Linux-related job postings - Hopkinton NH School District

[Fred]

...
> Oh, and their in-house IT support department consisted of 6 people to 
> support 150 newspapers (with an average of 25 computers each) all across 
> the Eastern seaboard.
> 
> So, it is not just education that has these issues.

Very illuminating. Thanks.

Believe it or not, Cisco back in 1999 had a policy of supporting
Netscape no higher than 4.x (and I forget what the x was.) But this was
annoying from a different standpoint because the intranet servers would
detect what Netscape you were running and simply *refuse* to work with
anything higher than 4.x. Since Cisco had a big internal push to
actually fulfill the dream of the "paperless office", nearly all
reports, documents, travel expenses, and corporate credit card usage had
to be filed online on the intranet. 

I always kept two browsers installed, Netscape 4 and 6 (I think that's
what was out at the time). 

Cisco was never stingy with its desktops, though, and we engineers could
even order new machines if our managers OKed it. But we all had
incentive to keep costs down because we wanted CSCO to be up as high as
possible. Stock opts ruled the day back then.

Cisco was both a very cool and very annoying place to work for. Cool
because we were pushing the edge with router and switch technology.
Annoying for a software engineer because the hardware got most of the
glory, and software's sole purpose was to support the hardware. Still, I
didn't complain much with all the stock opts sitting on my lap. ;-)
Cisco will always have a warm place in my wal-- er, "heart." Cisco was
largely a Unix shop -- most despised Windows. Rather passionately in
some cases. And the IOS operating system used in most of the routers was
stripped down and streamlined for *speed* AND *reliability*, without
compromising either. The net works. No excuses.

Also many worshipped John Chambers almost like a cult leader, but I
didn't say that. I wasn't around after March 2000, so I don't know what
happened after that, though my guess is that the "worship" aspect fell
with CSCO and the rest of the stock market. 8-)

-Fred