Greetings:
I've returned once more. I just read the nasty little spat that occured
when Mike, out of the generosity of his heart, offered to teach a class to
anyone on the list. He was unfairly attacked by some and accused of
elitism. How ironic. That's the last thing he is. The man has only
taught various classes at multiple colleges in an effort to share what
he's learnt as an enthusiast of technology. He loves to share the neat
things he's learnt. And given the relative uniqueness of his full time job
I would think most would derive some value from it. He's certainly not
doing this for the glory -- there's none to be had.
So, here's my $0.02, and I'll stay around this time to see who has their own
to offer. As far as I'm concerned the AKLUG list has sucked badly for a few
years now, and if you ever expect it to be a viable resource to more than
the handful that play there, the cause of it must be identified and
rectified.
That said, the following is the World of Linux & AKLUG according to Corliss.
--Arthur Corliss
Live Free or Die
The World of Linux & AKLUG according to Corliss
===============================================
There was a time, back in the early days of Linux when it was just a
"hacker's OS", when men were encouraged to be men. These days, it seems, that
most want us all to be women. The catch phrase for this is the accusation of
being an "elitist" by those with an obvious inferiority complex. Which is a
shame because there are real elitists that need to be dealt with as well, but
the unwarranted expansion of this term does everyone a disservice.
Let's face a few facts: there *are* multiple classes of Linux users. There
are those that are of the hacker class, that want to know how things work, and
how they can reassemble those pieces to do something else. And then there are
the user class, those that don't care what was going on behind the scenes, and
only want things to work.
In the early days of Linux, and by extension, AKLUG, hackers were the most
prevalent participants. Starting in the late ninety's, when Linux began
having significant commercial success, an influx of users expanded the
community. Possibly to the point that users now dominate.
The irony of this is that some users, and you know who you are, want to
establish themselves as the uber-geeks and experts of Linux. But they know
that they have no claim to that title, and so their inferiority complex causes
them to lash out at any one or thing that exposes their ignorance. In order for
them to maintain what they percieve is their rightful place in
the heirarchy of "experts" they must reduce everyone to a user in the
community.
The idiocy of this should be plain to see. If it wasn't for the hackers
the users wouldn't have anything to play with. By the same token, many
hackers become so after moving up through the ranks of the users. Hackers
need the fresh blood and ideas of new members in order to come up with even
better hacks.
In truth, users and hackers have a symbiotic relationship. Our resident
uppity users need to quit being so threatened by the hackers. And the
hackers should be more understanding that the users don't care about the
internals to the same extent that they do. Both have a critical role in the
development and furtherment of technology.
So, how does AKLUG exist into the future? Let's be clear: recent history
has seen the hacker's role almost completely silenced. Most of the hackers
I was on the list with myself have taken one of two actions: either leave
the list, or go into full lurk mode. This is simply not healthy. Not only
does it leave newcomers with the occasional bad advice of the users (if they
understood the full ramifications of their recommendations they'd be hackers
in the first place) which can hurt the recruitment of other users, but it
also deprives the hackers of new blood needed to refresh their ranks, as
users with hacker aptitudes are identified.
Now, in order to keep hackers engaged you have to work around their
shortcomings. We're not patient, and we're easily bored. If either of
those traits are brought into play we're much more likely to go amuse
ourselves and not participate at all. This means that, no, hackers are not
interested in answering Linux/Application 101 questions that have been more
than likely fully documented in a HOWTO or usenet group. This also means
that you need to be tolerant when hackers get cross-eyed from not being able
to understand why a user is satisfied that something works, rather than
caring about how it works or whether it's an elegant solution.
Personally, given the very different perspectives of the two class of
users I think the AKLUG lists should be segmented. There should be a
linux-users and linux-hackers lists. And then you have social functions
where you get both groups to rub elbows to get the cross-pollination to
occur as identified above.
The last idea I want to float is perhaps more subjective then the rest of
this: linux admins should be hackers. I know many users on this list will
object to this. However, I've had to maintain enterprise support contracts
for about six years now, and even at that level of support a self-sufficient
admin is a much more productive admin (and I can give examples from direct
experience in regards to this). Consultants, in general, are worthless as
well. I have yet to meet a consultant that was more than functionally
literate in their product, and I have yet to meet a consultant that actually
had the skills to claim a title like a "systems and/or network engineer".
If they actually were that good they wouldn't be dispensing advice from a
magic 8 ball, they'd be running an enterprise data center where their
mistakes costs millions of dollars.
In short, when I look to hire an admin I want a hacker. Someone who can do
more than tell me that something doesn't work, but why. And a person with
those skills will also be able to come up a solution.
Let's be honest, folks: if the extent of your skills is the ability to
follow someone else's instructions (whether in a book or a HOWTO) you're not a
hacker, you're a user. That's not meant to denigrate anyone, it's just a
fact. If you want to be more than that, then you want to be a hacker, and
that means you need to concentrate your education in hacker skills. The
problem I see on the list is users pretending to be hackers, and giving a
completely false idea to new users as to what that entails. That needs to
stop.
This isn't elitism, it is a practical reality. If it was elitism then the
"elitists" would be making fun of every simple question asked on the list.
To my knowledge that has *never* happened. The hackers will refute what
they consider to be an erroneous response, but they do not belittle
beginners. Based purely off of history there is no reason for anyone to be
afraid to ask a question. But it is fair that the responders should be
somewhat concerned about spewing an answer off that hasn't been well thought
out and researched. Historically, there's been a few guilty of spew-first,
think-later mentality.
All of AKLUG needs to consider what they want to be a part of and where
they want to go. The reality is that you've got a users' list on your
hands, and one that seems to be somewhat hostile to hackers. Are you going
to be a little more open to having hackers around and participating, or do
you want to keep this down to a "what's your favorite package for XXXX",
microsoftian level? It's your choice.
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Received on Fri Mar 16 13:14:33 2007
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.8 : Fri Mar 16 2007 - 13:14:33 AKDT