8 Apr 2000 tony   » (Journeyer)

Anti-hacking
I volunteered to help a friend set up a Win98 box at his work to behave as a masqing router. I offered to set up a Linux box earlier this year (using an old 486), but he resisted a little. Somewhere up the non-profit chain of command, someone decided to spend a lot of money to get a new PIII running W98 to do the same job.

This is the only reason for life for this box.

I suggested we set up the old 486 anyway, and use it instead of the PIII, and put the PIII to good use, but Thor tells me we can't do that; the powers-that-be have determined the new box must be put to this use, using Win98.

Times like this, I want to revive primal scream therapy.

How many other cycles are being wasted around the globe, for this same short-sighted misuse of technology? Groups that do social work won't spend a dime more than necessary on their clients, but they'll spend thousands of dollars on computers that will do nothing but serve mail for 4 people, or do this masqing router bit, or act as a print server. (Axis makes $400 print servers that work with MS-Windows networks, but people insist on buying computers to do the task.)

Does anyone have hard numbers? I'd suspect I could put together a fair cluster with the misused computers just here in Sitka. (pop: 8513).

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