If I am interested in working in large-scale cluster building and clustering applications, what are the best sources I could go to to pick up the related skills? What books/white papers would you recommend?
But did anyone bother to read Mahir Cagri's entire response?
Don't get me wrong. I found the faked Mahir page hilarious. However, the real Mahir
a) Speaks somewhat better English. b) Seems like quite the insightful character. c) Has the good sense to question what this kind of thing says about _our_ cultural values.
Personally, I'm not afraid to say that should I ever visit Turkey, I'm going to email Mahir and take him up on the offer to guide me around. He seems like a decent person who's had all kinds of weirdness dumped on him in the last week. Show him the respect of taking the time to read what he's said.
Most of us (myself included) don't understand all the issues involved with this problem well enough to comment intelligently about it. If people _did_ understand the issue, there wouldn't be guys going around collecting money for vetting Macintoshes for "Y2K compliance."
Remember, Party members, there are no certain physical signs of a thought criminal. Many traitors are clever (though obviously badly deluded, or they wouldn't be traitors, now would they?) and carefully conceal their dangerous, criminal ideas behind a mask of normality! Every member of the Party must remain constantly vigilant, lest these anarchists and vile suborners of our perfect social order work ruin and destruction on the State.
*spit*
The day of my liberation was the day I was told that my services as a high school teacher were no longer required. Kids, if you want the best advice I can give you, it's this: DROP OUT. Go get your GED and go to college where, while the administrations are just as facist, the libraries are generally not censored.
I'm at my friend C.'s wedding this weekend and she introduces me to her friend B. B. and I hit it off and wind up spending most of our time talking together (as neither of us know most of the other guests and members of the groom's family). She's pretty, smart, holds up her end of a conversation (I was literally able to listen to her talk all day), really doesn't give a rat's ass about computers (and made me not mind that), and doesn't wear makeup. These are all good things. I'm thinking "Wow, here's an intelligent woman who seems to enjoy my company, isn't any _more_ neurotic than I am, looks more than a little bit like Winona Ryder, and likes my hat. What did I do _right_ recently?"
Then, in the course of conversation, she tells me she has Multiple Sclerosis. It doesn't weird me out, so she tells me about an attack she had recently, very candidly, very honestly. Now, however, I'm questioning my attraction to her because I have this mental image of me in my 40's, helping her use the toilet. So what do I do? Here's possibly the most interesting person I've met in the last 5 years. Do I attempt to start a relationship with her? Knowing that I might not be emotionally equipped to deal with health problems that may not even come up? (2 out of 3 MS patients never lose their capacity to walk, completely debilitating MS is quite rare)
This is probably the wrongest possible forum to ask this stuff in, and possibly the worst group from which to seek advice, but I'm willing to ask.
IBM/BSD/Sun/whoever owns source code for program x. They have the right to release it with whatever license they choose. If you don't like the license it's released under, don't contribute to the project. If it's so important to you that you can't possibly stay away from it, send the company/person in question a thoughtful, well-written, non-angry email detailing your opinions and their relevance to the piece of software in question.
It's my opinion that IBM wishes to make their products more acceptable to the open-source community because IBM is not the slow-moving, monolithic corporation it was, say 30 years ago, and realizes the power and flexibility of the open-source development model. IBM is, after all, concerned primarily with IBM. If open-source provides them with the means to more rapidly develop better and more marketable products, there is nothing in their philosophy to stop them from adopting it for some projects.
Two things to watch out for in the way you're thinking:
Don't make the mistake of equating IBM and Microsoft. While M$ has actively attempted to FUD away the open source movement, IBM has maintained an at least tenative interest and association with open software.
Don't make the mistake of thinking that commercial != open-source. Open-source is a development model, not an end use, and there is nothing which prevents open-source software from being commercially viable and profitable. Look at Red Hat--sure you can download RH 6.0, but Red Hat still sells a lot of boxed copies of RH Linux, and even more support for RH Linux. For more on this, I recommend Eric S. Raymond's papers on the economic and social characteristics of open source which you can find here.
One last thing: Windows will never go open source. It would be too embarrassing.
While I don't find doing so pleasant, I have to disagree with Mr. Katz on this matter. I believe that a geek union is unlikely and unnecessary (if not harmful outright). The traditional goals of unions--better working conditions, better compensation, greater job security, etc. are largely irrelevant in geekspace. Compensation for geeks is already higher than most occupations with comparable training requirements, working conditions are positively idyllic compared with industries such as mining or construction, and job security, the long-term-work-for-one-company-the-rest-of-my-life model of the IBMs and DuPonts of the 1950s simply doesn't exist any more.
So what is left for a geek union to do? Require that employers allow geeks to play quake at work? Ban neckties? Get rid of flourescent lights? Require glare-free cubicles? Don't be ridiculous. If you can't get that stuff on the basis of the value of your work, you don't deserve it. The fact is, the substance of the arguments I've read here simply reads into geek culture the bad stereotypes of pimply, unwashed, drooling teenagers that, frankly, have been given lipservice too long. I know too many geeks who are serious, professional people to buy into them. Perhaps there's some joiner meme circulating which periodically brings this topic up, but it would be better served by starting a LUG than by anything like unionizing.
Besides, can you imagine Michael Corleone maneuvering to control the Geeks Union?
Such as that we _want_ Microsoft to start engaging in the sort of healthy competitive practices that encourage excellence, efficiency, and a better product should not be lightly made. I rather prefer the bloated pre-80's IBM of a company Microsoft is today. After all, it's easy to sneak up on a brontosaurus.
All this requires is moderation. Slashdot already has a system of moderation in place. That system could be extended to referee which individuals/domains are allowed to post jobs on the list. I don't say it would be easy (and, btw, GeekFinder mentioned above is very cool) or effortless, merely that it would quite probably be worth doing, and would certainly be a more productive approach than whining about the unenlightened nature of recruiting agents.
Read your own post there, sparky. The average poster on Slashdot is quite average. This is why my comment threshold is set to 2. People posting jobs here, on the other hand, would assumably read Slashdot, and know who they were posting to. This could, of course, be wishful thinking on my part, but despite evidence to the contrary, I enjoy engaging in optimism from time to time.
It strikes me that we basically have a solution to this sitting in front of us. After all, if these idiot agencies can manage a website _with_ middlemen, certainly Slashdot could provide something _without_ them. What I'm thinking of here is a service to allow companies to post searchable job listings which Slashdot users could then apply to, emailing a resume to a contact person at that company. Naturally, people advertising jobs on Slashdot will be of the highest quality (better monkeys) and be capable of understanding the resumes of technical people.
Not to say this must be done, mind you, only that it would be nice. We have to look out for ourselves because the job sites are too busy filling asst. manager positions at insurance agencies (and are, as has been stated, staffed with people too deeply ignorant of what it is that we do) to bother to give the technical community the kind of service it needs.
+--------+ The sage does nothing, and nothing is left undone. +--------+ DoktorMel
Go to your primary sources. I was looking through my Penguin Portable Thomas Jefferson the other day and found this which you might find useful. If you do use it and want the correct citation, email me. DoktorMel Rogue English-teacher geek
*sigh* Every time anyone mentions time travel some well-meaning idiot feels the need to mention the old "What if I went back in time and killed my former self?" cliche. Since you were able to type this stupid, overworked, meaningless waste of bandwidth, I will personally assure you that, should you go back in time and kill your former self at some point in the future, you will elect to perform this service to humanity at such a time as to preserve this winning example of the journalist's art.
As an educator I can say that yes, we do indeed want them to get interested in actually learning to use their computers.
How long will we hold to this idea that the "Linux Community" is geek stuff? After all, people, my BA is in English, and I use Linux every day (and as someone above me stated, I want to delete Windows so badly I can't stand it). One need not be a programmer (I'm not) or a dedicated geek (again, I'm not) to appreciate what is gained by using a reliable, consistent, robust operating system (not to mention all those cool windowmaker themes I've got).
Nevertheless, if we want more cool commercial products for Linux, if we want support for more hardware (and the cooperation from manufacturers necessary to get it), if we want more commercial software for Linux (i.e. games), it is the people in the Compaq commercials, those grandparents, and kids, and swtthang99@hotmail.com's that we have to win over. If we don't have them, the people in the corporate sector, people who care (and rightly so!) about making money, won't come on board.
Which brings me to where I started: education. With a Windows machine you _are_ stuck on the bunny hill. With Linux, you currently have to start on the intermediate hill (which is better than when I started using it a couple of years ago). The bunny hill is coming, though (GNOME, Lothar), and unlike Windows, the coming of the bunny hill doesn't mean that the other hills are closed. Linux can (and soon will) allow Joe Idiot to start computing in an environment that allows him to learn how his computer actually works, to affect how it works, to get into the guts of it--or not. Meet Joe Geek.
You Can't Do That With Windows.
Linus knows this.
I'll be looking forward to hearing what he has to say.
and the news about it is the contrast to be drawn between Gates and Linus. I'm not talking about their personalities, but the subject of their respective speeches. Did anyone notice Gates kept coming back to how much he/Microsoft had $pent developing Windows 2k?
Bill Gates is a sneaky bastard, after all and he knows that numbers (preferably numbers preceded by dollar signs and followed by percent signs or words like million and billion) attract the attention of the PHB crowd (who, as we all know, are the idiots who make the buying decisions which productive individuals then have to live with).
ZD fud doesn't matter.
Gates not "getting it" doesn't matter.
All that matters is that Linux remains what it is and has been: A better solution. So long as we don't lose sight of that, it won't matter how much fud gets spread around, because it won't do any good. The geeks are going to win.
See? I didn't fire the guy who was standing next to me when it happened.
Our new mouse has four buttons and a wheel.
Someone finally told us about optical mice. We will not mention that optical mice have been around for many, many years. We will act like we invented them. (c.f. IBM PS/2 and the 3 1/2" disk)
Hopefully somebody will solve the current bandwidth problems so that I can sell more stuff.
All versions of Windows 2000 should contain approximately the same bugs.
Our server products have a long way to go in the area of reliability.
Our early decision to try and force a proprietary communications model on the world has cost us a great deal of money since it has not been universally adopted, and we must now develop patches to allow for interoperability on many of our applications.
We have finally added something not unlike file permissions. We will not mention that this has been present in unix-like operating systems all along. We will act like we invented it.
We have finally created something like a real client-server operating system. We will not mention that other operating systems have had real client-server architecture for years. We will act like we invented it.
We will now allow you to prioritize network traffic.
We're still keeping the silly and outmoded distinction between a networked filesystem and a local filesystem. We're also still sorting stuff by which device it's on. Bill likes that.
We made a new folder under My Documents called My s because people were getting confused by the word "Document" and we try and appeal to the lowest common denominator of intelligence exclusively.
Windows 2000 has cost us a bunch to develop and right now we're betting our asses on it. If it doesn't catch on (if it is, for instance, another Windows 98) I may have to start selling Linux.
I like the word "empowerment." One of my employees used it and it impressed me, so I'm going to use it (because people who attend Bill speeches aren't, by and large, computer people at heart, and respond to such gibberish).
**************
Y'know, it's not that Bill doesn't "get it," it's that Bill gets something else entirely. And what he gets is wrong.
Many was the time, as I struggled through the process of really learning to use Linux as my primary operating system, that I felt like handing #linux a large chunk of my mind. Why is it that a politely worded, if somewhat naive question seems to garner scorn and derision from so much of our community?
Why are we so quick to ridicule the uninitiated for the unpardonable sin of daring to try and enter our sanctums? After all, was it so darned easy for _us_ to learn?
The fact is this: Linux has important advantages over Microsoft in all areas _except_ PUBLIC RELATIONS. Just as the Linux development community is collectively responsible for the code, the Linux user community is collectively responsible for the public perception of this OS, and we have not been doing our job. As Linux users we have a responsibility to be more polite, more civilized, better spoken, and, most of all, more helpful than the unwashed baboon hordes of Microsoft. If we lose the battle for public perception, we lose. Period.
There seems to be an attitude prevalent in the community that there is nothing which can be done about M$'s FUD. FUD only works because it contains a grain of truth. Those the media mistakenly calls "hackers" are a noisy, unruly, rude, loutish bunch. Linux is more difficult for a new user to learn how to deal with than MS Windows. But those facts are _our_ fault. The annoying kids populating IRC are our fault. We haven't done anything about it. Where are responsible channel operators who are willing to kick someone for being rude? After all, we're talking about #linux, not #teenchat, and the free speech of adolescent boys is _not_ a big concern of mine. Linux is harder for a newbie to pick up on because we haven't made a concerted efford to make it otherwise. Where is the network of volunteers contributing their time to help people who've just gotten the word?
That's really all I have to say. We can criticize Gates for this all we want, but all he's really doing is being clever and hitting us where we're weakest--PR. As with everything about an open OS, it is up to us to change that.
Slashdot Mirror
If I am interested in working in large-scale cluster building and clustering applications, what are the best sources I could go to to pick up the related skills? What books/white papers would you recommend?
Is how does the "Other" category break down? After all, it has a bigger share of the server market than Netscape.
Don't you love the big, Big, BIG gap between Apache and everybody else?
But did anyone bother to read Mahir Cagri's entire response?
Don't get me wrong. I found the faked Mahir page hilarious. However, the real Mahir
a) Speaks somewhat better English.
b) Seems like quite the insightful character.
c) Has the good sense to question what this kind of thing says about _our_ cultural values.
Personally, I'm not afraid to say that should I ever visit Turkey, I'm going to email Mahir and take him up on the offer to guide me around. He seems like a decent person who's had all kinds of weirdness dumped on him in the last week. Show him the respect of taking the time to read what he's said.
Most of us (myself included) don't understand all the issues involved with this problem well enough to comment intelligently about it. If people _did_ understand the issue, there wouldn't be guys going around collecting money for vetting Macintoshes for "Y2K compliance."
A penguin, a gnu, and Linus Torvalds smoking cigars and playing poker.
Remember, Party members, there are no certain physical signs of a thought criminal. Many traitors are clever (though obviously badly deluded, or they wouldn't be traitors, now would they?) and carefully conceal their dangerous, criminal ideas behind a mask of normality! Every member of the Party must remain constantly vigilant, lest these anarchists and vile suborners of our perfect social order work ruin and destruction on the State.
*spit*
The day of my liberation was the day I was told that my services as a high school teacher were no longer required. Kids, if you want the best advice I can give you, it's this: DROP OUT. Go get your GED and go to college where, while the administrations are just as facist, the libraries are generally not censored.
*nuffsaid*
I'm at my friend C.'s wedding this weekend and she introduces me to her friend B. B. and I hit it off and wind up spending most of our time talking together (as neither of us know most of the other guests and members of the groom's family). She's pretty, smart, holds up her end of a conversation (I was literally able to listen to her talk all day), really doesn't give a rat's ass about computers (and made me not mind that), and doesn't wear makeup. These are all good things. I'm thinking "Wow, here's an intelligent woman who seems to enjoy my company, isn't any _more_ neurotic than I am, looks more than a little bit like Winona Ryder, and likes my hat. What did I do _right_ recently?"
Then, in the course of conversation, she tells me she has Multiple Sclerosis. It doesn't weird me out, so she tells me about an attack she had recently, very candidly, very honestly. Now, however, I'm questioning my attraction to her because I have this mental image of me in my 40's, helping her use the toilet. So what do I do? Here's possibly the most interesting person I've met in the last 5 years. Do I attempt to start a relationship with her? Knowing that I might not be emotionally equipped to deal with health problems that may not even come up? (2 out of 3 MS patients never lose their capacity to walk, completely debilitating MS is quite rare)
This is probably the wrongest possible forum to ask this stuff in, and possibly the worst group from which to seek advice, but I'm willing to ask.
But here goes:
In 25 words or less, could you tell me why NT sucks so badly?
GUE Tech! Yes, GUE Tech provides REAL challenges for the graduate student. Why just study when you can study and run the risk of being eaten by grues?
IBM/BSD/Sun/whoever owns source code for program x. They have the right to release it with whatever license they choose. If you don't like the license it's released under, don't contribute to the project. If it's so important to you that you can't possibly stay away from it, send the company/person in question a thoughtful, well-written, non-angry email detailing your opinions and their relevance to the piece of software in question.
If you ask me rating licenses is a non-issue.
It's my opinion that IBM wishes to make their products more acceptable to the open-source community because IBM is not the slow-moving, monolithic corporation it was, say 30 years ago, and realizes the power and flexibility of the open-source development model. IBM is, after all, concerned primarily with IBM. If open-source provides them with the means to more rapidly develop better and more marketable products, there is nothing in their philosophy to stop them from adopting it for some projects.
Two things to watch out for in the way you're thinking:
Don't make the mistake of equating IBM and Microsoft. While M$ has actively attempted to FUD away the open source movement, IBM has maintained an at least tenative interest and association with open software.
Don't make the mistake of thinking that commercial != open-source. Open-source is a development model, not an end use, and there is nothing which prevents open-source software from being commercially viable and profitable. Look at Red Hat--sure you can download RH 6.0, but Red Hat still sells a lot of boxed copies of RH Linux, and even more support for RH Linux. For more on this, I recommend Eric S. Raymond's papers on the economic and social characteristics of open source which you can find here.
One last thing: Windows will never go open source. It would be too embarrassing.
While I don't find doing so pleasant, I have to disagree with Mr. Katz on this matter. I believe that a geek union is unlikely and unnecessary (if not harmful outright). The traditional goals of unions--better working conditions, better compensation, greater job security, etc. are largely irrelevant in geekspace. Compensation for geeks is already higher than most occupations with comparable training requirements, working conditions are positively idyllic compared with industries such as mining or construction, and job security, the long-term-work-for-one-company-the-rest-of-my-life model of the IBMs and DuPonts of the 1950s simply doesn't exist any more.
So what is left for a geek union to do? Require that employers allow geeks to play quake at work? Ban neckties? Get rid of flourescent lights? Require glare-free cubicles? Don't be ridiculous. If you can't get that stuff on the basis of the value of your work, you don't deserve it. The fact is, the substance of the arguments I've read here simply reads into geek culture the bad stereotypes of pimply, unwashed, drooling teenagers that, frankly, have been given lipservice too long. I know too many geeks who are serious, professional people to buy into them. Perhaps there's some joiner meme circulating which periodically brings this topic up, but it would be better served by starting a LUG than by anything like unionizing.
Besides, can you imagine Michael Corleone maneuvering to control the Geeks Union?
Such as that we _want_ Microsoft to start engaging in the sort of healthy competitive practices that encourage excellence, efficiency, and a better product should not be lightly made. I rather prefer the bloated pre-80's IBM of a company Microsoft is today. After all, it's easy to sneak up on a brontosaurus.
All this requires is moderation. Slashdot already has a system of moderation in place. That system could be extended to referee which individuals/domains are allowed to post jobs on the list. I don't say it would be easy (and, btw, GeekFinder mentioned above is very cool) or effortless, merely that it would quite probably be worth doing, and would certainly be a more productive approach than whining about the unenlightened nature of recruiting agents.
DoktorMel
Read your own post there, sparky. The average poster on Slashdot is quite average. This is why my comment threshold is set to 2. People posting jobs here, on the other hand, would assumably read Slashdot, and know who they were posting to. This could, of course, be wishful thinking on my part, but despite evidence to the contrary, I enjoy engaging in optimism from time to time.
DoktorMel
It strikes me that we basically have a solution to this sitting in front of us. After all, if these idiot agencies can manage a website _with_ middlemen, certainly Slashdot could provide something _without_ them. What I'm thinking of here is a service to allow companies to post searchable job listings which Slashdot users could then apply to, emailing a resume to a contact person at that company. Naturally, people advertising jobs on Slashdot will be of the highest quality (better monkeys) and be capable of understanding the resumes of technical people.
Not to say this must be done, mind you, only that it would be nice. We have to look out for ourselves because the job sites are too busy filling asst. manager positions at insurance agencies (and are, as has been stated, staffed with people too deeply ignorant of what it is that we do) to bother to give the technical community the kind of service it needs.
+--------+
The sage does nothing, and nothing is left undone.
+--------+
DoktorMel
Go to your primary sources. I was looking through my Penguin Portable Thomas Jefferson the other day and found this which you might find useful. If you do use it and want the correct citation, email me. DoktorMel Rogue English-teacher geek
*sigh* Every time anyone mentions time travel some well-meaning idiot feels the need to mention the old "What if I went back in time and killed my former self?" cliche. Since you were able to type this stupid, overworked, meaningless waste of bandwidth, I will personally assure you that, should you go back in time and kill your former self at some point in the future, you will elect to perform this service to humanity at such a time as to preserve this winning example of the journalist's art.
DoktorMel@yahoo.com
Of course they would.
My prediction is that Linux will toast NT regardless, though.
DoktorMel
As an educator I can say that yes, we do indeed want them to get interested in actually learning to use their computers.
How long will we hold to this idea that the "Linux Community" is geek stuff? After all, people, my BA is in English, and I use Linux every day (and as someone above me stated, I want to delete Windows so badly I can't stand it). One need not be a programmer (I'm not) or a dedicated geek (again, I'm not) to appreciate what is gained by using a reliable, consistent, robust operating system (not to mention all those cool windowmaker themes I've got).
Nevertheless, if we want more cool commercial products for Linux, if we want support for more hardware (and the cooperation from manufacturers necessary to get it), if we want more commercial software for Linux (i.e. games), it is the people in the Compaq commercials, those grandparents, and kids, and swtthang99@hotmail.com's that we have to win over. If we don't have them, the people in the corporate sector, people who care (and rightly so!) about making money, won't come on board.
Which brings me to where I started: education. With a Windows machine you _are_ stuck on the bunny hill. With Linux, you currently have to start on the intermediate hill (which is better than when I started using it a couple of years ago). The bunny hill is coming, though (GNOME, Lothar), and unlike Windows, the coming of the bunny hill doesn't mean that the other hills are closed. Linux can (and soon will) allow Joe Idiot to start computing in an environment that allows him to learn how his computer actually works, to affect how it works, to get into the guts of it--or not. Meet Joe Geek.
You Can't Do That With Windows.
Linus knows this.
I'll be looking forward to hearing what he has to say.
DoktorMel
Bill Gates is a sneaky bastard, after all and he knows that numbers (preferably numbers preceded by dollar signs and followed by percent signs or words like million and billion) attract the attention of the PHB crowd (who, as we all know, are the idiots who make the buying decisions which productive individuals then have to live with).
ZD fud doesn't matter.
Gates not "getting it" doesn't matter.
All that matters is that Linux remains what it is and has been: A better solution. So long as we don't lose sight of that, it won't matter how much fud gets spread around, because it won't do any good. The geeks are going to win.
--=+=--
Jesu Christi Dominatrix!!
DoktorMel
Hah. Look at my product crash last year.
We fixed that bug.
See? I didn't fire the guy who was standing next to me when it happened.
Our new mouse has four buttons and a wheel.
Someone finally told us about optical mice. We will not mention that optical mice have been around for many, many years. We will act like we invented them. (c.f. IBM PS/2 and the 3 1/2" disk)
Hopefully somebody will solve the current bandwidth problems so that I can sell more stuff.
All versions of Windows 2000 should contain approximately the same bugs.
Our server products have a long way to go in the area of reliability.
Our early decision to try and force a proprietary communications model on the world has cost us a great deal of money since it has not been universally adopted, and we must now develop patches to allow for interoperability on many of our applications.
We have finally added something not unlike file permissions. We will not mention that this has been present in unix-like operating systems all along. We will act like we invented it.
We have finally created something like a real client-server operating system. We will not mention that other operating systems have had real client-server architecture for years. We will act like we invented it.
We will now allow you to prioritize network traffic.
We're still keeping the silly and outmoded distinction between a networked filesystem and a local filesystem. We're also still sorting stuff by which device it's on. Bill likes that.
We made a new folder under My Documents called My s because people were getting confused by the word "Document" and we try and appeal to the lowest common denominator of intelligence exclusively.
Windows 2000 has cost us a bunch to develop and right now we're betting our asses on it. If it doesn't catch on (if it is, for instance, another Windows 98) I may have to start selling Linux.
I like the word "empowerment." One of my employees used it and it impressed me, so I'm going to use it (because people who attend Bill speeches aren't, by and large, computer people at heart, and respond to such gibberish).
**************
Y'know, it's not that Bill doesn't "get it," it's that Bill gets something else entirely. And what he gets is wrong.
Doktormel@yahoo.com
Many was the time, as I struggled through the process of really learning to use Linux as my primary operating system, that I felt like handing #linux a large chunk of my mind. Why is it that a politely worded, if somewhat naive question seems to garner scorn and derision from so much of our community?
Why are we so quick to ridicule the uninitiated for the unpardonable sin of daring to try and enter our sanctums? After all, was it so darned easy for _us_ to learn?
The fact is this: Linux has important advantages over Microsoft in all areas _except_ PUBLIC RELATIONS. Just as the Linux development community is collectively responsible for the code, the Linux user community is collectively responsible for the public perception of this OS, and we have not been doing our job. As Linux users we have a responsibility to be more polite, more civilized, better spoken, and, most of all, more helpful than the unwashed baboon hordes of Microsoft. If we lose the battle for public perception, we lose. Period.
There seems to be an attitude prevalent in the community that there is nothing which can be done about M$'s FUD. FUD only works because it contains a grain of truth. Those the media mistakenly calls "hackers" are a noisy, unruly, rude, loutish bunch. Linux is more difficult for a new user to learn how to deal with than MS Windows. But those facts are _our_ fault. The annoying kids populating IRC are our fault. We haven't done anything about it. Where are responsible channel operators who are willing to kick someone for being rude? After all, we're talking about #linux, not #teenchat, and the free speech of adolescent boys is _not_ a big concern of mine. Linux is harder for a newbie to pick up on because we haven't made a concerted efford to make it otherwise. Where is the network of volunteers contributing their time to help people who've just gotten the word?
That's really all I have to say. We can criticize Gates for this all we want, but all he's really doing is being clever and hitting us where we're weakest--PR. As with everything about an open OS, it is up to us to change that.