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Re: [Plug] what do people want out of plug talks
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On Mon, 20 Dec 1999, Bill Jonas wrote:
> I know that this will make me sound like a young windbag,
Better than sounding like an old one, which I think I'm about to do. :)
> We never promised, as the other gentleman wished, that we
> are a group of computer professionals (although some are and some aspire to
> be).
Okay, stop here a moment. Our goal is to have Linux taken seriously as a
platform. History shows that business has been the leader in the computer
field for being taken seriously (think IBM and the PC). If we want
business to take Linux seriously, we need to contribute to giving it a
professional appearance.
> I'm not saying that that justifies anything if we have the same attitude.
> It's a fact of life, though, that many Linux people have a somewhat (?)
> elitist attitude. (Just hang out in #Linux on UnderNet.) Not that anybody
> here does -- I think that everyone's been very kind and helpful.
And this, IMHO, is one of Linux's biggest weaknesses. You don't impress
people with an elitist attitude; it tends just to piss them off and just
convince them that it's not worth their time.
> I guess the point of all this is that I'll try to keep in mind *all* members
> of the audience, and to tone things down a bit. But frankly, somebody who
> can't handle the phrase "RTFM" probably shouldn't delve too deeply into
> computers.
I'm sorry, but if I have a question and choice between a snide "RTFM" or
an answer (and, hopefully how the answer was found), I'm going to pick the
latter.
I think the main thing to remember about the request is that this *is* a
public forum (even though it's limited to subscribers), and one of the
members of that forum (or community) has asked that people just keep a
handle the language. Politeness and propriety have nothing to do with
censorship.
Michael W. Ryan, MCP, MCT | OTAKON 2000
mryan@netaxs.com | Convention of Otaku Generation
http://www.netaxs.com/~mryan/ | http://www.otakon.com/
PGP fingerprint: 7B E5 75 7F 24 EE 19 35 A5 DF C3 45 27 B5 DB DF
PGP public key available by fingering mryan@unix.netaxs.com (use -l opt)
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