On Thu, 24 Mar 2005, [iso-8859-1] Frank Küster wrote:
May be it is off-topic but I have to share the experience:
When I reached the LinuxPark at CeBIT two people went behind me: She: Linux? Isn't that the other Windows. He: Yesss.
You can interpret this in very different ways. My wife knows what Linux is, well; but she has a hard time telling the difference between "Windows", "Winword", and "Microsoft"¹. Might just as well that "He" struggled to explain her the difference, telling that an alternative to "Winword" is "Openoffice", while an alternative to "Windows" is "Linux". So this would just mean he was glad that she learned the lesson...
Well, it is hard to describe the intonation: It was said in an absolutely convinced way and that he is the expert who is able to ensure her that this is exactly the right description. It definitely was kind of: Hmmmm, in principle you might say so if you want.
¹and also between "Linux", "TeX", "Emacs" and "Shell". She just doesn't see it made up of parts, it's simply the box where she writes the nice-looking letters, compared to the ugly-looking ones at work.
This is perfectly fine. I just want to make sure that we will see a different kind of visitors on our boothes in the (near) future and that we have to cope with this kind of people and we have to adjust our way to describe things that they are able to understand. (I'm currently working on a talk for exactly this kind of audience - it is the hardest talk I had to prepare in the last couple of years.)
Kind regards
Andreas.
-- http://fam-tille.de
