Re: I hate OpsConsole!

["Urbanek, Marty" <Marty_Urbanek@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Yes, I hate all that cutesy GUI crap too, when it gets in the way of doing
my job. However, I also see the demise of this platform if we don't admit
that that cutesy crap sells and shed the green-screen image. That is why IBM
is "shoving that bloatware down our throats". They are trying to keep us
from becoming extinct. Same thing with that lousy Info Center that after
years and years still doesn't have anything as easy to search as the way it
was originally when the organization was electronic copies of physical
manuals. But it sure does look purrrty.

Wouldn't it be cool if they just built a small 5250 terminal right inside of
the iSeries hardware and call it a service console or system status display
something? I remember various components of the mainframe use to have their
own little keypads and displays, like in a 3990 control unit. This would
just be an extension of that same concept. "No sir, that's not a green
screen, it's just part of the power supply".

-Marty
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date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 20:53:07 -0600
from: Jay Maynard <jmaynard@xxxxxxxxxxx>
subject: Re: I hate OpsConsole!

On Sun, Nov 16, 2003 at 06:42:57PM -0800, James H. H. Lampert wrote:
> I've long suspected that IBM's refusal to make certain network-related
> functions accessible from the command line or from anything
> terminal-based is really just a way to violently shove one more piece of
> bloatware, i.e., Client Access (which is actually two pieces of
> bloatware: both the client and the server are unnecessarily bulky) down
> the throats of their users. Come to think of it, three pieces, unless
> OpsConsole/OpsNav are available for DOS, Macintosh, or Linux.

No, they're not. Therefore, you must have at least one Windows box. (I
haven't tried them under WINE, but I suspect they do not work.)

I truly don't understand why they place such a requirement on top of such a
notoriously brittle platform as Windows. As an old mainframe systems
programmer, I'm appalled at the master console being anything but a dumb
green screen, at least as an option.