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Re: [LUG] today's meets and some observations etc.



On Saturday 25 September 2004 7:06, Neil Williams wrote:
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.


apologies for that, sometimes it slips out.


2. This was a Debian masterclass meeting, 

Oh come off it, it was nowhere near anything even approaching a masterclass...

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. 

mmm, there was nothing said that went over my head, and I am not a coder, and 
I did not feel out of my depth, and having owned and run my own servers (in 
addition to work stuff) I have some limited experience of sysadmin duties, 
and I wouldn't have characterised the topics discussed today as a technical 
or sysadmin masterclass...

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.

I was not attempting to blame anyone for anything, I was attempting to make a 
point, moreover a point that I think would be relevant to a Linux User 
Group's members enthusiasms and ambitions for their OS of choice.


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.

You deny my point, and then make it for me perfectly with this very paragraph.
Live-cd's and introducing them to people is little or no effort.


Even Microsoft are interested in it -
for they money, I would expect nothing less from astute businessmen

I don't see that users will get the 
choice. 

we differ, users always have choice.

Did you choose to not have MS-DOS around? 

yes I did as a matter of fact, came across it during work time of course, 
never ran it at home (please no comments about win9x being a gui on a dos 
shell)

Or to have IE thunking  
into 16bit code to release yet another vulnerability?

yes again.


Because you went to the meeting expecting something other than the topic
under discussion.

I went expecting nothing, I went to see __if__ high impact developments like 
knoppix and mepis live-cd's were making any impact at the mini con level, I 
was disappointed in that.


You learn nothing without getting involved. This was a masterclass meeting
- note the emphasis on class, as in learning.

You haven't read what I wrote, I have neither the inclination nor the ability 
to become a coder, and please stop referring to it as a masterclass, you 
demean the meaning of the word in exactly the same way as MCSE pundits demean 
IT Technician.


You'd feel differently if you'd asked one of the people there to fix your
shell.

my shell isn't broken, if it does get broken (and I honestly cannot recall the 
last time I had to deal with a broken shell) I can fix it in 30 minutes, 
guaranteed.
with all due respect to those who were there today, and without in any way 
wishing to demean their obvious abilities in the slightest, if I *needed* 
some shell hacking my first recourse would be to turn to those who 
contributed significant lumps of code to it.


Book the venue, propose a theme and we'll change the format, it really is
that simple.

venue isn't a problem
(obviously all concerned would need some advance warning)
theme is probably obvious from my previous email, evangelising windows users 
by giving them a linux solution on the day.



Well, that's it, rant over.

More of a troll really.

ah yes, the "anything that does not conform to my opinion must by definition 
be a troll" response.

indescribably sad.



I hope nobody is offended

Clearly, many would be offended by your offensive language - otherwise you
wouldn't have used the words you used.

oh come on for ***** sake, you hear worse at 7pm on the telly or in a primary 
school playground, I didn't use any words I did not hear other atendees utter 
today, admittedly I swear probably far too much, but I do that day in and  
day out and it is utterly pathetic to suppose it was done for no purpose 
other than to offend.


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.

I must disagree, there was no discussion on running your own inn server and 
tweaking the spools to fit on x size disk while maximising performance is y 
areas, there was no discussion on jpeg exploits, there was no discussion on 
tweaking your network to cope with malformed windows tcp/ip packets, what 
there was was what there has always been at these things, geeks geeking out 
and "hacking for the hell of it", which is great and something that I have 
absolutely zero problems with... unless of course you would care to correct 
me and give some examples of gnu/hurd running pukka servers on the backbone.



If anyone wants to harangue me about this off list or in person feel free
to mail me.

No, this stays on-list.

do you have a mandate to speak for everyone else?

I ATTEMPTED to make it very clear that I was NOT trying to upset or insult 
anyone in any way, shape or form.

Admittedly my language was a bit colourful, if there were minors present, but 
it was hardly extreme, however your (valid) point was taken and as you can 
see I have made the effort to ensure that there is a vulgarity filter in 
place now between my brain and the keyboard.

To brand me a troll and to claim that I would regret my trolling should I ever 
bork my shell is, frankly, the actions of someone who IS spoiling for a flame 
war, if you want one then fair enough, I quite enjoy a good flame, but I 
wouldn't like to inflict a petty squabble on the other list subscribers and 
as I have said several times, this WAS NEVER MY INTENTION, at any time.

good god man, one who plays the advanced technical specialist "masterclass" 
card simply CANNOT then turn around and pretend the such people do not along 
with the "geek" status inherit a propensity for saying things in such a 
manner that they might unintentionally ruffle the feathers of straights.

Let me ask you a question, and it is a serious question.

Do you feel that the main purpose of the LUGs is to provide a meeting place 
for deep geeks to hack? Or do you feel that the main purpose is to promote 
the use of Linux?

If it is the former (then LUG's have evolved over the years) then I must bid a 
graceful adieu to the DCLUG, for it will be utterly irellevant to me.

cheers

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