Nick Rout wrote:
Yes the morality and philosphy and price all have a place in the
marketing of FLOSS, and to some parts of the market they are powerful
attractions. But not necessarily to Joe Public.
Yes, the business case is strongest in that respect. Commercial-grade
training in the public sector fits this bill. Joe/line Public supply
only demand, if we can inspire them somehow.
Actually, how well do games go on your projector?
IIRC, Need For Speed II on a Playstation2 ran very well. Dimmed
background lighting is required to make it look good, however. I've got
DVD play-&-project sorted, but not used any games under Linux yet.
Tomorrow night @StAlbans would be a good opportunity for running some
game display tests, if anyone wishes to.
A problem has often been trying to share resources between demos and
installations. A person demoing their linux machine is a person lost to
the installers team, and vice versa. Thats why I think something with
more emphasis on the demo/expo stuff and having the instals in a back
corner (or a subsequent date) would be an idea.
Fair enough. Worth a try. This also means putting more commercial spin
on it, I'd say, to get vendor buy-in for the promotional budget. It
looks like an element of 'professionalisation' is required /
unavoidable, because the relationships we'll need to establish make most
sense projecting beyond just the current year. Perhaps we need to look
at 'CLUG Committee' again, and add a 'corporate liaison' role to sound
out interested parties.
Depending on where our venue needs settle, adding an Installfest
function/room shouldn't be too difficult. High demand could be spilt
over to the monthly meetings, as backup capacity.
It could as much be about offering a raft of reasons, starting with
"WOW" followed by security and availability of good apps and following
up with the cost, ease and ethics.
Yes, the reasons are all there. What seems to be lacking is public
interface. Good to be having this discussion.
'It just works' outweighs environmental sense, thus far.
not just in the computing world i'm afraid! counted the fendalton
tractors that have never seen an unsealed road lately?
'Environmental sense' was an elusive term, to describe why GNOME & KDE
are so good to work on, and relate that to overall effect upon planet
Earth. Resource wastage is probably the #1 issue affecting all our
futures, but it inadequately makes it from headline to doco to
'something constructive everyone can do'. This can change.
Challenging the forthcoming Wintel upgrade round on public, moral
grounds could easily become a global cause. Something each of us has to
consider, rather than expect group uniformity tho.
If what you are trying to say is that we don't need whizz bang to have
a good computing experience, I agree. I don't want the gross waste of
resources that is XP, Vista or, for that matter, the grosser excesses
of the fancier kde/gnome desktops. Getting what you want/need and no
more is a "good thing". Getting no less than what you want/need is
important too.
This is probably a matter of better defining 'need', philosophically.
Imposition does not work, but demonstrated good example does. Escaping
our cubicles and cloisters to interact more is the challenge there -
probably a modification of geek attribute. Identified correctly, 'need'
has global ramifications.
'Need', for me, is simply defined tho. I'll leave my boring sig
attached, and explain it, thus: every piece of software I require to run
a small, internet-based, 100% FOSS, owner-operator business, is listed
there (accounts are maintained on OOo spreadsheet; no urgency to
upgrade, sans-Winsecurity). And self-employment is freedom itself, many
find.
We probably have to engage with the Trademe ethic, and show how clean
data management is liberation for SOHOs (& bigger businesses). Leaving
the kids to run the Win-box into the ground would teach them maintenance
or choice, pdq. Ha! - 'clean your room' was just the warmup!!
yes, Vista is a powerful ally to open source.
Sounds like we're getting prepared for a storm. Wise to.
--
Richard Tindall, InfoHelp Services <http://www.infohelp.co.nz>, on:
Ubuntu GNU/Linux 5.04 free OS, 2.6.10-5-k7 kernel, GNOME 2.10.0 desktop
OpenOffice.org 1.1.3, Mozilla 1.7.12 email client & web browser
GIMP 2.2.2 graphics, gedit 2.10.2 web editor, gFTP 2.0.18 file transfer
