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

[Jerald Sheets]

On Mon, Jun 1, 2009 at 10:47 AM, Jeff Lightner <jlightner at water.com> wrote:

> 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.
>

I wholeheartedly agree.  Were it not for the aid of some very patient and
understanding people in the early days, I'd not have gotten into the
business.



>
> 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$.


This is an assumption.  Do you have 100% knowledge of this being the reason
people have switched?  In my case, I have two proprietary to my "other
pursuit" pieces of software that run on "Windows or Mac" and that's it.
There are no analogues to these products anywhere in the world that performs
these functions in computerdom.  It's these tools or pencil & paper.  I'll
choose the computer.


> 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.
>
>
Ok, so tell me...  On my Mac, I use Gimp, nmap, vim, the entirety of
DarwinPorts (analog to BSD's ports collection) as needed, MySQL, X11,
Apache, PHP, perl...  In effect, the *only* thing I don't use on my Mac that
I do on the Linux boxes on my desktop is the Linux Kernel and Gnome.  In a
"work" context, absolutely everything I'm using is FOSS.  In a "personal"
context, I'm using some vertical market software not available anywhere
else.  So , in essence, I'm doing precisely what you're suggesting:  "avoid
proprietary stuff as much as possible".

To Jim's point:

Much in the same way it was "back in the day", I think it falls to us the
community to educate the "unwashed masses" and "technotards" et. al.

For instance, our user group in  Baton Rouge, the "Cajun Clickers Computer
Club", had the regular monthly meeting with some song & dance from a vendor,
an instructional talk at the very simplest levels for the uninitiate, a
mid-level talk regarding any ongoing topic, and then after the break,
another talk for the advanced user.

There were "SIGs" covering all the various things user-types would be
interested in, whether photography, video, networking, MCSE training, Linux,
etc.

CCCC didn't see itself as a specific sort of OS-club, but a "Computer
Club".  They charged $25/yr for monthly meetings, and for any mid-week stuff
for various SIGs, they managed their own meetings.  From meeting at Shoney's
to some guy's house, everyone still learned, and CCCC saw itself as
responsible to help educate people as responsible computing citizens and on
BBS membership & contribution (later, the Internet).

<soapbox>

I think it's incumbent upon us, the community, to educate and further the
knowledge of the computing masses as we come into contact with them
regarding the intricacies of their machines.  Obviously, we'll never have
contact with them all, but if we take the initiative as those responsible
for helping "collective education" along, then the ratio of technotards goes
way down.

Sometimes the answer is indeed to move people to Linux.  Sometimes it is to
get them to another OS or hardware platform altogether.  For my mom it was
OSX, for my dad, Windows.  For my kids, they like Linux as well as OSX.

If we stop thinking about platforms and start thinking more about general
"computing" education of users, we'll get a lot more traction and have a
much more educated "unwashed masses" out there.  I think that OS selection,
and general community usefulness will naturally follow.

Or maybe that's just the teacher in me.  :)


--j
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