On Thursday 02 January 2003 19:30, Alex Shnitman wrote: > On Thu, 2003-01-02 at 17:57, Gilad Ben-Yossef wrote: > > > Don't forget that not everyone in this world is meant to become a > > > programmer. In fact, *all* the people in the modern world are mere > > > consumers of most of the technologies and products that they use, be it > > > computer software or canned tomato paste, and they neither know nor > > > care about the way they're created. > > > > This is where you and I completly differ. I don't like the concept of > > being a consumer and that children are being brought up to be one. This > > is exactly the "drone" mentality I as referring to. > > Well, you may not like it, but you are one. There's no way that somebody > could know everything about everything, and that's why we specialize in > different things. You have no choice but accept that most of the > technologies and products in this world you will never completely > dissect and understand -- it just all got too big for one person. >
Objection. 95% of people don't own BMW, use Hitachi DVDs, have an iMac at home and only drink Lipton "tea". That's because there's competition and that's because they have something to choose from. Now please enlighten me what kind of choice a consumer (not us Linux geeks, but a consumer, as in truck drivers, blond secretaries and investment brokers) has when it comes to operating systems? And even hardware platforms? What we're trying to do here is compensating for this. And you're telling us that we're drones who have no other choice but to accept things the way they are and... "move along people, nothing to see here"? > The "basic understanding" you mentioned elsewhere in your e-mail is what > makes all the difference -- it's very good to thrive to have a basic > understanding of everything, but tweaking the source of your word > processor is way beyond that. So the boy who specializes in music in his > school has a computer class, and you as a teacher must give him the > knowledge that will serve him best when he later has to use a computer > (as a *consumer*), and not draw him into the free software argument and > make him a showcase of your opinion at the expense of his time and > mindshare. Let me summarize you the free software argument in schools for you so that you rethink your above statement: 1) There's no reason why a state maintained school should waste taxpayers' money for proprietary software when an [equally good] free alternative exists. In fact, in a people's government (wow, a herd of pigs flying by) there is absolutely no reason why proprietary software should be used at all. 2) There's no reason why a state sponsored school should be a poster boy for a proprietary company's marketing campaign, establishing that this proprietary company's inherently inferior software, user interface and data formats are a de facto standard 3) There's no reason why a state sponsored school should encourage the students' family to choose one particular proprietary piece of software (not that there's many) and pay for it or, even worse, encourage piracy. It is not our moral duty to teach people that proprietary software, copyright, intellectual property, privacy, communism or gaysexwithdogs is right or wrong. It is our moral duty however to compensate for commercial propaganda and give people enough tools and knowledge to make a reasonable judgement themselves. What we were trying to do here is exactly that. If you don't like it, you're welcome to not participate. The aforementioned boy in the music class has a right to be aware that software is going to play a vitally important software in everyone's life soon - it already does, in case you didn't notice. It is also his very right to be aware that choices exist, and that he has a choice instead of someone (in this case, the school) choosing a default standard for him. Unless of course *you* are comfortable that *your* kids are going to be deprived of elementary independent thinking, that is. If you are, I suggest you watch Total Recall 2070 to see how bright out future is going to be. -- "I'm not saying there should be a capital punishment for stupidity, but why don't we just take the safety labels off of everything and let the problem solve itself?" ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
