Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1998 15:47:21 +1100 From: jonathan michaels <jon@caamora.com.au> To: FreeBSD-chat <freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: Smaller, Dedicated tools and Greg's Daemon News Article Message-ID: <19981215154721.A23602@caamora.com.au> In-Reply-To: <19981215122945.B15633@freebie.lemis.com>; from Greg Lehey on Tue, Dec 15, 1998 at 12:29:45PM %2B1030 References: <19981214083023.C2587@freebie.lemis.com> <Pine.BSF.4.05.9812132318160.6577-100000@s8-37-26.student.washington.edu> <19981214201953.52678@welearn.com.au> <19981215111225.O17075@freebie.lemis.com> <19981215124855.28247@welearn.com.au> <19981215122945.B15633@freebie.lemis.com>
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i was going to stay out of this one, becaue most people think i'm an irrational bigot, wll i'm about to give more proof. On Tue, Dec 15, 1998 at 12:29:45PM +1030, Greg Lehey wrote: > On Tuesday, 15 December 1998 at 12:48:55 +1100, Sue Blake wrote: > > On Tue, Dec 15, 1998 at 11:12:25AM +1030, Greg Lehey wrote: > >> On Monday, 14 December 1998 at 20:19:53 +1100, Sue Blake wrote: > >>> On Sun, Dec 13, 1998 at 11:29:40PM -0800, Jason C. Wells wrote: > >>>> I spent the entire weekend doing battle with Microsoft products. We > >>>> produced a 400 page report using the bastard Word 97. Easily 20 full man > >>>> hours were spent trying to figure why there were big red X's where > >>>> pictures used to be and recovering files that were corrupted during > >>>> crashes. We could not put together more than 20MB/200 pages of text before > >>>> complete instability occured. > >>>> > >>>> What a horrible waste of time. > >>>> > >>>> Oh yeah, don't forget that little paper clip sucker in the right corner. > >>>> Good thing I didn't have my gun. I'da shot the futhermocker right in his > >>>> litte winky eye. > >>>> > >>>> Imagine trying to put together "The Complete FreeBSD" in this environment. > >>>> > >>>> The point is, I know how well small dedicated tools work. I haven't > >>>> learned the text editing tools because I was never motivated to do so. > >>>> > >>>> A recent email chat combined with Greg's article have completely convinced > >>>> me that I should learn a little bit more programming in order to make my > >>>> life easier. > >>>> > >>>> Emacs, Tex, here I come! > >>> > >> > >>> Greg will scowl from his perch, but even the simplest programming is > >>> beyond me at the moment. There are other ways, though. First a tale > >>> of woe. > >> > >> [Illustrative story omitted] > >> > >> No, you don't understand. Well, I suspect you do understand, but > >> you're pretending not to. The article in question was not about > >> programming, it was about control. You have wrested control in the > >> manner I was advocating. > > > > My point exactly. We do similar things for similar reasons but we > > attribute success differently. You advocate programming as the way to > > wrest control. Not the main point, but enough to make me very nervous. > > No, you still don't want to understand. > > > I start by typing 'cat notes.txt' and notes.txt contains all the > > commands I'm afraid of forgetting. I could just as well type 'sh > > notes.txt' and then you'd attribute what I was doing to programming, > > which would scare the bejeebers out of me. Next you'd be expecting me > > to get all tangled up on those loopy things with punctuation and dollar > > signs spitting out everywhere and I'd be losing control, not gaining > > it. Then I'd run away and look for comfort in less efficient methods > > that I _can_ control. Anything but programming! And I'd still end up > > doing the same as what you're advocating. > i will start by stating this for teh record, i have an intellect that can swamp both of yours combined, by several orders of magnitude, yet i an kept 'normal' by teh fact i have a body that refuses to function correctly, it is in part why i am now a card carrying psuedo vegetable on welfare. > OK, what you're discussing are your personal fears. That has nothing > to do with programming, only with your perception of programming. this is not what sue is saying, even by the reometest strech of any fevered imagination. she is stating teh beleeding obvious. people are worried about doing things that they cannot understand, a fact many of teh motormouthed, er typewriter jockies in freebsd-questions forget. people ask questions to get anwers, usually to very specific and narrow interest field questions .. yet the answers that are derived would form the basis of a best seller in several areas of derivitive psychology and information mis-interpretation. people answer questions from thier own experiential universes, people interpret the queston being asked, primarly, based on how tey understand teh languge of teh question .. i'm not talking about levels of english competance or some such excuse some of our educated amreican participants use ofr 'getting it wrong'. comuters have a specific language that means more or less the same things in russian as it does in amreican english, as it does in australian english as it does in english propper. where the real diffuculties lay are the disparities in teh levels of comfortablenss, or level of capability to understand teh suble nuances in the differeniat shifts in meaning, based in part upon teh munber of letter and or thier ordering that acompanies teh person name. i've noticed that the more 'educated' a name gets, the les able are the answers to be understood by one less well endowed. freebsd is a microcosm of one such envoronment .. as sue is pointing out in her simple but succint responce. simple ain't stupid, thier is a maxim in engineering 'good engineering is both simple, efficient and elegant' a maxim some responders to article, myself include would do well to heed. to reiterate ... programming is just word manipulaton, youspeak english, you program, some people do it better than others, easy of usage is not an issue, understability of outcome and functionality are the primary currancies that inhabit most people pockets. sue like most people is nt afraid of programing persay, she is 'afraid' of making the investment of time into a project that will return little ot no dividend in teh long run. lets face it thier is no right or wrong way to do things in unix. thier is only a solution that delivers the desired results, or one that delivers them at great cost, hence inefficintly, or on ethat dose not deliver the desired results. each person has thier own 'way of doing things'. i was arguing a question of semanitcs with sue on day, may years ago, and when i say that both of us were 'wrong, n the plural sence, and that both of us were right, i asked how could this be ? my answer is shckingly simple, unix give one the fredom to explore thier own avenues and to arive independanly at a solution that on teh surface might be very similar or have no outward aprance of conformance whatsoever. this is what sues, and most others arguement is really allabout .. i'm not god, as such i cannot dictate others thoughs .. but if you see from an unbiased perspective (it took me may years of crippling physical torment to get thier, i was a heard nut to crack) you can see that this could be the most likely position. > > >> If you had needed a little program (never played with PERL?), > > > > You know I have. It's not comfortable because I don't understand every > > part of it. Hardly any, actually. It robs me of control. You're spot on > > about the motivator, but one person's tool is another's strait-jacket. > > Well, in fact *I* can't write PERL, and that's one of the reasons. > It's a nasty little language, as near as I can tell, but now it's > anchored in the Web, I suppose I'm going to have to learn it. Still, > you can't gain control without first going to some effort. That's > exactly the reason that Microslop is so successful with its ``don't who gave you the right to do this ???? what authority do you weild to make this sort of obsenity ??? we live in a world where space and respect are becoming very tangible assets, thie is no place for this sort of childish purality, none whatsoever. as we rise in teh ranks of our peers we all have a moral, if not ethical obligation to display a respect for our peers (this is very easy, its thgier adulaton we all crave) and our opsoaition, much harder becaue it they that stand in teh way of geeting what we wonat from thise who fawn at our feet. microsoft may be alot of thigs, but i have yet to hear a microsoft employee even come close to teh drivel and level of childishness that pervais teh linux newsgrougs, mailinglists and sadly is coming here .. thie is no place for this sort of name calling. i'm not defeding microsoft, i'm doing my level best to keep the playing filed level so that when it comes my turn to fend of critisism, i can honestly say, i didn't thow those stones ... or put another way, i stayed behind to help cleanup teh broken glass. microsoft ha many good people working for it, some even use freebsd, not just at home but at tehier internal ms netork workstations connected to the corporate wan. what we should be dong is capitalisiong on thier good will, not this kind of personal attack on hoe they make a living. i don';t like freebsd being rubished becaue i've invested a lot over the years .. microsoft users feel the same way. users of microsoft product don't get a full frontal lobotomy as a byproduct of thier usage of microsoft product. unfortunately the same cannot be said of out linux peers and now that sam disease is creeping incidiously into our own midst. sttartng at teh top .. as most of these kinds of infects usualy do. name calling is for children, who don;t know any better, we as freebsd users pride ourselfs of our maturity, or so goes the rhetoric .. in the corporate minds and hearts game thier is no winers or loosers, just casualties, let us not become one of teh casualties of this most incidious of wars, not against microsft, or linux, or whatever comes next, but against the dehumanising process that sees it as ok to rubbish someone else, sometingelse, simply becaue it is not like us, or out toy of teh month. i've spokento may that have come across from ms lan manager networks, forst to linux than fnally to freebsd. of teh many things they say about freebsd, well teh expected is, network performance, reliability, stability. productivity and ever other bloody -ivity under the sun .. one thng stands out. what may you all ask is that one thing, its quiote simple, it is the level of maturity displayed bu the average freebsd user, teh lack of schoolboy names in teh from: lines, teh level of conversational skills displaved in teh amnswers to questions but even above all this is the one fact that stands out the most, that eing tha fact that we as a group don't malign our 'competition' to coin a phrase, 'even if we came over form microsoft' we don't hear the usuall industy tripe about microsoft, its so refreshing. this last bit was a small parapharase, it had ot be i cannot remember all the was said inthe order it was said, but it is the gist of teh conversation. well, i've said enough to get my throat cut .. but i will, i need ot say one more thing. what ive said above needs to be incprporated into the deamonnews as well. or more to the point it needs to beocme one of teh foundational bylines. treat our peers with respect, treat our competition with respect. when we start, or in freebsds case do so again, to do this as a class action we will have the microsofts beaing a path to our door and we will be assured a place in heaven, so to speak. its not about winning or loosing, or even about how ne playes the game, it si about helping people. one way we all can do this is to cut teh mindlessly childish namecalling, in[articular of microsoft. regards jonathan ps, to those who will comment onmy spelling, i have dsylexia, i suffer with sever chronic pain and my cns is braking down, complain if you will, its not going to change the fact that i caanot type becaue my body is resisting my attempts at active correction. -- =============================================================================== Jonathan Michaels PO Box 144, Rosebery, NSW 1445 Australia ===========================================================<jon@caamora.com.au> To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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