[Glastonbury] Sedgemoor IT Cluster

[Ian Dickinson]

My view on all this is that the Windows/Linux debate, fun though it
is, obscures a larger picture - which is that, as an industry, we**
have failed in such spectacular fashion that relatively minor
reductions in brokenness are counted as major successes. ** The 'we'
is the computing industry as a whole. There may well be people on this
list who don't count themselves as computing professionals, but I've
been working in I.T., mostly research, since graduating 22 years ago,
so I certainly include myself among the guilty.

Is Linux hard to use? Absolutely yes. No question. Is it hard*er* than
the other primary, hard-to-use, alternative OS? Maybe yes, maybe no.
People on this list will likely say no. You easily can find people to
argue both sides of that coin. Is it more secure? Probably yes, but
again you can find both opinions easily enough. Is Linux secure on any
absolute scale? Not really. Read up on rootkits and port-knocking if
you really want something else to worry about. Installed MySQL on your
distro? The default administrator is typically 'root' with password
... well, actually, there isn't one. Who among us always remembers to
go through and properly harden their distros after installing?

To those list members who are cranking up their electronic ballistae
even now, fully loaded with pithy rejoinders (I know who you are :-),
just recall all those times you've tried to explain computing
terminology to non-initiates. I do quite a bit of informal
family-and-friends consultancy, and I often catch myself struggling to
explain the most obscure and arcane things that I've come to take
entirely for granted.  Try this experiment: go to a local pub, find an
Ordinary Person (I'm told they still exist, even in Glastonbury), and
explain phishing to them. What it is, why it's called that, and how
come they're allowed to be exposed to such risks, with the response of
the cognescenti being "well, you should be more careful". Then ask
them which blogs they've had to google to figure out to work the TV,
or the last time they rebuilt the kernel for their phone. Some things
just work, even quite complicated things, but we have come to accept
that the norm for computing devices is that they typically don't.
Digital music has been around for years, but it took Apple to make the
iPod "just work" to make it really take off. Plug-in-and-go, or start
discussing which lossy audio compression technique is least worst,
whether Ogg Vorbis can really avoid the patent issues around MP3, yada
yada.  I wonder to what extent we re-inforce the problem with the
gobbledy-geek language we're all so fond of.

I've forgotten where I was going with this rambling rant now :-)  I
suppose my concern is for a sense of perspective: when we're arguing
it out with all comers, making the case for Linux, OSS and the rest,
that we should remember that todays's most prized technologies will be
primary exhibits in the "museum of the absurd and ridiculous" in 100
years time. Or maybe 50. At least I blooming well hope so.

Ian

PS Tim: I don't think anyone who hacks their own python and bash
scripts can count themselves as "non-technical". Sorry mate, you're
well out there towards the cool*** end of the bell curve!

*** actually I think I'm supposed to say l33t these days