hello, dave!<br><br>i am absolutely not afraid to speak out about what i feel is right. <br>and it is glad to have you in this discussion, as you both represent the computing services<br>of the university and the lug here. <br>
<br>i have just been to the computing services and they refused to adhere to their own policy.<br><br>i have moved a macosx installation to another machine (a macbook pro in this case)<br>and archived the gentoo installation. then installed the ubuntu 9.10 on the macbook<br>
(and people, everything worked almost out of the box, and i was running a <b>single boot</b>) <br>machine, powered by a fresh linux kernel in about 20 minutes. <br>so, i came to the helpdesk, after what the fellow there called rob ward, saying:<br>
- hello, here's a young gentleman, vladimir, who wanted to speak to you<br><br>i pointed out that i didn't want to bother rob and therefore never asked to speak to him,<br>after what this person once again repeated that "vladimir here wants to speak to you"<br>
<br>then they asked me to email them my hw addresses so that they can register them.<br>and .... they refused to do it 5 minutes later, on the grounds of the fact, that the hardware<br>is apple computers and had a mac os x install originally on it. <br>
<br>now, how do you explain this? what shoud i do next, dave? <br><br>the lesson that i was referring to in my email was about showing that there could be several <br>ways of bypassing their procedures. imagine - if i initially wasn't being honest to them,<br>
i would just call them and said, that this is an iPhone i am trying to connect, quoting the hw <br>addr. that's it - job done. but no, i tried to explain that by no means i will agree with the sophos <br>draconic EULA (<a href="http://vovka-j.livejournal.com/46165.html">http://vovka-j.livejournal.com/46165.html</a>).<br>
so now i will try to get the access to the network legally. using a linux machine.<br>and then will be trying to change the discrepancies in their policy, the misleading<br>information they provide on the web site and the printed out brochures, also,<br>
will fill in a complain about the Sophos EULA, that it should be removed from the<br>distributed binary. i would install this useless anti-virus just to pass through the<br>security check (following the guidelines) and then remove it without much thinking <br>
if only not this EULA. and the question here is not OS specific. it is the question<br>of either computing services negligence (they distribute the binary which has an irrelevant<br>requirement to agree with EULA) or the broader issue of discrimination of my software<br>
choices (in this case the choice being not to install the software that requires everything,<br>including letting someone to my premises). <br>in the end of the day - why is a choice of food (vegetarianism), a choice of which church to <br>
go to on a sunday (religion) is more important than my ethical views on software licensing? <br><br><br>vlad.<br><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">2009/12/17 Dave Love <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:d.love@liverpool.ac.uk">d.love@liverpool.ac.uk</a>></span><br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><div class="im">Vladimir <<a href="mailto:vladimir.jakubovskij@gmail.com">vladimir.jakubovskij@gmail.com</a>> writes:<br>
<br>
> But I want to teach them a lesson.<br>
> I need a laptop of any sort for a couple of days - to change the mac addr so it matches the<br>
> hw addr of my macbook, to walk in there, register, close the lid of the Linux laptop,<br>
> open the macbook, and say - Hello, you've been framed :D<br>
<br>
</div>You might be more careful what you say in public, no matter how stupid<br>
you think people in Computing Services and their rules are -- just a<br>
suggestion. Merely annoying your BOFH is rarely a good idea, let alone<br>
posting something like that potentially in front of them, and I assure<br>
you they don't need lessons on MAC addresses. If nothing else, consider<br>
that this sort of thing (archived) may not give a good impression of the<br>
group, and doesn't help any effort to improve support for non-Windows<br>
users in the university in case everyone is tarred with the same brush.<br>
<div class="im"><br>
--<br>
(Dr) Dave Love<br>
‘E-Science’, Computing Services Department, University of Liverpool<br>
AKA <a href="mailto:fx@gnu.org">fx@gnu.org</a><br>
<br>
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