[Klug-general] (no subject)

[james snyder]

On Thu, Mar 08, 2007 at 12:17:46PM +0000, Dan Attwood wrote:
> Ok shall we set the April talks to be one on IPTV by Colin for the
> none technical and one on SHH by Mike for the technical?
>
> And while wer'e at it can somebody please explain to me why people
> keep ing offering talks along the line of 'why XYZ is a load of
> rubbish' or 'techniques and methods for killing end users' or 'why I
> hate XYZ'?
>
> Surely the aim of any lug should be to help it's members learn new
> things - remember the round table discussions we had in Dover? and
> also remember the cross section of member we have.
>
> If people really want to dicuss things why i hate such and such
> perhaps they should save it for the pub meets or maybe we should
> arrange for some proper, structured debates. I person anally don't
> want to have to sit and listen to someone troll for half an hour - i
> have better ways to spend my time.

Having heard Mike's talks on this subject in the past, I don't think
there is any real negativity there, and such a talk can only be useful,
IMHO. Whats more, with the recent(ish) posts on getting jobs and
certification in IT, a talk from someone who has been doing this stuff
professionally since the last century would only be useful to the
membership.

The other talk you are alluding to, I am guessing, is my "Why computer
scientists should be shot", which is not a troll, and not a rant, but a
talk designed to promote wider awareness about where we have come from
as an industry, and where we are going. Any programmer worth their salt
should have studied "Software Failure and risk" and thus should be able
to learn from mistakes. A talk like this is important in that respect.

This said, I will be changing the title of my talk in march to "In the
Beginning was the command line." (cookie for the first person to spot
the reference :p )

J

Neal Stephenson, the guy who wrote Cryptonomicon and Snow Crash has an essay about the command line.

It's called In the Beginning was the Command Line.

http://www.cryptonomicon.com/beginning.html

Jim/Linux/James



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