[Preston] Re: topics for meetings

[Guy Heatley]

Yes, I appreciate your point, but one of the goals of the group is to
help new users get to grips with stuff they have never done before. We
are a *user* group rather than a developer group so please don't feel
intimidated by subjects that you may not currently understand.

I for one, always react against snobbishness, elitism or geekyness
that aims to exclude the un-initiated.

Anyone giving a PLUG presentation ought to be aware that there may be
a person in their audience who only heard the word "Linux" the week
before and I hope no-one would sneer at a new user for asking a newbie
type question.

Obviously, computer science is a technical subject and there are
concepts that require a lot of getting your head round. I often feel
the best way to approach this learning curve is just to pick a spot
and start digging e.g. with the FUSE example, you may not have
understood the minute details of userspace filesystems, but you may
have learned how to install a new piece of software on your Linux
machine, as a "by-product" of your efforts.

In any case, those that give the presentations usually have to deal with:-
a) their arguments being  held up to intense scrutiny
b) being criticised, asked awkward questions, having flawed logic
exposed (most commonly by VAX John ;-)
c) satisfying demands for on-the-spot reverse engineering of perl code

all in the name of fun.
It all usually turns into a pitched argument / flame war. Then
everyone shakes hands and goes for a beer to show there's no ill
feeling.

I suppose there was that time when all the Emacs users were lying in
wait for the Vim lot, with knuckledusters... (I'm joking :-)

So don't be shy, come on down.

Cheers!
-- 
Guy

On 8/2/06, Nick Holme <nick.holme at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> Hi all, sorry I couldn't meet you in the pub last night, but Tuesdays
> aren't so good for me at the moment so the meeting has to cover some
> thing that I can relate to in order for me to make it. On that subject
> maybe you could have a poll of members to see what sort of thing people
> want. I'm afraid that "using the kernel module ¨fuse¨ to create virtual
> filesystems as a non root user. You can use a variety of filesystem
> types such as encrypted or remote over SSH" goes right over my head
> (sorry Guy) as did things like the robot control.
>
> I've been using Ubuntu for months now and I'm quite happy with it, but
> there is lots of quite basic stuff that I don't know without going into
> heavy duty stuff, although the bit about running linux off a USB stick
> sounds like fun.
>
> Incidentally I've been looking at Open Source web radio and have done a
> set of guides if anyone is interested. I have posted them at
> http://www.thepcprofessor.co.uk/edupress/ if anyone is interested.
>
> Cheers for now and hope to see you next meeting
>
> Nick
>
> 		
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-- 
Guy

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