[ale] using ipod touch or iphone with linux (yeah, OSeX!)

[Jeff Lightner]

This puts me in mind of the early days of AOL where technosnobs would
blast anyone who posted on a list if he had @aol.com email address.
Sure newbies can be a pain but at one point we were all newbies in
something.

Although I will say I do also wonder at the many people I see on this
list willing to use Apple proprietary stuff just so they can say they've
dumped M$.  If you're an open source advocate it seems you'd want to use
open source tools and avoid proprietary stuff as much as possible.

-----Original Message-----
From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On Behalf Of Jim
Kinney
Sent: Monday, June 01, 2009 10:18 AM
To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts - Yes! We run Linux!
Subject: Re: [ale] using ipod touch or iphone with linux (yeah, OSeX!)

yeah, yeah. mac fanboy recycled from an amiga fanboy :-)

for me, a mac is a great tool as long as I want to do what Job's et al
have decided I can do. Arguably, that decision is based on what is
known to work. And Mac's are designed for the tech-illiterate masses.
Maye it's just intellectual arrogance on my part but I have always
through that the mac was too easy to use and that allowed people who
were not technically knowledgeable to have access to potentially
dangerous abilities.

OK. So it's a quote from "Spiderman" but it makes sense, "Along with
great power comes great responsibility".

Wow! But whose responsibility? The end user? The vast Mac user base is
to clueless to understand anything about _how_ they do things other
than "click here, drag there". The Windows user base bottom 1/3 is
probably the cause of the term "technotard". I have friends who got a
nice new Mac laptop and were totally happy. Until Apple pop-up
reminded them to do an update fro security concerns. Then their laptop
would not reboot. Apple store got their laptop running again but
without any of their original files (pics of their new baby, the
adoption paperwork, etc). The next time they needed to "update" their
system what do you think they did?

Yep. They don't update any more. (But they do email all of their pics
to their gmail account now!)

So is the responsibility on the OS writers? Um. No. The EULA clearly
states the company accepts NO RESPONSIBILITY for the condition or
useability of the software.

OUCH! So it _IS_ the unwashed masses who get stuck with the
responsibility for the technical functioning of their system.

Enter the GPL, Free Software, Linux process. Is the user experience
more challenging? Absolutely. I think that is a good thing. I don't
want to allow untrained children to play with guns and we all here
know the importance of information flow. So allowing untrained users
to operate effectively dangerous machinery is totally irresponsible on
the part of the OS providers.

I'm kicking Ubuntu here as well. It's "_so_easy_" to get a high
horsepower Linux system running with Ubuntu that now the unwashed
masses see a lower cost exit from the rat race of Microsoft. I'm not
yet convinced that hordes of nubes with a high-powered Linux box is a
good thing. Maybe if the Ubuntu install did not include any way for
the remote bad guy to compile anything as a deterrent to root kit
installs and the primary user was forced to have a 12 character
password since that user has full sudo access and the default apt repo
was only for users and didn't include developers and maybe if....

I could go on and on and on about this with nearly _any_ OS.

The user interface on the Mac is pretty. Underneath the hood is a
"borrowed" OS overlaid with a high-profit model pile of other stuff
that looks spiffy and makes non-techs happy.

Somewhere our society has decided that it's OK to coast through life
without _knowing_ what goes on around us and with the tools we use
daily.

Maybe the Linux curriculum group can help a little bit. :-)

</Monday philosophy rant>

-- 
-- 
James P. Kinney III
Actively in pursuit of Life, Liberty and Happiness
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