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Re: [LUG] Meeting to be booked by John.



On Tuesday 28 September 2004 7:03, Neil Williams wrote:
On Tuesday 28 September 2004 6:38 pm, john wrote:
On Tuesday 28 September 2004 5:51, Simon Waters wrote:
Where were you when we were organising all the big public events?

which big public events would they be then?

http://www.dclug.org.uk/index.php
Past Events

Linux Install Day - 29th April 2001 at Exeter Uni

Open Source Day - 27th April 2002 at Exeter Uni

St. Peter's School - 27th March 2003

Paignton Rugby/Cricket club 17th July 2003

Plymouth University 12th August 2003

St. Peter's School - 19th Feb 2004

August Meeting - 28th August 2004

is that it??
a year gap, then another year gap, then two others that year and two this 
year?

that's it?





before then, and I gotta tell you I genuinely cannot recall any big
public linux events being promoted locally at any time since then.

You weren't looking then were you?

what part of the word "promoted" don't you understand?

when the way people find out about a local linux event is by first finding the 
local linux group all you are going to get are people who are going out of 
their way to find something they know exists.

that's not promotion.


The Install Day, Open Source Day and Plymouth University meets were all big
public meetings in the local area. If you want to book something the size
of the NEC or the Pavilions, we'd be only to glad to come along with our
four bar extension leads, switches, hubs, Cat5, laptops, headless boxes,
possibly a projector and boundless enthusiasm for GNU/Linux.

I have nothing to repent so don't hold your breath expecting me to be
contrite.

Yes you have - swearing, trolling, rambling, grumbling and doing NOTHING to
make anything better. 

tell you what neil, kiss my ass.

I'm going to quote Fringe here. 

"Two things aren't shocking here. First is the typical slashdot response of, 
"Oh, they were idiots, they used idiots, obviously it's their fault." Which 
isn't really very helpful; most people are, by slashdot standards, idiots. 
The goal of modern commercial software is to lower the bar such that idiots 
can use it safely. (That's distinct from the goal of so much open-source 
software, of providing more power to the gurus while scaring away women and 
children, to build up the developer's technical cred.)

The other thing that isn't shocking is that Windows is perceived, by some, as 
being lower cost and more reliable. And again, slashdotters will argue the 
moon away that it ain't so. And, again, for non-idiots in their lexicon, 
they're correct. But on average, they're wrong.

Years ago I build a pretty powerful product, cross-platform. Runs on BSD, 
Linux and Windows, using Sybase, SQL Server or MySQL. All but one sale over 
the years was Windows. Why? Because that's what the businesses use. Lower 
training costs. When things go wrong, they're fixable via GUI. Don't need to 
find a guru, any convenient semi-geek can do the job.

I've been very annoyed by this. I really expected BSD and Linux to take off. 
But corporates lack sufficient geekpower, on average, to use Linux. And that 
is the reality that too few geeks are willing to cater to. And I say this as 
someone who has, in the last year, done hardcore commercial development on 
all three platforms."

end quote.

note the last bracketed sentence in the first paragraph.

people like that get in the way of converting desktops away from windows
people like that get in the way of new users adopting linux

me, I'll stick to the real world for now and stick my head back in linux mini 
cons in a year or two and see if anyone has woken up and smelt the coffee.

yes I know damn well I am very easy to label as an arrogant cantankerous 
bigoted bastard, but I get shit done, and I don't have a great deal of time 
for people who don't, and six un-publicised meets in three and a half years 
and more importantly an attitude that when someone comes along and says "hey 
guys, what about converting people" you resort to pseudo religious mode and 
brand them a troll instead of saying what EVERYONE knows is true, "yeah, it's 
too damned easy to zone out on the deep geek stuff, one of the psychological 
traits of being a nerd." then like I said kiss my ass.

I _KNOW_ I have all sorts of rough edges, and when they are pointed out to me, 
eg the swearing, even though I think it is bullshit I go "hey, can't expect 
other people to pander to my foibles if I don't do the same in return" and 
what happens, I still get accused of trolling....  well this troll had been 
doing stuff, and has spoken to people, had a venue IN TOWN where people would 
see it, has a couple of local companies happy to contribute (one was just 
about convinced to stump up a thousand mepis cd's) and a newsworthy political 
entity, and it takes people with rough edges and contacts to make that shit 
happen, but hey, you're right, you're way too leet for me and you'll get at 
least four or five more un-publicised meets in before longhorn ships and 
everything is DRM;d up the wazoo.

Anyone wants to mail me privately of come round and scream blue murder at me 
feel free, you're always welcome, but do it off list because as of now list 
mail for davenull is going to /dev/null

Kai, don't lose that passion man, it's beautiful.

I'm outta here.

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