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On Saturday 25 September 2004 6:01 pm, john wrote:
I want to say something here, but first I want to make it abundantly clear that this is in no way any form of personal attack or criticism of anyone either in particular or in general, just some observations.
1. NEVER swear - this list is publicly archived. I've just had to hand-edit the archive version to remove your unsavoury and unwarranted vocabulary. I would recommend that you refrain from forcing me to do that in future. 2. This was a Debian masterclass meeting, NOT a welcome newbies to the wonders of free software meeting. I'm sorry if you thought it would be newbie centric, but ALL the discussions about the meeting were about advanced / technical / sysadmin stuff that requires knowledge and a little programming. That was the design of the meeting - you cannot blame the members for doing what they intended from the start. I'm sorry if you thought it would be a different kind of meeting, book a venue and prepare a topic - we'll gladly troop along and do a real Welcome mat show, it's been done before. However, do allow time - polished performances and liveCD's take time to prepare. Technical wizzo is much less work because it's what most of the people attending such a meeting are doing 24/7.
and I feel Kai's vision (and I think "vision" is an appropriate word for the huge enthusiasm he clearly displays) of the browser replacing the desktop is an example of that, it's never going to happen, and it's never going to happen because USERS aren't interested.
Even Microsoft are interested in it - I don't see that users will get the choice. Did you choose to not have MS-DOS around? Or to have IE thunking into 16bit code to release yet another vulnerability?
Finally linux has grown up to be a serious contender... so, back to the plot. I stick my toe in today and see the same old same old, attendees largely split into two camps..
Because you went to the meeting expecting something other than the topic under discussion.
take a choice, get a working computer system by installing gnu/hurd and spending a good part of the day hacking the loader and disk partitions, or do it by sticking in a live-cd and typing "sudo knoppix-installer" and sitting back for 30 minutes.
You learn nothing without getting involved. This was a masterclass meeting - note the emphasis on class, as in learning.
old farts like me will take the latter, because hacking the bourne again shell is something we do not call productive work,
You'd feel differently if you'd asked one of the people there to fix your shell.
meanwhile the crediton guys go home with bugger all, and several hundred clients / users are still only being exposed to windows, even though there are better linux solutions out there.
Book the venue, propose a theme and we'll change the format, it really is that simple.
Well, that's it, rant over.
More of a troll really.
I hope nobody is offended
Clearly, many would be offended by your offensive language - otherwise you wouldn't have used the words you used.
or upset or sees it as any sort of personal attack, it certainly wasn't meant that way, and if I've trampled all over someone's pet budgie then I apologise unreservedly, but from my point of view everyone who doesn't walk away from one of these things clutching a live-cd and with deb testing installed via livecd going "WOW!" and itching to show it to their friends is a missed opportunity.
If this was a 'SoftwareFreedomDay event or LinuxInstallDay, maybe a Let's Start You in GNU/Linux day, perhaps a Come and See GNU/Linux day' then fine, you could expect live CD's and lots of handouts. We've done that. This meeting was the other kind - technical stuff for those who do the technical work.
If anyone wants to harangue me about this off list or in person feel free to mail me.
No, this stays on-list. -- Neil Williams ============= http://www.codehelp.co.uk/ http://www.dclug.org.uk/ http://www.isbn.org.uk/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/isbnsearch/ http://www.biglumber.com/x/web?qs=0x8801094A28BCB3E3
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