[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> Steve Kudlak wrote:
> >
> > Brendan/Coolian wrote:
> >
> > > > My dad gave me some advice once on how to handle people that
> > > >treated me differently because of who I was,"Screw 'em." If you
> > >
> > > Wait....I think I feel something....yes...It's a smile.
> > >
> > > Good post. More toughness instead of whininess.
> >
> > (Hopefully only a minor rant)
> >
> > But this is WHAT I AM BURNED OUT ABOUT UNIX AND LINUX. All this "I am a
> > tough work hard/play hard unix geek...RFTM...It's Nature..." That and
> > "deal with it..." I can sort of forgive the falling into the "beer
>
> Yup. And this wasn't even Unix/Linux, this was on the topic of linux-
> as-beer-commercials.
>
> Personally, while I do get tired of a certain level of whining, I didn't
> hear that conversation as a whiny one - it was a statement of a problem,
> and *mostly* stated with intent to analyse.
>
> Sometimes you need to have a long rambling conversation to analyse what
> a problem IS so you can go tackle it. Toughness is appropriate for the
> tackling-the-problem end. For dealing with it.
>
> Damned hard to deal with something when you don't know what it is.
>
> Jenn V.
> --
> Humans are the only species to feed and house entirely separate species
> for no reason other than the pleasure of their company. Why?
>
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] Jenn Vesperman http://www.simegen.com/~jenn/
>
> ************
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.linuxchix.org
Well let's see I have a lot of experience with, and this is going to date me:
ITS
TENEX-TOPS20
UNIX (pretty good...forgot a lot tho')
LINUX (linux) but not lots of internals
ITS which never went beyond a certain 3-lettered "Institute" had hackers (long
before the press got a hold of the term) kind of at first sight mildly snarly,
but quickly became friendly. It was obscure, weird but fun to learn, you
gathered friends relatively easy and they'd showed you things. There was the
bad documentation disease of "me and my 5 friends know how to do this..."
The worst institue habit was obscurity and attack professors. The latter were
rare but rather nasty. Any presentation or thesis defence was a real
challenge. Some of the tough questions were warrented, but not screamed at
people. These were worse than the ITS hackers themselves. Although the
commenting or things was rough and ready but not insulting.
TENEX/TOPS-20
Easier to Learn, Good Support. Had a reasonable user interface...Was easier to
teach students at the place the Presidential Daughter goes this. Even when they
just walked in....Internals made sense and were clearly if intensely profusely
documented. Generally the DEC-Types at the time were freindly but things were
kind of expensive, and there were several had to have manuals. These came with
examples, and the best explanation in a manual of assembly language I have so
far seen. This has not been replicated....Note lots of the ARPANET to INTERNET
transition took place on these machines. The going from NCP to TCP thing
happened a lot in this "universe".
UNIX
Initially this was very daunting. There weren't nutshell manuals at the time.
Hard to learn, obscure commands, commands to sed look like noise, mean snarly
people who supposedly are there to help you. They were as bad as the overly
abrasive high school coaches one runs into and wonder why they suffer no ill
fates.
But it was like a friend?? said: "Well it's like Math, once you get the hang of
it, it becomes much easier. " Yep that's the way it was, there was a method
it's apparent madness. I never got used to vi and I still mess up with it.
linux
Though supposedly initially a clone of unix (UNIX) does seem to be easier.
There is more support. I haven't done much but play with a few non-home-machine
versions. There are certainly books that one can learn things out of. Over all
the people who know it are generally friendlier and more willing to explain and
less like high school coaches.
I guess what I am trying to say is these places have atmospheres, and how one
reacts to them does get infleunced by it. One can't easily just provide simple
formulas. I mean the simplest would: "Over 90% of users are male, so beer
commercial are just a fact of life, so yep let's haul out the pictures of busty
babes..." If someone objects, we don't care, that's the way the world is. Grow
up, get used to it, Case Closed! Besides everyone is getting out of wack over
somethin silly and trivial. That's the marketing to guys only technique, and
yep it works."
Look at bars, swimsuit issues of a dozen things and the like. It certainly
isn't inclusive. Or worse yet those "find a foreign wife " services.
That's a bit ranty, speaking of the tough approach, or fixing things. What's
the proposed fix for this. There is wide variation in what people think is
acceptable. Some will argue that the current guidelines in industry are less
set by thoughful people than lawsuits.
I tend to propose like copy the page and mark it up. Borrow but modify
Brendan's idea of adding naked men flash images in rotation, and make some
silly commentary. I mean I know lots of female Monty Python fans and they never
did shy away from lots of innuedo and silliness. I mean humour seems to help a
lot.
Have Fun,
Sends Steve
************
[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.linuxchix.org
