Re: what ever happened to linux?(Rep. Cleaver/immigration rants, etc.)
I may be just a reader of the forum for the vast majority of the posts arriving at my electronic doorstep but, I feel rather mystified..... I thought this is the Kansas City LINUX Users Group. While I can be massively entertained by the sociological/political/religious meanderings of some folks who post here, my primary interest is in learning as much as I can about, you guessed it, LINUX. So, howzaboutit? If some folks wish to beat each other about the head and shoulders in a virtual world, why not go pick an open field and go at it for real instead of wasting our collective in-boxes with non-linux trivia?
On Tue, Aug 12, 2008 at 6:42 PM, Craig Aldinger <gonzogone@gmail.com> wrote:
I may be just a reader of the forum for the vast majority of the posts arriving at my electronic doorstep but, I feel rather mystified..... I thought this is the Kansas City LINUX Users Group. While I can be massively entertained by the sociological/political/religious meanderings of some folks who post here, my primary interest is in learning as much as I can about, you guessed it, LINUX.
It happens occasionally that we discuss things other than Linux, the *BSDs, other Unices, or even the DOS/Windows lineage. Given the wide variety of political and religious leanings of this group, when we do that, it's almost certain to result in a flamefest. Especially when people resort to a particular form of ad hominem that seems to be really popular lately: X: I don't like ____. Y: ____ is (all/disproportionally) non-white, therefore you're a racist. [The unstated conclusion is that anything a racist likes/agrees with is automatically bad.] It's getting on my last nerve. In fact, in the spirit of Godwin, I'm going to propound my very own Internet Law. Here's my working version: "Calling someone a 'racist', rather than addressing the truth or falsity of their position, is an implict confession that one is unable to do the latter."
On Tue, Aug 12, 2008 at 8:10 PM, Monty J. Harder <mjharder@gmail.com> wrote:
It's getting on my last nerve. In fact, in the spirit of Godwin, I'm going to propound my very own Internet Law. Here's my working version: "Calling someone a 'racist', rather than addressing the truth or falsity of their position, is an implict confession that one is unable to do the latter."
I don't know what to call it, but it has an element of truth. Maybe we should refer to it as dropping the R-bomb or some-such term. Maybe "The Harder Corollary to Godwin: the less likely your opponent has a valid defense or opposition the more likely they are to call you a racist." Jon.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 I highly recommend KCLUG set up a BS list, similar to LEAP, where non-Open Source discussions can take place. I find this helps to minimize the signal to noise ratio for those who wish to just concentrate on OSS. Patrick -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (MingW32) Comment: http://getfiregpg.org iD8DBQFIoj+fMYIXomaKpd8RAhZiAJkBxQ3tZbXNDns6pbgdgoKzSo0nuwCfelVg piNdQkNzfED2N18eEWJGULU= =f4+2 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
On Tue, Aug 12, 2008 at 8:57 PM, <marlowe@antagonism.org> wrote:
I highly recommend KCLUG set up a BS list, similar to LEAP, where non-Open Source discussions can take place. I find this helps to minimize the signal to noise ratio for those who wish to just concentrate on OSS.
Any mailing list is a social community. The topics of discussion will drift. You're going to need to learn how to cope with that on your own. -- Chris
--- On Tue, 8/12/08, marlowe@antagonism.org <marlowe@antagonism.org> wrote:
I highly recommend KCLUG set up a BS list, similar to LEAP, where non-Open Source discussions can take place. I find this helps to minimize the signal to noise ratio for those who wish to just concentrate on OSS.
In my experience creating a new mailing list for people to which to take their unrelated discussions, results in an empty BS list and the same level of OT discussions on the original list. Sometimes people just don't want to bother going somewhere else, and sometimes those on the free E-mail providers have used up all their E-mail filters already and don't have one free to use for yet another mailing list. Plus there's the added disincentive of the new BS list containing entirely inflammatory messages: no one wants to subscribe to a daily dose of inflammatory messages. Dodging the cow patties in the existing mailing list is somewhat preferable. Plus the instant you mention such a list, someone will start a "censorship!" flamewar, and none of us wants that.
On Tue, Aug 12, 2008 at 8:10 PM, Monty J. Harder <mjharder@gmail.com> wrote:
"[making an ad hominem attack] rather than addressing the truth or falsity of their position, is an implict confession that one is unable to do the latter."
this can be generalized to most logical fallacies, not just Against The Person.
--- On Tue, 8/12/08, Monty J. Harder <mjharder@gmail.com> wrote:
On Tue, Aug 12, 2008 at 6:42 PM, Craig Aldinger <gonzogone@gmail.com> wrote:
I may be just a reader of the forum for the vast majority of the posts arriving at my electronic doorstep but, I feel rather mystified..... I thought this is the Kansas City LINUX Users Group. While I can be massively entertained by the sociological/political/religious meanderings of some folks who post here, my primary interest is in learning as much as I can about, you guessed it, LINUX.
It happens occasionally that we discuss things other than Linux, the *BSDs, other Unices, or even the DOS/Windows lineage. Given the wide variety of political and religious leanings of this group, when we do that, it's almost certain to result in a flamefest.
Part of the problem is that Linux and various other things associated with Linux fall into a category which paradoxically attracts people from both ends of the political spectrum. Its free. This means that businesses can benefit from it, but it also means that individuals can throw off the yoke of oppressing corporations bent on global domination (which is bad for business, at least the business with aspirations towards global domination). Plus as Linux has stayed on the sidelines when questions of religion and divinity have come up, people from all religions start using Linux, even the weird ones (you know, the ones where a bunch of people worship something that you don't worship). Thus two people who have diametrically opposed religious beliefs both like the same OS and both belong to the same mailing list, and thus have ample opportunity of meeting people, finding minor theological faults with them, and thus exploding the list into major theological flamewars. And of course Linux generally attracts the more intelligent people in the world, meaning that mentioning Hitler and such things as "Godwin's Law" are more likely to continue the discussion as folks find rational ways of including Hitler in the discussion. On the mighty and holy N-----s, "Godwin's Law" may have halted a discussion amongst the lesser mortals, but on an intelligent mailing list full of intelligent but seemingly emotionally thin-skinned individuals, its just another topic to find parallels to compare it to the over-arcing topic, Linux.
Craig Aldinger wrote:
I may be just a reader of the forum for the vast majority of the posts arriving at my electronic doorstep but, I feel rather mystified..... I thought this is the Kansas City LINUX Users Group. While I can be massively entertained by the sociological/political/religious meanderings of some folks who post here, my primary interest is in learning as much as I can about, you guessed it, LINUX. So, howzaboutit? If some folks wish to beat each other about the head and shoulders in a virtual world, why not go pick an open field and go at it for real instead of wasting our collective in-boxes with non-linux trivia?
I have an Ubuntu Linux-related question. I've been running an Ubuntu server for several months. I'm very pleased with how easy it is to run. Uptime is very good. On the other hand, I swear that Time Warner is interfering with my connection from home to the server which is located elsewhere. Time Warner provides Internet service to both locations. I'm getting dropped pages and seeing an inability to submit forms on the remote server. I'm using Firefox 3 at home on a laptop running Windows XP. I seldom see the same problem when the laptop is on the same network as the server. Can folks recommend any good network analysis tools that we can install on the server? Chuck
tcpdump and/or wireshark: http://www.tcpdump.org/ http://www.wireshark.org/ The latter used to be called Ethereal, and the GUI was in fact written by an earlier kclug member. Ethereal at least, is available on windows. Run it on the client or server or both with a sufficiently tight filter. It watches the 'wire' and your filter narrows down what it reports so your screen isn't flooded. The filter "host 192.2.0.1 and port 80" would be sufficient on your laptop to limit reporting to traffic on your server (192.2.0.1) on port 80 (web). Show up at the next meeting, and I can demonstrate wireshark in action. I use my Time Warner connection alot, and haven't seen much interference, malicious or accidental. (Aside from when I saturate my link with traffic.) If you can ssh to your server from the meeting, you can do a remote packet capture with tcpdump -w, then scp it to your laptop and view it there with wireshark. It's likely some sort of misconfiguration, or malformed POST request though, but wireshark can rule out network interference. On Tue, Aug 12, 2008 at 23:03, Chuck <chuck@mutualaid.org> wrote:
Craig Aldinger wrote:
I may be just a reader of the forum for the vast majority of the posts arriving at my electronic doorstep but, I feel rather mystified..... I thought this is the Kansas City LINUX Users Group. While I can be massively entertained by the sociological/political/religious meanderings of some folks who post here, my primary interest is in learning as much as I can about, you guessed it, LINUX. So, howzaboutit? If some folks wish to beat each other about the head and shoulders in a virtual world, why not go pick an open field and go at it for real instead of wasting our collective in-boxes with non-linux trivia?
I have an Ubuntu Linux-related question.
I've been running an Ubuntu server for several months. I'm very pleased with how easy it is to run. Uptime is very good. On the other hand, I swear that Time Warner is interfering with my connection from home to the server which is located elsewhere. Time Warner provides Internet service to both locations. I'm getting dropped pages and seeing an inability to submit forms on the remote server. I'm using Firefox 3 at home on a laptop running Windows XP. I seldom see the same problem when the laptop is on the same network as the server.
Can folks recommend any good network analysis tools that we can install on the server?
Chuck _______________________________________________ Kclug mailing list Kclug@kclug.org http://kclug.org/mailman/listinfo/kclug
of some folks who post here, my primary interest is in learning as much as I can about, you guessed it, LINUX. So, howzaboutit? If some folks wish to beat each other about the head and shoulders in a virtual world, why not go pick an open field and go at it for real instead of wasting our collective in-boxes with non-linux trivia?
(sorry for the double send. Gmail screwed up my list post) A Linux Users Group I don't believe is a group of people with 1 specific topic being Linux. I believe it is a Social group that connects us with people who have passion and desire for technologies such as Linux, Open Source, and other topics that people like *us* are concerned about. Like the BMW motorcycle group. Do you really think they sit around talking about BMW motorcycles? No, the come together because of BMW motorcycles but the socialize, discuss, and grow to gether as a group of people. Linux users used to be out there all on their own. Hell, as a subspecies of humanity called Geek/Hacker our very social life is one of loneliness as we sit in our basements every night hacking away only seeing our *friends* in small little text windows that scroll. To afraid of the outside world to have multitudes of friends like normal humans. Then formed Linux Users groups that took our depressing little sob story of loneliness and showed us that there are people out there just like us. It took us out of our basements and to an event where we can finally realize just how awesome it is to see a person face to face by offering us a social environment where we feel safe and welcome due to a common interest. Linux User Groups bind geeks back into human interaction. Who says it has to be Linux interaction?
On Fri, Aug 22, 2008 at 8:30 AM, Tom Bruno <tom@limesg.com> wrote:
where we can finally realize just how awesome it is to see a person face to face by offering us a social environment where we feel safe and welcome due to a common interest.
Linux User Groups bind geeks back into human interaction. Who says it has to be Linux interaction?
The difference is that they occasionally, you know, talk about cycles. They ride em around town, and maybe BMW holds an event. Imagine if the BMW group only ever talked about Harley Davidson, or political views on immigration. It too would be dysfunctional. Here, we have a discussion dominated by a few, to the active disinterest of a good number. We can agree to personally filter and ignore. We might even agree to make these hidden filters explicit. But something more is needed. We need people to present their work. For example, I don't think I've seen you mention Neuros Technologies on the ML yet, even though it's of prime interest to the group. I'm curious, why haven't you mentioned it at all? Justin Dugger
On Fri, Aug 22, 2008 at 11:32 AM, Justin Dugger <jldugger@gmail.com> wrote:
The difference is that they occasionally, you know, talk about cycles.
But a massive discussion of the benefits of OTR mudflap size legislation would be equivalently on-topic there
But something more is needed. We need people to present their work. For example, I don't think I've seen you mention Neuros Technologies on the ML yet, even though it's of prime interest to the group. I'm curious, why haven't you mentioned it at all?
Justin Dugger
who are these "you?" So tell us about Neuros Technologies already!
On Fri, Aug 22, 2008 at 11:52 AM, David Nicol <davidnicol@gmail.com> wrote:
On Fri, Aug 22, 2008 at 11:32 AM, Justin Dugger <jldugger@gmail.com> wrote:
The difference is that they occasionally, you know, talk about cycles.
But a massive discussion of the benefits of OTR mudflap size legislation would be equivalently on-topic there
But something more is needed. We need people to present their work. For example, I don't think I've seen you mention Neuros Technologies on the ML yet, even though it's of prime interest to the group. I'm curious, why haven't you mentioned it at all?
Justin Dugger
who are these "you?" So tell us about Neuros Technologies already!
David, I'm sure you've heard of these things we call "replies". A post is written in response to another poster's message, providing context and an intended audience. In such cases, "you" is directed towards the other poster. This "you" would be Tom Bruno, a Neuros Developer and Manager, and subscriber to KCLUG. Neuros (http://www.neurostechnology.com/) produces a number of embedded Linux devices. Tom's even promoted a small political cause about DRM, which benefits both Neuros and Linux in general: http://open.neurostechnology.com/content/unlocked-media . The question is, why has he chosen to ignore the KCLUG mailing list, except to egg on mailing list flamewars? Justin Dugger
Doesn't mailman support list sub-topics? Would anyone be interested in using this feature, so the people who don't like political talk don't have to get the political messages, but they can get everything else? Just an idea, I've never actually used mailman's sub-topic feature, so I don't know if it's more cumbersome than it's worth. ~Bradley On Tue, 2008-08-12 at 18:42 -0500, Craig Aldinger wrote:
I may be just a reader of the forum for the vast majority of the posts arriving at my electronic doorstep but, I feel rather mystified..... I thought this is the Kansas City LINUX Users Group. While I can be massively entertained by the sociological/political/religious meanderings of some folks who post here, my primary interest is in learning as much as I can about, you guessed it, LINUX. So, howzaboutit? If some folks wish to beat each other about the head and shoulders in a virtual world, why not go pick an open field and go at it for real instead of wasting our collective in-boxes with non-linux trivia?
_______________________________________________ Kclug mailing list Kclug@kclug.org http://kclug.org/mailman/listinfo/kclug
There's one way to find out. I doubt it can be any worse than the alternative. On 2008-08-22, Bradley Hook <bhook@kssb.net> wrote:
Doesn't mailman support list sub-topics? Would anyone be interested in using this feature, so the people who don't like political talk don't have to get the political messages, but they can get everything else?
Just an idea, I've never actually used mailman's sub-topic feature, so I don't know if it's more cumbersome than it's worth.
~Bradley
On Tue, 2008-08-12 at 18:42 -0500, Craig Aldinger wrote:
I may be just a reader of the forum for the vast majority of the posts arriving at my electronic doorstep but, I feel rather mystified..... I thought this is the Kansas City LINUX Users Group. While I can be massively entertained by the sociological/political/religious meanderings of some folks who post here, my primary interest is in learning as much as I can about, you guessed it, LINUX. So, howzaboutit? If some folks wish to beat each other about the head and shoulders in a virtual world, why not go pick an open field and go at it for real instead of wasting our collective in-boxes with non-linux trivia?
_______________________________________________ Kclug mailing list Kclug@kclug.org http://kclug.org/mailman/listinfo/kclug
_______________________________________________ Kclug mailing list Kclug@kclug.org http://kclug.org/mailman/listinfo/kclug
participants (13)
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Billy Crook -
billycrook＠gmail.com
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Bradley Hook -
Christofer C. Bell -
Chuck -
Craig Aldinger -
David Nicol -
Jon Pruente -
Justin Dugger -
Leo Mauler -
marlowe＠antagonism.org -
Monty J. Harder -
Tom Bruno