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Sandals and Ponytails Behind Slow Linux Adoption

Eric Giguere writes "CNet is reporting that according to former Massachusetts CIO Peter Quinn 'the lax dress code of the open-source community is one of the reasons behind the software's slow uptake in commercial environments.' In particular, Quinn blames the 'sandal and ponytail set' for sluggish adoption of Linux by businesses and governments." From the article: "Quinn, who faced plenty of scrutiny over his support of the OpenDocument standards-based office document format, said proponents of open source in government faced formidable opposition from vested interests if they went public."

3 of 948 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Yeah... by doubledoh · · Score: 0, Offtopic
    LOL. I liked your points, even though they are ruthless. Actually, I liked them because they were ruthless. Anyway, I just wanted to answer your sig question: Meat tastes good to you because your parents shoved it down your throat when you were growing up and every advertisement on tv told you it tasted good and all your friends that were influenced by their parents reinforced this idea and the multi-billion dollar meat/dairy industry spends millions of dollars every year making sure that you continue to believe that meat tastes good. I personally hate the taste of meat...and the odors that emanate from fast food restaurants makes me want to vomit.

    Evolution? The survival "instinct" of the human being is our ability to reason. Our science and reasoning has helped us discover that meat, despite it's "good taste" causes cancers, heart disease, and so forth. Science has also demonstrated why heroin "feels good" but is still "bad" for you. Our evolutionary bodies are also not in tune with the advent of the agricultural revolution. Despite the fact that most of us can easily pop down to a grocery store and buy as much food as we want when we want it, many of us have the instinct of fattening up for times of famine (even though famine is a thing of the past for most westerners). This fattening up instinct never meets times of famine and therefore we are getting more obese and more prone to diabetes...so I'd say that evolution f'd up big time in this case. Fortunately, our survival instincts (reason) will probably help us out with most of these evolutionary shortcomings via genetic engineering, biotechnologies, and nanotechnology.

    I could of course go on and on about how our body's perceptions don't always give us the most accurate or beneficial data, but I think you get the picture. I'll leave you with the best example...many people that smoke cigarettes claim to do so because they enjoy it or because it relaxes them...but evidence neverthless shows that nicotine consumption it is killing them. Science and Reason, not savage animal instincts, will determine the evolutionary fate of man.

    --
    I think, therefore I doh.
  2. Re:Yeah... by Reality+Master+101 · · Score: 0, Offtopic
    I personally hate the taste of meat...and the odors that emanate from fast food restaurants makes me want to vomit.

    It doesn't matter what you personally like or don't like, the vast majority of people like meat. Look at vegetarian web site... it's recipe after recipe of vegetarian meals that are supposed to simulate meat, and that's for people who don't WANT to like it.

    Then look at children. Very, very, very few children enjoy green vegetables. If they were so good for you, wouldn't we have evolved such that children would love them?

    Your points about heroin, etc, aren't relevant because those aren't subject to evolutionary pressure like food is. Food has a direct relationship to survability. If vegetables made a huge difference in how long someone lived, then it should be that people who liked vegetables a lot more than meat should be naturally selected. But they haven't been.

    I actually know part of the answer -- it's because the energy density of meat is far superior to the energy density of vegetables, so we naturally gravitate toward the thing that is better able to keep us alive.

    But given just how much better meat tastes than vegetables to the vast majority of people (including me, I really dislike vegetables for the most part, and looooooove meat), I predict that a lot of the nutritional bias against meat will turn out to be completely wrong in the future.

    --
    Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
  3. Re: meatalicious by kevin_osborne · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    (so very, very offtopic, but...)

    eating meat essentially means you are a stupid ass man. please let me explain you good for long time fun:

    Your points about heroin, etc, aren't relevant because those aren't subject to evolutionary pressure like food is. Food has a direct relationship to survability. If vegetables made a huge difference in how long someone lived, then it should be that people who liked vegetables a lot more than meat should be naturally selected. But they haven't been.

    junk science buddy. evolutionary pressure is way too slow an effect to alter diet - it's like saying gravity is why we are muscular. it has an impact, but very negligible in comparison to, well, evolutionary pressures (strongest man gets the mate) in this case :-). there are plenty of skinny predators that get along fine with bulging pectorals.

    diet and preference is all about resources. our palate evolved to make sure we lusted after fats, proteins, sugars and salts because 50,000 years ago (the last time we were any diffrent in physiological evolutionary terms) these substances were extremely hard to get a hold of - they either required killing something with the equivalent defensive properties of a tank or migrating long distances between scarce and contested resources.

    each of these things (fats, proteins, sugars, salts) are now very, very easy to get hold of but our hunger sense for them hasn't underdeveloped yet because evolution is so damn _slow_.

    the fact is these foods are now, on average, very very _bad_ for the average persons health, and evolution is starting to grind into action - hence the rise of vegetarianism - but in the mean time most of us are beholden to out of date instinctual urges that are unhealthy.

    so the _intelligent_ among us are leapfrogging evolution and choosing not to eat meat. they're evolving, and we're being culled for being unfit for survival. So if you're smart enough to understand evolution, you should be smart enough to short circuit your meat palate. If not, you're an evolutionary chump.


    Then look at children. Very, very, very few children enjoy green vegetables. If they were so good for you, wouldn't we have evolved such that children would love them?

    junk, junk, junk. children play with themselves in public as well, do you think that replicating it as an adult would be a positive addition to your evolutionary chances? I'm thinking no, dumbass.

    - and yes, I eat meat, but in honour of a good rant I'm prepared to be a raving hypocrite to assuage my excoriation fetish. have nice day good buddy! (yes, you need to say it in a pidgin asian accent to make it funny :-)