off topic

Thu May 4 03:13:19 UTC 2006

On Wed, 2006-03-05 at 22:49 +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote:

> > Why on Earth do you come to these newsgroups if you are only
> > interested in Linux bashing?  You're not an ordinary sort of troll,
> > or I'd just be ignoring you.

> Read his recent posts in the security thread. He's been in this game 
> since '76 and even made comments about how he's come to hate 
> computers. That might have been a self-deprecating joke, but many a 
> true word is spoken in jest.

It wasn't a joke.  I've come to loathe the stupid little bastards.  But
not for themselves but rather for what they have become.  (In much the
same way as I loathe television, in fact.  Both are technologies with
great promise and no delivery on those promises.)  The only reason I own
a computer at all, in fact, is to keep in touch with family while I live
here in China.

> Most likely scenario: a clue-up technical guy whose had to put up with 
> 30 years of the accumulated garbage of PHBs, clueless idiots, idiotic 
> developers and all the other trash that infests this industry. So you 
> get someone who knows his onions but now every time he communicates 
> in his professions, and all you hear is the cynicism. I've seen it 
> many times, it's a damn shame and a waste of decent manpower.

Don't forget the five-year-and-counting hiatus as a language teacher
because I just couldn't stand the high tech field any longer.

> I for one would like to see him tone 
> down the cynicism a notch and share more of his expertise. 

I'd be less cynical if I saw less hypocrisy.  Hypocrisy like the same
people who scream FUD anytime someone says something bad about Linux
screeching hysterically -- and more importantly incorrectly -- about the
flaws of Windows.  Hypocrisy like saying two things are identical except
for where they're different, and then getting offended when that
difference is highlighted and thrown back at them.  Hypocrisy like
complaining to high heaven about the myriad of flaws in an operating
system they don't even use (!) while acting like faeces-flinging bonobos
when a person who is actually using Linux points out the flaws in it.

So, let's make a deal.  The community at large gives me less reason to
be cynical and I'll be less cynical.

> It's 
> there, he just doesn't let it out to play with the rest of us too 
> often.

Well, I don't have that much expertise in UNIX.  I hated UNIX on contact
when I first encountered it.  I honestly think that the computing world
was held back by UNIX's so-called "design".  (Scare quotes present
because I generally don't consider layered kludges to be a design.)  I'm
a devotee of the Stanford school of thought, not the New Jersey.
(http://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html)

If someone has questions about ripping DVDs under Ubuntu, I'll be all to
happy to help out there.  It's one of the areas I spent a lot of time on
because of the confounded problem with my wedding video.  I have pretty
much all aspects of that covered except for the final little problem of
properly annotating the screen ratio.  That I still can't reliably do
while ripping.  I'm working on it, though, and in the meantime I just
manually switch the screen ratio when I play the movie.

> Michael, I have a question for you: Why did you _really_ switch to 
> Ubuntu on your desktop and drop Windows? 

I ran across the "Trusted" Computing Initiative and saw that Vista was
going to be a TCI platform.  DRM is, to me, a blight on essential
freedoms -- freedoms far more important than whether I hypothetically
have access to source or not.  (More clue-by-four time: free source
don't mean squat to 99%+ of end-users.)  I refuse to accept the
almost-literal hijacking of my computer by software vendors and content
providers.  So I made the conscious choice to do without.

Later, as Ubuntu improves, I may even convince my wife to make the
switch.  Not if, however, the howling gibbons who rise up at the
slightest hint of criticism continue to have their way.

--
Michael T. Richter
Email: ttmrichter at gmail.com, mtr1966 at hotpop.com
MSN: ttmrichter at hotmail.com, mtr1966 at hotmail.com; YIM:
michael_richter_1966; AIM: YanJiahua1966; ICQ: 241960658; Jabber:
mtr1966 at jabber.cn

"I find many of the machines of violence very attractive. Tanks,
airplanes, warships, especially aircraft carriers. And the German
U-boats, submarines." --The Dalai Lama
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-users/attachments/20060504/37d47944/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-users/attachments/20060504/37d47944/attachment.sig>