[dundee] OLPC Videos...niiiiiiiiiice!

Sun Jan 20 15:31:20 GMT 2008

Well, I don't know what to say about this, I've been trying to keep out of
this as much as possible.. .however I wanted to add a few things. Thank you
first of all for clearing up the... comments...
Secondly. Our group is a big fan of the OLPC scheme. I don't know if you
have an equivalent in your .NET user group but it is something the whole
group has put a lot of thought and effort into and whereas it would
obviously be beneficial to provide teachers (as per your example) to
developing countries, that would be the focus of another campaign. Which
would be a better way to spend the money could be endlessly argued both ways
and I don't think anyone would ever get a solid anwer. As it stands, there
is an initiative to bring technology at a cheap price to developing
countries that we can participate in. The fact that this technology
incorporates Linux (the heart and sole of our group after all) makes it even
more... tempting (not the right word but the word evades me)

As it goes with "MS Bashing" we are all guilty of it to some degree. A lot
of the LUG and society have switched because of problems with MS products. I
for one had a series of computers that enjoyed crashing a lot. Whereas I see
that this is not directly MS fault necessarily, when installing Linux on
them (ok, with a bit of fiddling and configuring) they worked perfectly.
What you have to remember is that all of this is to be taken a little
lightly. I still have a legitimate XP license for both my laptop and PC and
I still use both. There are a lot of features in Windows and other MS
products that are very good. It just happens that my preference happens to
be with Linux and I find it makes much more sense to me.

As you may have noticed, a lot of people in the LUG and society talk about
converting MS users. Again, this is not necessarily direct competition (at
least I don't think it is) Let's take a step back... Students, the
university is full of them... each probably with student loans and getting
into debt. Now, apart from the select few in the computing department, none
know about any alternatives (even then their knowledge of it is just that it
exists) The main problem we find is that with MS being taught the whole way
through the education system, people think it's expected. We're just trying
to show that people don't *need* to spend money. Whether they do after that
is entirely up to them. Also, I think there's a big thing with having, not
only peers you can turn to, but having people you can teach (possibly an
"e-penis" thing) but I've also learned a lot while teaching people the
little I know.

Anyway, I think thats about all I can say for now.
I hope this all goes better from now on :)

Nistur

On Jan 20, 2008 3:09 PM, Gary Short <gary at garyshort.org> wrote:

> 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
>
>
>
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