Found it! It's from All You Need Is Love: How the terrorists stopped terrorism in The Atlantic. Their own generals wanted to break up Black September, but couldn't come up with a way to get these ridiculously dedicated terrorists to stop:
My host, who was one of Abu Iyad's most trusted deputies, was charged with devising a solution. For months both men thought of various ways to solve the Black September problem, discussing and debating what they could possibly do, short of killing all these young men, to stop them from committing further acts of terror.
Finally they hit upon an idea. Why not simply marry them off? In other words, why not find a way to give these men -- the most dedicated, competent, and implacable fighters in the entire PLO - a reason to live rather than to die? Having failed to come up with any viable alternatives, the two men put their plan in motion....
So approximately a hundred of these beautiful young women were brought to Beirut. There, in a sort of PLO version of a college mixer, boy met girl, boy fell in love with girl, boy would, it was hoped, marry girl. There was an additional incentive, designed to facilitate not just amorous connections but long-lasting relationships. The hundred or so Black Septemberists were told that if they married these women, they would be paid $3,000; given an apartment in Beirut with a gas stove, a refrigerator, and a television; and employed by the PLO in some nonviolent capacity. Any of these couples that had a baby within a year would be rewarded with an additional $5,000.
Both Abu Iyad and the future general worried that their scheme would never work. But, as the general recounted, without exception the Black Septemberists fell in love, got married, settled down, and in most cases started a family...the general explained, not one of them would agree to travel abroad, for fear of being arrested and losing all that they had -- that is, being deprived of their wives and children. 'And so', my host told me, 'that is how we shut down Black September and eliminated terrorism. It is the only successful case that I know of.'
That was the view from the inside, dunno how it squares with your knowledge. But that's the source I had, for what it's worth.
You joke, but this is literally the case. I can't find the link, but a lot of terrorists basically don't have a life, and getting them one actually breaks up the group. This was tried on (IIRC) the Black September group.
"Genesis was not written for the purpose of providing a literal or scientific account of Creation. To read it looking for such is unwise, because it ignores the authorial intent and misses the meaning of the text."
Jesus thought Adam and Eve were real, as did Paul. Indeed, the whole point of Christianity is that Jesus redeems the original sin of Adam and Eve. You can't have a real Jesus and a metaphorical Adam.
You're not a real literalist, you're just pretending to be one.
You have a low enough user ID you should remember IE 4/5 versus Netscape 4. Microsoft did many extensively-documented monopoly abusive things, but Netscape 4 was shit.
What is needed is people who know nothing to do beta-testing. Sure, feedback is appreciated from people who know how to code, what is needed is feedback from those pesky users.
This. Get in there and break shit.
Or even just a 'thank you' to the makers, so the makers will be motivated to go on. An email saying something like "Thanks for making this program. Keep up the good work. I really like it." will be great to programmers.
And this. Debian reportbug even has a "--kudos" option for the purpose:-)
Or, to put it another way, employers love someone who shows actual evidence they will work for their pay without being a whiny little bitch with first-world problems.
I wrote large chunks of the Mozilla 1.0 FAQ. You bet I listed it on my CV. This is back when no-one outside open-source circles had heard of it and IE's usage was 96%.
ALWAYS INSTALL XUBUNTU CLEANLY, not over an existing GNOME3/Unity infestation. Unity messes with various GTK+ settings in your config and shit won't work right.
Vic Gundotra's pulling out all the stops to make the metrics look good, it's true. Hence the TV and newspaper advertising in the desperate hope for users.
No shit, they bought a full page ad in Metro (a piece of shit, but read by every bored commuter in the entire UK) touting as a major selling point that you could bitch about your boss on G+ and not get caught by him. This was targeted at 20-40ish office workers. I can't think of a more appealing message for a social network.
In any case, they've done the damage and no-one actually cares any more. The techies (who, being geeks, have funny names) were alienated and warned their non-techie friends off; the non-techie friends are happy on Facebook.
This is the "God of the gaps" argument applied to G+. "Your evidence is wrong, G+ has a zillion users!" There's not so many public posts. "They're all making locked posts!" The ComScore ratings are terrible. "They're all on these particular devices that they just don't happen to measure!" Clap your hands if you believe in G+? "Plus one!!"
G+ started with WILD ENTHUSIASM from the techies. They were recruiting their friends at a fantastic rate, the software was marvellous, the engineers were right there and responsive...
Then they started kicking people off for not having a WASPonym.
Facebook has a similar requirement, but they stop you from creating the account. They don't let you create it, then kick you off. Incidentally affecting every other Google service you're on, including your Android phone.
And of course techies use weird names, because they're annoying nerds. You can say these people were dicks for using stupid names, but it turned out that this argument didn't convince people to stick around. And they certainly weren't going to stop warning their friends off it.
Google+ got out its nuclear howitzer, locked target on its foot and pulled the trigger.
Man. All they had to do was not be Facebook. All they had to do was not be Facebook.
But I'm sure the newspaper and television ads will do wonders. And everyone active on G+ is loving it as much as the people on Buzz loved that.
You didn't read the comments. The KDE 4 developers' contempt for users who don't want to follow their exciting active database-backed desktop vision. Then the guy wonders why Trinity won't simply shut down their project because he says so, even though he is clearly opposed to everything users actually want from it.
Also, note how he's asked several times to explain just what the bugs he saw were and goes to great lengths to weasel out of being specific.
KDE 4 appears to be a desktop for its developers. It will never have a significant userbase outside that.
Slashdot Mirror
Sure, I'd want more verification of the idea than a single anecdote like this, but it's still interesting.
Found it! It's from All You Need Is Love: How the terrorists stopped terrorism in The Atlantic. Their own generals wanted to break up Black September, but couldn't come up with a way to get these ridiculously dedicated terrorists to stop:
You joke, but this is literally the case. I can't find the link, but a lot of terrorists basically don't have a life, and getting them one actually breaks up the group. This was tried on (IIRC) the Black September group.
That's just sophistry to try to deny your backsliding. There's a whole science of how precisely the Genesis creation and flood occurred.
"Genesis was not written for the purpose of providing a literal or scientific account of Creation. To read it looking for such is unwise, because it ignores the authorial intent and misses the meaning of the text."
Jesus thought Adam and Eve were real, as did Paul. Indeed, the whole point of Christianity is that Jesus redeems the original sin of Adam and Eve. You can't have a real Jesus and a metaphorical Adam.
You're not a real literalist, you're just pretending to be one.
Culturally, this has long been the case! Lots of stuff people think of as "Christian" is straight out of Milton or even Dante.
The literal truth of the Bible is that the sky is a firmament with water above it (Genesis 1:6-8).
You have a low enough user ID you should remember IE 4/5 versus Netscape 4. Microsoft did many extensively-documented monopoly abusive things, but Netscape 4 was shit.
LibreOffice, however, has a collection of easier fixes specifically to lure people in. And it works. Every project should do this.
What is needed is people who know nothing to do beta-testing. Sure, feedback is appreciated from people who know how to code, what is needed is feedback from those pesky users.
This. Get in there and break shit.
Or even just a 'thank you' to the makers, so the makers will be motivated to go on. An email saying something like "Thanks for making this program. Keep up the good work. I really like it." will be great to programmers.
And this. Debian reportbug even has a "--kudos" option for the purpose :-)
Or, to put it another way, employers love someone who shows actual evidence they will work for their pay without being a whiny little bitch with first-world problems.
I wrote large chunks of the Mozilla 1.0 FAQ. You bet I listed it on my CV. This is back when no-one outside open-source circles had heard of it and IE's usage was 96%.
I'm a sysadmin and totally not a coder. But I'm also a writer. So
1. Install it on stuff. In particular, install it on platforms that aren't Fedora or Ubuntu. Document problems you find. Cross-platform = robust.
2. Documentation, FAQs. The documentation always lags. 1. will generate lots of stuff you write up. Wikis can always do with maintainers too.
Scammers can sell the service of buying your way in.
ALWAYS INSTALL XUBUNTU CLEANLY, not over an existing GNOME3/Unity infestation. Unity messes with various GTK+ settings in your config and shit won't work right.
I'm on 11.10 but with Xubuntu. It's nice.
Dude. 8.04 was called "Hairy Hardon."
Vic Gundotra's pulling out all the stops to make the metrics look good, it's true. Hence the TV and newspaper advertising in the desperate hope for users.
No shit, they bought a full page ad in Metro (a piece of shit, but read by every bored commuter in the entire UK) touting as a major selling point that you could bitch about your boss on G+ and not get caught by him. This was targeted at 20-40ish office workers. I can't think of a more appealing message for a social network.
It really hasn't.
In any case, they've done the damage and no-one actually cares any more. The techies (who, being geeks, have funny names) were alienated and warned their non-techie friends off; the non-techie friends are happy on Facebook.
This is the "God of the gaps" argument applied to G+. "Your evidence is wrong, G+ has a zillion users!" There's not so many public posts. "They're all making locked posts!" The ComScore ratings are terrible. "They're all on these particular devices that they just don't happen to measure!" Clap your hands if you believe in G+? "Plus one!!"
G+ started with WILD ENTHUSIASM from the techies. They were recruiting their friends at a fantastic rate, the software was marvellous, the engineers were right there and responsive ...
Then they started kicking people off for not having a WASPonym.
Facebook has a similar requirement, but they stop you from creating the account. They don't let you create it, then kick you off. Incidentally affecting every other Google service you're on, including your Android phone.
And of course techies use weird names, because they're annoying nerds. You can say these people were dicks for using stupid names, but it turned out that this argument didn't convince people to stick around. And they certainly weren't going to stop warning their friends off it.
Google+ got out its nuclear howitzer, locked target on its foot and pulled the trigger.
Man. All they had to do was not be Facebook. All they had to do was not be Facebook.
But I'm sure the newspaper and television ads will do wonders. And everyone active on G+ is loving it as much as the people on Buzz loved that.
Pinball > video games. Because you can actually play the game by beating the crap out of it.
Because it worked so well for Scientology.Yeah, I can't see this going wrong in any way at all.
You didn't read the comments. The KDE 4 developers' contempt for users who don't want to follow their exciting active database-backed desktop vision. Then the guy wonders why Trinity won't simply shut down their project because he says so, even though he is clearly opposed to everything users actually want from it.
Also, note how he's asked several times to explain just what the bugs he saw were and goes to great lengths to weasel out of being specific.
KDE 4 appears to be a desktop for its developers. It will never have a significant userbase outside that.
Everyone should read that post and its comments. It demonstrates wonderfully why KDE 4 will never have a non-negligible userbase.