[ale] bout me company

[David Corbin]

Jeff Hubbs wrote:

>
> So I guess what I'm saying is that we need not feel loathing for 
> WinMan.  One of the key strengths of living in Linux-land is that we 
> tend to attract people toward it and the economics of the situation 
> lend itself to doing just that with very little load.  Some time back, 
> I recall posting to the ALE list a story about something that happened 
> one time when I was at the Perimeter CompUSA.  I brought some Linux 
> magazine with a distro CD attached to it (Storm, I think) to the 
> register and the guy who rung it up for me saw the mag and said "I've 
> heard about Linux - is it any good?"  So, I gave him my twenty-second 
> answer and he seemed receptive.  I started to walk away after paying 
> and I stopped myself and said to him, "Look, I just bought this 
> magazine - I can do with it what I please, right?"  The guy looked at 
> me funny (happens a lot) and kind of nodded.  As I started ripping the 
> plastic off the magazine, I said, "I can download this and burn myself 
> a CD anytime I want...you take this one" and I just handed him the CD 
> out of the magazine.  I lost almost nothing, yet I gave him enough 
> software to run a small country.  For all I know, he might have thrown 
> it away without as much as looking at it or he might be hacking kernel 
> code by now, but the point is, he had it in his hands - legitimately. 
>  What he did or did not do with it was up to him, not MS, not some 
> training outfit.  
> Wouldn't you agree that these people need our help more than they need 
> our scorn?

They do, Jeff.  And I'll help anybody that is receptive to help.  But 
I'm not going to spend an oz of effort to help people that won't help 
themselves.  I'm not going to "beat my head" against the wall of people 
that aren't interested in learning.

>
> - Jeff
>
> fgz wrote:
>
>>Well put, and diplomatic also. Stiffled my impulse to
>>think poorly of the WinMan just on general principles.  :)
>>A classy read, Jeff.
>>
>>-fgz
>>
>
>




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