[dundee] OLPC Videos...niiiiiiiiiice!

[Gary Short]

Lee Hughes wrote:
> Hmm... maybe you'd like to explain your recent blog entry
> 
> here http://twitter.com/garyshort
> 
> and quote
> '
> Wow, the morons on the Linux list are worse than the morons on 
> CodeProject, how is that possible?! 12:50 PM January 18, 2008 
> <http://twitter.com/garyshort/statuses/613397672> from web
> 
> and
> 
> Good morning Twitterati. I went to a Linux user group meeting last 
> night. Wow, never met such a bunch of tin-foil-hat-wearing loons :-) 
> 09:22 AM January 18, 2008 
> <http://twitter.com/garyshort/statuses/612862912> from web
> '

Hi Lee; sure I'll explain what I meant by these posts. The night before 
I came to your user group I was presenting at a .Net user group based at 
the Caledonian University in Glasogw. As this group is based in a Uni it 
attracts a lot of students, these students have a mix of interests both 
MS and open source.

In the pub afterwards a group of us were talking about a particular open 
source project that a few of us contribute to. One of the guys said we 
could learn a lot from the Linux community re managing open source 
projets because, although its relatively new to the C# world, open 
source is the life blood of the Linux community.

I thought that was a great suggestion, and so did most of the people in 
the discussion. But, there were a couple of guys there who said it 
wasn't a good idea, because they'd tried that and found it alomost 
impossible to have a discussion with the Linux group because (I believe 
a vocal minority of) people would just drown out any thread they started 
with anti Microsoft postings. He referred to this minority as "tin foil 
hat wearing loons", not because he thought they were paranoid, but using 
the more general idea of the tin foil hat blocking out any other 
signals. They couldn't see a way in which any MS project could be good 
and refused to make any positive comments.

I thought that would be a minority view so came along to your group the 
following night. Lo and behold the very first conversation I get 
involved in was a perfect example of what had been discussed the 
previous evening. I suggested that OLPC was not the best way to help the 
education of kids in the developing world. Almost immediately the topic 
moved from that point to "Microsoft sucks".

Now the posting I made wasn't a blog posting, as Lee said, but was a 
Twitter posting. I follow (and am followed by) a small group of people, 
most of whom were involved in the conversation of the previous evening. 
As you are limited in terms of the number of characters you can use in a 
Twitter posting I used the phrase that one of us had used the night 
before to basically say "hey, you were right and I was wrong. I tried to 
engage with the community on what I think is an important issue and 
instead of coming back with an arguement showing why I was wrong to want 
to send teachers instead of laptops, the conversation very quickly 
decended into a MS versus Linux religious war, despite my attempts not 
to let it."

Now as for the codeproject comment, that arises because one of my 
followers on Twitter is a CodeProject MVP and has been for a number of 
years. He has this huge bug bear that the vast majority of questions he 
answers these days are from students who are wanting answers to course 
work questions. He tries to point them in the right direction but get 
them to work it out for themselves as he feels (and I agree) that this 
is the best way to learn. However, he finds that, very quickly, the 
posters get aggressive with him if he doesn't just supply the answer so 
they can cut and paste it into their work. He refers to these people as 
the "CodeProject morons" when we are speaking, as a short cut way of 
saying the above. When he says "CodeProject Morons" we both know the 
sort of people he talking about.

The two of us (and a couple of other people) had been IM'ng about me 
going to your group and someone had said that there would be an 
equivalent "Linux Moron" who, like the "CodeProject morons" would become 
agressive because I was an MS person. I argued at the time that I 
doubted it.

My posting above conveyed the fact that you guys had become agressive 
about MS even faster than the students who couldn't just get the code to 
answer their question. Hence, I post that the "Linux Morons" were even 
worse then "CodeProject Morons".

Now if you read the postings between me and Lee you will see that I am 
trying to have a discussion about whether it is better to send teachers 
or laptops. You will also see that Lee has not added to that debate at 
all but has chosen to attack me because of my MS background - well fair 
enough, I have broad shoulders I can take it. What he's done here is to 
search the Internet for something with which to attack me (why would 
someone even do that?) and because, out of context, these posting look 
like very damaging posts, he as decided to post them here in an attempt 
to embarrass me and yet I'd never take any of his anti MS comments from 
this thread and post them on the local Dundee .Net group forum in order 
to embarrass the Linux guys who attend our group.

Having said that, I do understand that because none of you were aware of 
the context of these posts they are offensive, and for that I appologise 
to everyone in this group.

> you'll notice, this was even before I'd 'debated' the OLPC topic with you.

I'm glad you placed the word debated in inverted commas as, if you look 
back this thread, you will see that you never actually debated the point 
at all. You never came up with a single reason why it is better to send 
laptops than teachers, all you've really done is attacked me for earning 
a living using MS products.

> I think this post speaks for itself.

Actually it doesn't speak for itself because you just posted it to 
further your attack on me, without knowing (or caring I suspect) what 
the context of the comments were. In much the same way as if I posted 
your anti MS comments on the Dundee .Net group to embarrass the Linux 
guys who attend, it would not really speak for you.

> I can't possible teach you anything, unless your willing to accept new 
> concepts and new ways of doing things?
> 
> You've just lost a great opportunity to learn new things from me, and me 
> from you and that's a real shame, and somewhat disappoints me.

I'm glad you are disappointed because I don't intend to give up. I 
intend to continue to come along to the meetings (unless of course you 
guys throw me out) because I believe there are lots of things we can 
learn from each other. As for learning things from you personally, well 
the jury is still out on that one. You had the perfect chance to teach 
me why sending laptops was better than sending teachers; instead you 
chose not to do that but to attack me personally. Also, when you said 
I'd "sold out to MS" I asked you very directly to tell me how I could 
earn the money I need to survive in the Open Source community. You had 
the perfect opportunity to teach me how to do it. Instead, you trawled 
the Net for something you could use to embarrass me.

I'm hoping that was just a case of you having to "put the new guy in his 
place" and now that you have done that you can go on to make a clear 
arguement why OPLC is better than teachers. I'm certainly willing to 
listen to your points, even if you are not willing to listen to mine, 
its the only way to learn after all.

> just for that, I'm now going to have to deploy the secret weapon.
> 
> http://home.loercks.net/unsortiert/microsoft_angepinkelt.jpg

Now you see, that is funny :-)

-- 
Cheers,
Gary
http://www.garyshort.org