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

[Jim Kinney]

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.

Jeff, you're right. My blast of "technotards must die" does generally
sound like elitist grousing . I do tend to get quite short-tempered
with people when the have problems and can't seem to understand that
they need to at least try something different. I get really steamed
when faced with the "stubbornly ignorant and proud of it" mentality.

But my major mistake was in the mis-comunication of the root problem:
TRAINING!!!

As the the rising leaders in technology, the Linux crowd produces a
whole crap-ton of code and the thing that separates the proprietary
desktop OS's from the community desktop wannabe's OS, training for
newbies, is just miserably lacking.

Again: here's hoping the ale-school list can generate some brilliant
ideas. The thought of a few million clueless newbies loading the
computational powerhouse that Ubuntu is on multi-core, broadband
connected hardware just terrifies me! Accidents happen. Deliberate
sabotage happen. But when ity happens on a scale of millions of high
powered systems, we are looking at a mess. And the media, try as they
might to understand technology will only pick up on the "Linux systems
worldwide participants in largest worm/virus/other scary computer
problem here, and totally miss out that people who are NOT qualified
to handle root responsibility are getting root responsibility.

Maybe what is needed is a real desktop-user-only version of Ubuntu,
Fedora, etc. No development tools. No sudo.  GPG keys and a system
binary hash stored on repo servers for installed desktop users.

thinking out loud there...
>
> 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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-- 
-- 
James P. Kinney III
Actively in pursuit of Life, Liberty and Happiness