From owner-freebsd-advocacy Thu Nov 5 17:43:53 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id RAA02273 for freebsd-advocacy-outgoing; Thu, 5 Nov 1998 17:43:53 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from Loki.orland.u91.k12.me.us (Loki.orland.u91.k12.me.us [169.244.111.67]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id RAA02264 for ; Thu, 5 Nov 1998 17:43:50 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from netmonger@genesis.ispace.com) Received: from celeris (56k-port4005.ime.net [209.90.195.15]) by Loki.orland.u91.k12.me.us (8.9.1/8.8.8-Loki) with SMTP id UAA17601; Thu, 5 Nov 1998 20:43:25 -0500 (EST) (envelope-from netmonger@genesis.ispace.com) X-Server-ID: Loki.orland.u91.k12.me.us, OCSNet - Orland Maine USA X-Coord-Name: Drew "Droobie" Baxter, OneNetwork Exchange X-Coord-Addr: Droobie@Openlink.orland.me.us X-Coord-Pager: USA: 207-471-2719, http://pagedroo.orland.me.us Message-Id: <4.1.19981105204113.00a77c40@genesis.ispace.com> X-Sender: netmonger@genesis.ispace.com X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.1 Date: Thu, 05 Nov 1998 20:41:32 -0500 To: "Jordan K. Hubbard" , Brett Glass From: Drew Baxter Subject: Re: Linux "best of breed?" Cc: "Jason C. Wells" , advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG In-Reply-To: <27114.910316233@time.cdrom.com> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG At 05:37 PM 11/5/98 -0800, Jordan K. Hubbard wrote: >> Sorry to disturb you, but this is your wake-up call. > >Sean Connery has a great line in The Untouchables where he, riddled with >gunfire and dying, grabs Kevin Costner by the shirt and demands "What >are you prepared to DO? WHAT ARE YOU PREPARED TO DO??" > >A lot more than be an alarm clock with an expensive college school >education, one hopes? A lot more than that is certainly needed, of >course, and having an advocacy group which spends its days going >"wail! moan! despair!" in a collective fashion also strikes me as a >fine way of going under. Any group of people engaged in such activity >are not generally notable for actually being productive. > >More to the point, if we actually subjected all the messages posted to >this mailing list over the last 6 months to even the most rudimentary >statistical analysis, I'm highly confident that we'd find something >like: > > 78% General gnashing of teeth, rending of cloth > 22% Content actually dedicated to furthering advocacy > >and I'm probably being far too lenient with those figures, if >anything. The psych majors will probably tell us that numbers like >these are a general indication of Some Sort of Group Dysfunction which >Only Trained Sociologists Can Really Understand, but I say bah. The >numbers indicate to *me* that too many people have simply fallen in >love with reporting on the game from the sidelines and have forgotten >that they were supposed to be out on the field actually playing it. > >To put it another way, if people devoted themselves to the process of >conducting their own advocacy efforts with the same energies I've seen >them devote to freaking out about Linux's own efforts or screaming >about falling chunks of sky, we'd have the BSD daemon on the cover of >Time Magazine by now. > >- Jordan > And here I thought that this years Time Man of the Year was the BSD Daemon itself... Damn I lost the bet. --- Drew "Droobie" Baxter Network Admin/Professional Computer Nerd(TM) OneEX: The OneNetwork Exchange 207-942-0275 http://www.droo.orland.me.us My Latest Kernel: FreeBSD 3.0-CURRENT (ONEEX) #14: Mon Oct 19 22:36:58 EDT 1998 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message