I have not attended meetings for years - when the meetings moved from the Lees Algonquin campus downtown, it became painful enough to not bother. Subsequent moves westward were just as bad for me. There have been many meeting topics that were interesting, but not enough to commute in from the far east end where I live. No matter who is happy, not everyone will be.
I know it flies in the face of environmental sensitivity, but centrally close to the Queensway with free parking means a lot to people living outside the Greenbelt. I was once involved with the Board, and could be persuaded once again if the survival of the group demanded help. There is too much value in a community to let it die without objection. Richard and Rob's comments regarding the future are well worth more thought. Many years ago getting Yggdrasil or Debian Buzz loaded and running off 1.2m 5.25" floppies was a lot more challenging than today. The "bar" is much lower today than it was historically. Meetings were more necessary due to the benefit of hands-on help and a sympathetic crowd to share the pain of achieving a text console and a diald SLIP connection. Memories - Lynx and Pine. Linux is more pervasive today, but perhaps less recognised. As it has become mainstream concealed inside things like my Sony TV, it has also lost most of it's crusading warriors to the clock. People's value of knowledge is directly proportional to the amount of pain it engenders in it's acquisition. From that perspective, most new people today just don't value Linux as much as us elder statesmen. I gave up long ago trying to explain why Linux is a great choice for many real tasks. If people are foolish enough to pay a lot more, get a lot less and then depend on companies that make them listen to endlessly looping interactive telephone queues in call centers in Asia, that is their problem. Perhaps North America's infatuation with avoiding actual critical thought in business decisions is part of the reason why their kid's better start learning Mandarin to converse with their new overlords. A basic business principal that seems to be lost on the current hipster crowd of smartphone-totin', Facebook-posting MBA's is that you should invest your money in people, not things. Knowledge invested in people is a valuable asset, and "things" are just liabilities that depreciate. What is a corporate license of Microsoft Office from 2001 worth today? Nothing. If the same license acquisition value (mulitplied by desktops in service) had been invested in IT people, those few IT people could support all the desktops using LibreOffice (or whatever the flavour de jour) for a fraction of the ongoing expense. Stupid, plain and simple. Oh, well enough typing. No one is probably listening, especially those that should. -- Bill _______________________________________________ Linux mailing list Linux@lists.oclug.on.ca http://oclug.on.ca/mailman/listinfo/linux
