On 21-Mar-12 3:23 PM, Bill Strosberg wrote: > 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.
Moving meetings back east-ward would cause headaches for folks in the west end. The Algonquin location is a good one - right on the transitway. Close to 417. What's not to like, other than a few extra minutes en route? > People's value of knowledge is directly proportional to the amount of > pain it engenders in it's acquisition. True. If it's hard to make do what you want, then it's probably not very good. If the designers put that little thought and effort into the interface, one must wonder about the quality of the underlying code. > 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. Learning Linux isn't going to change the fact that our critical infrastructure is being sold off to our chinese overlords. Examine the track records of current and past Liberal and Conservative governments if you want to complain about the impending "buyout". Greed in the name of "shareholder value", speculators and a public interested only in the lowest price, quality be damned, are the problems. I recently bought a BBQ. Primary criteria (other than it being a reasonably good unit) was: Not Made in China. I prefer to keep jobs on this side of the ditch. > What is a corporate license of Microsoft > Office from 2001 worth today? Nothing. What is a linux disk from 2001 worth? Or a 2001 Dodge Caravan? You got it, 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. Those IT people would have moved on in late 2001 or 2002, maybe 2003 when the company went bankrupt and was sold (to chinese "investors"). Further, those IT people would have been tearing their hair out trying to get those documents printed (at all, let alone with any form of pretty - and reliably reproduceable - formatting). Yes, you pay for MS Office, but OTOH, you truly do get what you pay for in the alternatives. Now, I'm not gonna say that the alternatives are better... IMO, all OS's are flawed. Some just work better for some tasks and do more poorly at others. As professionals, we need to put personal propaganda aside and pick the best tool for the task at hand. I stopped preaching years ago - noone takes evangelists seriously (and all OS's have made significant improvements over the last few years, anyway) and we all just want to get our tasks done, have a couple pints and spend time with our families. If OCLUG does die out (which will be unfortunate), just do not transfer any assets to groups in TO (hey, gotta keep the inter-city rivalry going, yes?) LOL _______________________________________________ Linux mailing list Linux@lists.oclug.on.ca http://oclug.on.ca/mailman/listinfo/linux
