraps you're gettin, cuz when that budget cut comes into effect next year, we probably won't even have email anymore.

-j

get real, the campus is dependent on email..... that will never happen

anyways I have to support the *nix ideas on this one, cheap as hell and much more dependable.

out
Crackity

ps: thank god I havent switched over yet....... waiting til all the bugs are out.... but when is that going to happen? :)

You can thank god for not switching, but in the next couple weeks, you get moved whether you like it or not. Forced migrations will be coming up.

And, as I said in the other thread, UMR did NOT unilateraly decide to spend 130 grand on those boxes, UM SYSTEM decided to spend A HELL OF A LOT MORE THAN THAT to do this same thing at EVERY UM SYSTEM CAMPUS. You people are so intent on blaming Rolla for your problems that you seem to have forgotten that they have bosses too. You think the server group enjoys this? You think they're back in the switch closet laughing about this or something? Hell no. You say they're incompetent, but I would venture that NONE of you has EVER had the slightest amount of experience with the broad array of network interface and user load challenges that the CIS staff deals with every day. You think just because you rigged a mail server once on your *nix box you know how it works? Chances are very good that you have no idea how to scale e-mail services to accomodate 7000 users, let alone interface that same system with a statewide network of servers, and moreover, not because you want to, or because it's the best way, but because that's what the higher ups demand. All this bitching and whining, and I would bet that most of you don't even have a clue who the server guys are. You have this "Berlin-Wall Commie-Kremlin" megalith in your head with 'CIS' stamped on it and you blame it for everything computer related. Those guys have a hard job. Your little *Nix box next to your desk might seem infaliable, but if you let 7000 people login to it, I guarantee they'll find problems and issues you've never dreamed of.

Stop the bitching.
It makes you sound foolish.
Does it suck that e-mail is down? Surely. But trying to pin it all on your own little imaginary incompetent CIS staff sure won't bring it back any faster.

Furb

I find it hard to believe someone can so strongly defend the CIS. While some of what you say may be true they have in the past done several things that should put them to shame in any sane student's mind. It's sort of the same as the people who post (often anonymously) saying "if you don't like it, leave!" or "bitching about it won't help" etc. If someone doesn't ever complain about something when it sucks, it will NEVER get fixed. And while complaining HERE on this forum is most likely not going to help anything, it is about the equivalent of a few people agreeing on something sucking before notifying anyone in the loop of it. It's sorta like if you had teachers that gave you all 100's on everything even though your work sucked, when you graduated with a 4.0 you'd still suck and nobody would keep you hired.

Although CIS is forced to do a lot of dumb things by MU, they could be a lot worse. I think our CIS department is actually one of the top ones out there. Of course I base this off my experience the first year I was here. I mean shit we had our own static ips and hostnames my freshman year. The only other campus I know of that has that is MIT.

-Ryan

Yeah, but that doesn't change that a failure like with the email machine would have resulted in somebody getting axed if it were a business.

Oh yeah.. crackity that last part about email was a joke. I knew I should have labelled it as such...

As far as Rolla conspiracies, I don't understand what the problem is. I love this place. It seems like half the people think they are geniuses, and that they belong at MIT. Well, I know I wouldn't make it there... And I've met maybe 3 people that I honestly believe could succeed there.

Forums are great. I get annoyed every time I read them cuz it seems like everyone has a spikey stick shoved up their ass and they wanna take it out on the world. (It's not just this one... trust me.) And yet, I can't stay away. Maybe I have my own spikey stick? :)

Oh and um, um, um...

533|< 0//||2

-j

This is offtopic, but oh well...

{rant mode="on"}
There's a simple reason why many of us aren't at MIT: money. Granted, there's financial aid for just about any college/uni out there, but chances are slim that you'll get anything, especially if you're a male WASP from "Smalltown, USA" with no local scholarships.

That said, Rolla's not that bad. It seems most of the bitching comes from, how should I say it?, "big city-folk" who are used to having night clubs, dance halls, etc, etc, etc and are suddenly thrust in to a small town, ummm, "situation." Coming from a place about the size of Rolla, I was shocked at the similarities between here and home. YES, there's not much to do on the surface. That's why you have a brain. Find something to do. Go outside. Get to know the area. It may be shocking to find out, but there's more to the weekends than alcohol.
{/rant}

I'm actually from a large city, full of nightclubs and such, and frankly, there have been many times when I've found Rolla to be more entertaining. For all the attractions that the big city claims to offer, they are rarely truly entertaining, and the few that are close down quickly in favor of yet another dance club, drive through beer barn or tenny bopper high school hang out. IMO, I think all Rolla really needs is a bigger movie theater, some new restaurants (of the non-subway variety) and something like an arcade/putt-putt, etc. Even if you couldn't put it all in Rolla, spread it our amongst St. James, Cuba, etc., as they are all only a few minutes away.

(End of rant) :)

This is a bit off-topic, but in light of all the "I could built a *nic bsd mail server", this article might be interesting:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/24239.html
Apparently John Draper (Cap'n Crunch for you phreakers) has come out of the dark.