Walk Alone

Yup. I got myself an ICQ number. You may ask why? Many reasons.

1. I *hate* integration. The only reason I’m holding on to my Yahoo id is because of its IM. I can subscribe to Yahoo groups using my non-Yahoo ID too. This integrated/consolidated service reminds me too much of MS and MSN. Did you know that MSN has a blogging service too - ofcourse you need a MSN id for that. Thank God that up to now, Gmail and Blogger are seperate. And so, ICQ it is.
2. I hate integrated services that offer you everything (even if you want only some things) or nothing.
3. I hate… you get the idea.

What can I say? I’ve been allowed to continue as HoTT - TT is Tech Team, go figure out the rest. I suppose I must bow down and say “Thanks. Thanks.. O Ye wizards from the comp/it/etrx streams for letting a student from Electrical Engineering become HoTT”. In the bargain, nearly half the team is made up of IT wizards because that stream sacrificed a HoTT slot. Phew! No wonder we stay tuned during elections.

The comp/it/etrx (cie for short) people believe the TT belongs to them. Why? Because they use Flash. And maybe some programming and scripting. They use lpt interface programing. They handle lots of PCs and peripherals. And thats all.

To tell you what I feel - THIS SUCKS. Period. In these times, to use those points as a criteria for exclusive ownership over the TT is anachronistic. These people have got an over-inflated opinion of themselves. They forget that they got equal competitors churned out by the thousands from various B.Sc. IT courses, NIIT, Aptech and lots of similar institutes. Frankly, a formal degree in cie has lost its relevance in these times. Rank amatuers can beat these comp/etrx guys at their jobs - such are these fields. As for IT, please show me where these people work. They are simply taking away programming and system admin jobs. I, an amatuer who looks on Linux and related stuff as a hobby, could study 4 books on say, Linux Administration, Apache, MySQL and Perl - and beat a BE Comps/IT student hands-down at server design and admin anytime. (ok don’t sweat - I don’t have the time or inclination). These people can’t appreciate the fact that someone outside their direct discipline can do things as good as them or (again, don’t sweat) better.

Visit Joe’s blog on his site. He has a post on the irrelevance of Comp Science Engineering. Read it.

Its come down to this - tomorrow is the day when the different posts are going to be “officially” alloted. Its a battle allright. The spoils will go to the victors. The contestants have returned home - to be ready with their body and soul for the battle the next day…

Bookmark this page for the results of the battle. I’ll tell you about it tomorrow.

How does one persuade a guy to use Linux? When he is using w32 since he’s using a PC. The only thing he has used or is interested in are w32 apps, frequently MS products. By nature of the OS being proprietary, quite a few apps are proprietary. I leave the rest to your intepretation. This guy treats his PC as as appliance - like a toaster, or maybe a glorified DVD player + calculator + TV + game console. His immediate concern concern is getting the toast - or his job on the PC done. And the only way he can/wants to do it is the way he was taught or like he learnt it. He recently migrated to Win XP. And is curently coming to terms with multi-tiered user levels, advanced config options which were never seen in Win 98/Me and much more.

I feel sad. I was like him once. Not having a choice. Not being aware of a choice being present. Not knowing that things could be different, and better, than they were now.

He is sorting out issues with his newly installed w32 build 5.x. He scoffs when I tell him that wizards are/should be the last option. He believes that having less wizards indicates a high-minded attitude among the developers of a system - that it is intended to drive away newbies. And then he says that LUGs are symptomatic of some shortcomings in Linux - that “linuxers are handicapped”. He refuses to believe that something which survived through so much (so much that I can’t fit it all here - visit Eric’s and Joe’s sites for more info and links) won’t last into the future. Though he is gracious enough to admit that the same fate may fall on w32. I believe that Linux will survive. Perhaps by another name. Maybe BSD will become dominant. Solaris. Maybe even Mac OS or the proper, authentic Unix itself will become open and dominant. Am I being over-confident? Will the principles of OSI and FSF fall away?

I don’t think so. I’ll do my best to keep them up - my little bit.

You might want to read more of this GNU/Linux v/s Windows slugfest at Sandesh’s blog.

Finally got time to write something. And its an explanation for why I didn’t write sooner. My schedule in this week was… get up as early as possible… get to college… do some or no work there… stay there as long as possible… hence come home as late as possible… early dinner… check mails… chat with friends… remember that you have to go to college early tomorrow… go to sleep. (full stop)

This is a vacation. Wonder how it will be when college starts.