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In all fairness, the city manager often isn't a public office, but one appointed by the mayor. However, the point of the city manager is to know a lot about a lot of things, to keep all aspects of the city running smoothly, and to also know when he doesn't know something, and to then consult someone else about it. That's the only way to make good decisions in an office as broad as that one. He obviously doesn't know how to do the second one, and for that alone should no longer be in his office, because with anyone, the stuff they don't know is a much larger set than that they do know.

"It's frustrating to see people with such a lack of people-skills hold a public office."

I think Taylor should make a public apology to CentOS, I'd love to see that get on international news. The linked article felt like a euphemism in comparisson to the real thing. While it's true that he didn't resort to vulgarities as I recall, he was still rude and arrogant and couldn't stop posturing with FBI threats. Simply refusing to get help from someone who knew what they were doing by claiming that he knew enough with his supposed 22 years of experience is nothing less than arrogance, god forbit his geek pride gets hurt when he has to admit he doesn't know everything. Even after CentOS sorted his problem out for him he still implied that the fault lied with them by telling them that if they had come up with the information sooner he wouldn't have had to threaten them.

And of course when you think the guy's finally finished, here comes this article with the monkey flinging yet more poo around: "“This is just a bunch of freaks out there that don’t have anything better to do,” he said. “When I came in to work Monday morning, I had about 500 e-mails, plus anonymous phone calls from all the geeks out there. [CentOS is] a free operating system that this guy gives away, which tells you how much time he’s got on his hands.”"

If that guy was working for me a simply firing wouldn't be sufficient, I'd be pretty tempted to boot his ass into orbit. It's funny how he insulted CentOS for making the OS he gets to enjoy for free, yet if the same thing had happened with Windows he would be paying for the whole experience, what an ungratefull asshole.

Give the guy some flack.

That's what we're doing.

What kind of arrogant S.O.B. threatens to call the FBI? Have you ever been in an IRC channel where some idiot comes in, and threatens to call the FBI or police on you when his internet connection keeps dropping? This is almost exactly the same thing, and I'm kind of annoyed that the CentOS people responded at all to him, even before the threat.

I mean, if they had just politely steered him towards Apache troubleshooting, they would have done their job. He could call the FBI all he wants, but chances are that their investigators have more of a clue than he does - at the very least, I'm sure they have a direct line to their IT guys.

"There is a large gap between who have in-depth knowledge of computers and networking, and those who do not. And from the other side it is possibly hard to comprehend to see what is going on."

Indded, and and that is why, as the city manager, it is his *JOB* to consult people who *DO* know. It's not his job to be an ignorant a$$.
He could have avoided a lot of the bad publicity that followed by doing the professional thing and say he got in over his head and that he made a mistake. He didnt and now what has happened is noones fault but his own.

here is a large gap between who have in-depth knowledge of computers and networking, and those who do not. And from the other side it is possibly hard to comprehend to see what is going on.[/i]

True, but this is a guy with supposidly 22 YEARS OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY EXPERIENCE!

Lets translate this into 'Joe Blogs' speak; it would be the equivilant of saying, (setting in New Zealand), "how can you be out of bacon! with 60million sheep!" (yes, a league player visiting New Zealand actually said just that).

I would be ashamed of myself if I got 22 years of experience and make a gigantic mistake like this.

I'd guess that these "22 years of experience" of his are turning the computer on, using Word and Solitaire and shutting it down. With maybe one or two extra courses in "How to use the Internet Explorer".

No. That's not how these people react. No matter how big it gets, it will fuel him and convince him evermore that he was right. He will never understand.

More like Basil Fawlty's bellhop really.

No, Manuel isn't an a$$. He's just a guy who tries his best. Mr Taylors arrogance and ignorance is much more like Basil.

" With statements like this, it's obvious CentOS people haven't been in the enterprise business for long. Instead of replying in a calm matter, Hughes replied in full anger. "

Absolutely not. How can you contend such a thing with a straight face? I've dealt with plenty of large organizations and received far less favourable responses. Let us not forget that he was being baited by someone who wasn't even a "customer". His response was commendable and anything more pandering on his point would have only encouraged Jerry into worse behaviour than he was already exhibiting.

"Had Hughes answered proberly, all this fiasco would have been avoided. His response wasn't "commendable" at all. What Hughes did was a classic newbie error. He replied with throwing more gazoline onto the fire."

What are you talking about? What would have been a proper response in your opinion, a full bendover? Jerry sends off an ill-tempered email, making demands and threats and you suggest that Mr. Hughes very restrained and even helpful response was inappropriate and caused the issue? It sounds to me that you need to review the facts a little bit more objectively and without the bias that "the customer is always right". Jerry was not and is not a customer of Mr. Hughes nor did he claim to have any desire to be. He demanded satisfaction from someone who had no responsibility to provide any service to him at all. In most places, if you glove slap someone you are asking for much worse than the helpful responses that Mr. Hughes provided.

Edited 2006-04-03 16:07

He replied extremely kindly to Taylor.

The mere fact Taylor claims 22 years of experience and doesn't even know about index.html shows how stupid he is, and how wonderfully calm and nice the reply from Hughes was.

Whatever..

The real sinners in this story is hosting company. They said they weren't running CentOS while they actually were.

Taylor should give CentOS an apology and find another company to host the website of Tuttle.

Hughes replied calmly to all the nonsense coming from Taylor.

Of course the reply wasn't overly kind, but it's not supposed to be.

If somebody blames you for the errors done by other persons, you probably won't be capable of answering as nicely as Hughes did.

The mere fact you can Hughes for doing so much to help Taylor shows how much of a Tuttlemoron you are yourself.

The only better thing Hughes could have done would have been to reply: "Not our problem. Contact your host."

And simply keep replying that.

Considering how ignorant Taylor is, I too feel sorry for the city.

Hughes replied in full anger.

No he didn't. Read the e-mails.

"We hope you are happy with it, since we produced it for free and you are able to use it without paying us ... and are even threatening to have us arrested for providing to you free of charge."

He did reply in full anger. He should have just pointed out the obvious problem and shut his mouth (aka no side remarks).

---------------------

His reply is not "in full anger". He probably shouldn't have thrown in the two side comments ("I feel sorry for your city" and the one you cite above) in his first e-mail. However, considering the tone he got from Jerry Taylor - who certainly could've acted more professionally throughout this whole exchange - I think his initial reply was fairly calm. "In full anger"? No way.

Why should Mr. Hughes have to shut his mouth and put up with that kind of crap? He's a human too. Not only that, but CentOS is provided for FREE. He has no obligation to be polite in the face of abuse. None. He's not a public servant - unlike Mr. Taylor who, ironically, was rude from the very start.

Hughes could have just not replied. Or give out a canned reply telling the user to referring Taylor to their IT dept or the CentOS forums for further help in web server trouble shooting. But Hughes didn't. He filled that reply with a big cup of "We hope you are happy with it", "we produced it for free".

But Hughes DID tell Taylor to seek out an IT personnel in his own department. Taylor refused that suggestion, very likely because there is no IT person in his dept. I'd be shocked if Taylor IS the IT dept...

Oh and, reporting Taylor to ISP for abuse... sound familiar?? Replace ISP with another 3 letter acronym. Yeah, you got it

"Oh and, reporting Taylor to ISP for abuse... sound familiar?? Replace ISP with another 3 letter acronym. Yeah, you got it "

Reporting someone to their ISP for abuse is a minor event and serves to make the internet a safer and friendlier place. Abusing someone and threatening to report them to the FBI because you couldn't find your way out of a closet with a map on the other hand is malicious and qualifies someone as being the dangerous type who should be reported in order to keep the internet safe.

For that matter I don't know how people can sympathize with Taylor who, rather than simply reading the very clear page sitting in front of him (like this one: http://centos.hughesjr.com/testing/noindex_new.html ), resorted instead to having a temper tantrum.

At the very least maybe this will teach Jerry Taylor some manners and self restraint.

The Open Source aspect doesn't matter in this case. The City is paying for hosting services. Replacing Apache with IIS would have amounted to the same thing.

Actually, that would have been funnier, because Microsoft wouldn't even have responded without a $35 support fee charged to his credit card. Imagine poor Jerry's outrage then.

He did reply in full anger.

No he didn't, and especially not in the passage you quoted. At the very worst he is slightly sarcastic, which is quite understandable given the circumstances. But even then he managed to retain a polite, diplomatic tone.

You're just using this incident as an excuse to further your own anti-Linux agenda.

I think that the "I feel sorry for your city" comment does come across as a little rude (not that Mr. Taylor wasn't rude to begin with). Most of what Hughes said was very reasonable and calm. I am wondering if Hughes didn't actually mean "I am sorry that your city's web page is not working". I think that fits in more with what he was saying. Of course, I can't read minds...

You're way off man.

Hughes replied in a very very kind way, trying to explain to a person without any knowledge whatsoever, what was going on, including pointing him to the right place for information.

Taylor started a flamewar and the mere fact that we can laugh at his stupidity makes him attack the rest of the world.

Look at the way he talks about 'geeks'.

If anything, Taylor's sheer stupidity and accusations forced CentOS to be defensive.

As I always say.. "you can lead an ass to knowledge, but you can't make him think."

those are the problems that happens when trying to save a buck. don't accept cheap imitations insist on the best. the most trusted brand name worldwide for over 20yrs and it's installed on 90% of the desktops. with award winning text support. and it even supports DRM, always demand on the best. demand for Microsoft products.

Whatever they're paying you, they're paying you too much for this pityful attempt at guerilla marketing.

Grandparent is a shill? Hmmm.. sounds sarcastic for me

Don't insult Homer!

Ay, where did my "ing" go?

Your keyboard was infected with the CentOS virus.

I have to second that.

The Apache test page reads:
"If you have issues with the content of this site, contact the owner of the domain, not the CentOS project."

It's that easy.

Taylor's bio said he had a degree in Electrical Engineer, so I wouldn't necessarily expect him to know much about a web server.

Did his little display of stupidity force the university to take back his degree?

1. Jerry Taylor is paid $63K a year, which is public record, which you can verify.

2. No one expects him to be able to administer a Linux machine, but it's fair to expect him to not be a complete dick via email, especially when it's been pointed out that he's wrong.

3. Anyone who is so obnoxious and arrogant deserves this sort of ridicule.

"emailing Tuttle officials 800+ times, plus calling, leaving voicemails, yada yada.. While the initial story was amusing, the response makes the open source community look very unprofessional irregardless of if it was warranted or not."

Oh, give it a rest.

*I* am part of the OSS community, whatever that means, and *I* didn't call him...It doesn't say ANYTHING about this supposed OSS community more than Muslims burning buildings over a cartoon.