I am considering unsubscribing. I also didn't attend your
meeting and probably won't. I think your PLUG is like a lot of
other LUGs and is going to disappear.
Your system wouldn't let me login (yes I used the login name of
hhhobbit and the password that was mailed to me). If you people
love Darl McBride who single-handedly did more to try to trash
the ability of anybody to use Linux and dislike Richard Stallman
whose work makes it possible for you to have Linux I am more than
baffled. I am DUMBFOUNDED!
I needed people with Linux expertise to help leverage people off
of Windows onto Linux for security reasons. Specifically, I see
the following two areas as ripe for the picking:
1. People at home. Many have very little technical knowledge
and will need assistance from time to time. A good LUG is the
place to get this. In fairness, some of your members are
providing that, but if somebody is so entranced and enchanted
by McBride to accuse me of not having social skills they are
NOT the kind of person I need to help hand-hold these people
into using Linux. Specifically, people could help them start
to make the transition to Linux by starting with installing
Firefox, Chrome, or Opera as their primary browser on Windows.
Then install OpenOffice in place of Office. Anything that reduces
the culture shock in going from Windows to Linux will help
them when they make the transition. BUT THESE PEOPLE ARE GOING
TO NEED A LOT OF HELP! And all they are going to care about is
that they got rid of a problem - Windows malware. They don't
adore Linux and probably never will except for this one reason,
THEY GOT RID OF THE MALWARE! But they also need to get what
ever it is they do done (and that is THEIR business).
2. Small business owners do not have the protection that you or
I as individuals have. They are spear-phished and the hackers
once they get the needed info siphon off their bank account and
then sabotage their machine so it won't boot. But what do they
have to go to? Deseret Industries replaced their Windows 2003
POS (Point Of Sale) Server system with a Windows 2009 POS
system. Why didn't they consider Linux? BECAUSE THERE IS NO
LINIX POS! About their only alternative is perhaps IBM'S AIX
POS system and it is actually far more expensive rather than
less expensive than what Microsoft provides. You would have to
create it manually. No small business has the resources or
technical staff to do that. Why didn't somebody already seize
on this business opportunity? BECAUSE THERE IS A LAW-SUIT FROM
SCO STARTED BY DARL MCBRIDE THAT STILL WON'T DIE AND GO AWAY!
They are promising to continue it forever. I would NOT write
ONE LINE of code in that situation and I don't know one other
business manager that wouldn't do exactly the same thing
unless it may be Novell.
So what can we do to help them? SANS, Brian Krebs formerly of
the Washington Post and others have already come up with the
answer. Give them either a dedicated machine to do their banking
with or a bootable Linux CD that they can boot to Linux to do
their banking from. These CDs could be provided at meetings and
PLUG people could help small business owners in using it.
My friend Greg warned me about you people and he was right. He
also gave up on PLUG. But he is using Ubuntu Linux just to
get rid of the Windows malware situation. So you are going to
have to make a decision of where you want to go. You are going
to have to come up with a charter that details the direction of
where you are headed and what you consider important. If it is
any of the following I am definitely not interested:
[a] Promote Darl McBride who is the pivot point of somebody who
tried to destroy Linux. Microsoft at the start was so happy
with what he was doing you can't believe it. From that you
should not misinterpret me as being anti-Microsoft. I am
not. I am pro-security and wanting people to have something
that gets the job done. If that is Windows and they are
happy, so am I. It is just that I know from a security
stand-point that Linux is much better.
[b] Discuss the esoterica of things that really don't help
normal people get their job done. Once they get rid of the
Windows malware and get things doing what they need to get
done they are happy campers. That is fine with me! That is
one more satisfied customer that when I write to a company
and say: I have a pipeline problem. Your Linux code for
your PCI parallel board won't compile I will no longer get a
support staff person that says "we have umpteen mergers
and that is an unsupported product." If we have 10,000 new
Linux users in place of each one we have now they wouldn't
even dream of saying that! They would literally put their
Linux staff programmer on the job and try to figure out why
it no longer compiles on both Ubuntu 10.04 and OpenSuse 11.2.
Hey, both the gender bender USB ---> Parallel cable and
this PCI Parallel board work on Windows. Why not on Linux?
IT IS THE PIPELINE that is the main source of the problem.
But I am still baffled why Fedora 3 could recognize my
monitor and Fedoras 10, 11, and 12 couldn't. ALL MICROSOFT
WINDOWS USERS WOULD HAVE THE SAME PUZZLING THOUGHT! Why
did it have it then but not now? Ditto for one printer
filter that worked replace by 12 that well they may work
or they may not work.
[c] Continue with the idea that distros should diverge more and
more rather than converge to something ordinary people can
handle. I am sorry but Ubuntu shifting the maximize,
minimize, and close buttons from upper right side to the
upper left side is hard to understand. For the same reason
I continue to use a QWERTY keyboard instead of shifting to
DVORAK - sooner or later I hit the other way of doing it.
Standardization of ontrols of automobiles were done years
ago. The same thing needs to happen here with Linux. Having
fifteen different ways for mounting my FAT32 partition of
which thirteen are wrong is hard to understand.
So you people hammer it out what is you want to do and I will
go another way. But I will be damned if I will ever understand
why somebody would lovee Darl McBride and hate Richard Stallman
to the point that they would say I lack social skills. Perhaps
they work for Omniture and are peeved that my PAC filter strips
almost all (all?) of their scripts out so you don't even see the
2o7.net host called? C'est la vie.
HHH
PS I am still printing on my HP LaserJet 4P printer but only
from Linux. Why wouldn't I? The replacement printer costs
$200 and the print cartridges cost $70 but only print out
700 sheets. I don't know how many thousands of sheets I
have printed with current print cartridge but it is a lot
and there will be more - that is MY battle now, NOT yours,
but again a Windows person who has it working with both
the gender bender cable and the PCI Parallel plug in board
would be like my friend who works for BYU that said Linux
is not ready for the desktop. From the perspective of a
security person, LINUX HAS TO BE READY. There are things
I can't even filter any more (at all) in a pro-active
fashion.
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