"For the great enemy of truth is very often not the lie -- deliberate, contrived and dishonest -- but the myth -- persistent, persuasive and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the clichés of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought." JFK Yale University graduating class speech (June 11, 1962)

May the source be with you, but remember the KISS principle ;-) Softpanorama Search

Softpanorama
(slightly skeptical) Open Source Software Educational Society

This is a self-education oriented site that contains resources for the independently minded IT folks, critical to mainstream fads related to programming (especially scripting) and Unix system administration. While attending university has its value in itself, as a good university cultural environment can't be replicated elsewhere, for talented people independent study might save some money and can help to avoid excessive feeding of education sharks. Nevertheless, lifelong self-education is important and should be a goal in itself.

The main purpose of the "slightly skeptical" approach (which is a signature of the site) is to stimulate critical thinking about system administration and software development as professions, to reveal hidden elegance of Unix and its concepts and to stress the importance of scripting languages such as Perl. We try to eschew the conventionally favored obfuscations about IT workplace and related propaganda (for example about IT outsourcing) and expose the theater of absurd which often both academic and, especially, corporate IT represents (sometimes in the form of humor), It also warns about psychopathic bosses (toxic managers) such as micromanagers, bullies, narcissists and authoritarians as well as a standard corporate torture chamber called performance reviews.

In a way this is a site of the "resistance movement" against "disposable IT workers". Still this is an educational site not a propaganda site and unlike propaganda that manipulates people emotions and prejudges to impose propagandist's views, education tend to develop the ability of critical thinking.

Internet is a tool that gave us vast new opportunities of information exchange while at the same time tremendous possibilities of degrading of quality of this exchange in all major areas -- social, cultural, political and technical. In the latter role Internet serves as a spam channel, producing waterfalls of textual and visual spam fueled by advertising fees. In this sense filtration of information became much more important. You can use this site as one of such filters as links it provides for each topic are carefully evaluated.

For more information see About.

Recent updates:

• [May 20, 2012] Economics of Peak Energy : Cruise to Frugality Island for 401K Lemmings : Financial Humor : Glass-Steagall repeal
• [May 19, 2012] Russian Music Oldies : Red Army Choir : Bolshoy Children Choir
• [May 18, 2012] Troubleshooting OMU agents : Deinstallation of OMU agent
• [May 17, 2012] Sysadmin Horror Stories
• [May 16, 2012] Skeptic View on Unix Security : Softpanorama Laws of Computer Security
• [May 15, 2012] iLO 3 -- HP engineering fiasco
• [May 14, 2012] VNC on Linux
• [May 13, 2012] Economics of Peak Energy : Cruise to Frugality Island for 401K Lemmings : Financial Humor : Glass-Steagall repeal
• [May 12, 2012] Russian Music Oldies : Red Army Choir : Bolshoy Children Choir
• [May 11, 2012] Scriptorama : Open Source Software Development as a Special Type of Academic Research (Critique of Vulgar Raymondism) : A Second look at the Cathedral and the Bazaar : A Slightly Skeptical View on Scripting Languages : A Note on the Relationship of Brooks Law and Conway Law
• [May 10, 2012] Grid Engine : LAMP Stack : Apache Webserver
• [May 09, 2012] Linux Troubleshooting : Debugging
• [May 08, 2012] Regular Expressions -- the most popular nonprocedural language : AWK Regular Expressions : GNU grep Regular Expressions : Slightly Skeptical View on University Education
• [May 07, 2012] Scriptorama : iLO 3 -- HP engineering fiasco : Grid Engine : Conceptual Integrity : Pipes -- powerful and elegant programming paradigm : Prototype Based Object-Oriented Programming : SOCKS4 proxy
• [May 06, 2012] Economics of Peak Energy : Cruise to Frugality Island for 401K Lemmings : Financial Humor
• [May 05, 2012] Russian Music Oldies : Russian Choirs
• [May 04, 2012] Authoritarians : Paranoid Managers : Aggressive Incompetent Managers : Understanding Borderline Rage : The Fiefdom Syndrome : Office Stockholm Syndrom
• [May 03, 2012] Slightly Skeptical View on University Education
• [May 02, 2012] Bad Linux Advocacy FAQ (Raymondism FAQ)
• [May 01, 2012] Using -exec option with find
• Older entries

Softpanorama Switchboard

Switchboard -- Links, Links, Links...

Algorithms : Links : System Administration : Linux Administration : Red Hat : Suse : Commercial Unixes : AIX : HP-UX Administration : Solaris : Databases : Editors : OS design : Languages : Networking : Mail : Orthodox File Managers : Open Source Software Problems : Scripting : Skepticism : Security : Software Engineering : Social : Corporate Psychopaths : Micromanagers: Unix Tools : Unixification of Windows : WWW

Recent articles:

• "IT does not matter" fallacy and "Everything in the cloud" utopia
• Unix Find Tutorial

Created: May 16, 1996; Last modified: May 04, 2012