[TriLUG] Mozilla - News Filtering?

[Jos Purvis]

On Son, 23 Sep 2001, Scott Chilcote wrote:
> After getting much razzing over still using pine and slrn at my last 
> company, I've been trying to get the hang of Mozilla (.94) to replace 
> them.  
*snip!*

*sigh*

<p type="rant">
	Y'know, I just don't get this.  When I worked for ${ISP}[0], I used to
get grief about using CLI mail clients like mutt and pine for my email needs
(along with the rest of the sysadmins--this became a PHB vs. geek issue),
instead of the "corporate standard", which was Netscape.  Now, looking around
the office there, I'd see people using Pegasus, Eudora, LookOut![1], LookOut
Express![2] and so forth, who would get no grief whatsoever, so I know it
wasn't a support issue[3].  Apparently there's some commandment that goes
along with being in manglement[4] that says 'pointy-clicky=good;
command-line=bad'.  I suspect this is the same commandment that leads to truly
outstanding acts of intelligence like mandating migrations of all the servers
to Windows, 'cause hey:  it's pointy-clicky, right?  Must be good.  Mm-hmm.
	Don't get me wrong:  I'm not some GUI Luddite who attempts to do
everything imaginable with the keyboard so as to avoid laying hands on the
unclean, button-bearing spawn of Xerox PARC[5].  I do my share of
pointy-clicky, thanks, and sometimes even find it (*gasp*) more useful than
attempting the same thing from a command line.  Occasionally.  When the moon
is full.  My *point* here, and I do have one, is to wonder in my artless
soliloquizing fashion why you feel (or more properly, your pointy-haired
manglement feels) you have to fix something that obviously isn't broken.
You've been using mutt and slrn for years, they seem to work for you:  what is
adding some pointy-clicky thing on the desktop going to do for the corporate
image or your productivity?  Unless you're just feeling that your mouse has
been underutilized lately, and needs a quick pick-me-up, what's the urge to
switch[6]?  Seems like, unless they're moving the whole organization to the
same (that is, *really* the same, version, release number and all) piece of
software, that mandating that everyone switch to something graphical is just
going to result in a lot of wasted time spent learning new clients that don't
work nearly as well as what you're used to, for no particularly good reason
other than that some pointy-haired individual wants your desktop[7] to look
nicer. 

	--Jos "Of course that's just my opinion.  I could be wrong." Purvis

[0]  Or more properly, $[I,A]SP_THAT_SHALL_REMAIN_NAMELESS.
[1]  Couldn't resist.  The Magic 8-Ball said, "Outlook not so good."  Still
have to ask it about Exchange, though.
[2]  Couldn't resist again.  Too easy.
[3]  As in 'you can't use something the desktop support folks won't fix if it
breaks'.  Which would have been funny:  we never let desktop support come
within 50 feet of our computers, and thus did all our own support anyway.
Wouldn't be very good sysadmins if we couldn't...
[4]  I know, I know, there are people on this list who are managers.  Suffice
it to say:  there is a difference between "being a manager" (and thus possibly
still a geek) and "being in management", which is a state of mind, perhaps
akin to intimate knowledge of Cthulhu.
[5]  Viz. http://www.arsdigita.com/asj/history-of-computer-science
[6]  OK, yes, I understand:  you put up resistance here, you get labeled "not
a team player".  Grr.  It becomes annoying, you cave, you move on with your
life.  Yes, I use LookOut! at work.  No, I don't have a choice, thanks for
asking (and yes, they really use nothing but the Outlook-proprietary ports.
IMAP and POP need not apply.[8])  *grumblefsckmutter*
[7]  The visual-metaphorical one, I mean.  If anything, I've found that using
graphical MUAs tends to keep my physical desktop *dirtier*, on account of the
coffee and blue words I tend to spray when it quits randomly while reading
mail.
[8]  Oddly, although they religiously insist on requiring LookOut!, they don't
seem to use anything other than the email system.  Even our phone numbers are
distributed as an Excel spreadsheet, which is another rant entirely, as is
LookOut!'s "support" for plain-text email.  Sheesh.

-- 
/  Jos Purvis (purvis at melete.org) ||  Yet Another Security Geek  \
+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| I just can't haiku / I can never remember / how many...MY EYE! |
|     -- Mike Sphar, demonstrating his poetic abilities in SDM   |